Blog
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Unbelievable?
4June 6, 2013 by Lydia Syson
‘Isn’t that rather implausible?’
I’ll take a bet that if you write vampire novels or fantasy or dystopia for young people, that’s not a question you get asked very often. But credibility is important for all kinds of writing. When it comes to historical fiction, it’s a must. keep reading
Category Blog | Tags: credibility, Esmond Romilly, Felicia Browne, International Brigades, Jessica Mitford, John Sommerfield, Molly Murphy, Paris, People's Olympiad, real volunteers, Running away, Steve Fullarton, Wogan Phillips
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This is London
1May 12, 2013 by Lydia Syson
The first time I ever saw Tower Bridge open was thanks to my Great-Aunt Bertha. We had a huge number of great-aunts (my grandfather was almost at the end of thirteen children): Bertha was far-and-away our favourite. She told the most wonderful and subversive stories, often about her own childhood, including this particularly memorable tale of disobedience rewarded: keep reading
Category Blog | Tags: Artists' Open House, Dulwich Festival, exploring London, Loraine Rutt, lost rivers, Sasek, Silt Road, This is London, Tower Bridge
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Come and see the blood in the streets
0April 22, 2013 by Lydia Syson
What prompted thousands of men and women, some only teenagers (like Nat and Felix in A World Between Us), to leave everything they knew to go and help the Republican cause in Spain – often without a word to their families? Many had never left Britain before, most didn’t speak a word of Spanish, and a fifth of them were killed there.In Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom, a documentary film at a political meeting is the deciding factor keep reading
Category Blog | Tags: Anti-fascism, blood on the streets, fundraising documentary, Ian Hart, International Brigade Memorial Trust, Ivor Montagu, Jim Jump, Ken Loach, Land and Freedom, London Socialist Film Co-op, Medical Aid for Spain, Propaganda films, Spanish Civil War films, The Defence of Madrid, Trabadajores, Trabajadores
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Please tell Mr Gove what you think…
0April 10, 2013 by Lydia Syson
We’ve all got until Monday 16th April to respond to the Draft National Curriculum, published subject by subject here, so if you care what happens to the future of education in England (sic) don’t let this opportunity pass. keep reading
Category Blog | Tags: Camden New Journal, curriculum for cohesion, Gove, history education, history not propaganda, Martin Spafford, National Curriculum, Richard Evans, Schools HIstory Project
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Left out
4March 14, 2013 by Lydia Syson
I’m developing a new obsession, fuelled this week by a number of chance media encounters. Today I read an article by Mariko Oi reflecting on her own extremely selective education in history as a teenager in Japan – just nineteen pages of a textbook were devoted to events which took place between 1931 and 1945. Oi then outlined the ‘curriculum battles’ taking place in Japan right keep reading
Category Blog | Tags: curriculum, Edmund de Waal, Fujioka, history, Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, Matsuoka, The Exiles Return, world war 2
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Homage to Catalonia: the debate
3March 4, 2013 by Lydia Syson
“You’ve written a book about the Spanish Civil War? Oh yes, Orwell, right?”
“Mmm. Yes and no.”
I’ve had a few conversations along these lines in recent months. It’s hard to explain George Orwell’s complicated relationship to the complicated Civil War in Spain and its complicated historiography in just a few words. As a teenager, I absolutely loved Homage to Catalonia keep reading
Category Blog | Tags: Barcelona, Christopher Hall, Franco, Homage to Catalonia, IBMT, ILP, Jim Jump, Len Crome, Mary Vincent, May Days, Orwell, Orwell Society, Paul Preston, POUM, quiet front, Richard Baxell, Spanish Civil War historiography, Stafford Cottman, Tom Buchanan
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Questioning the Triumph of Abolition
1February 27, 2013 by Lydia Syson
A few years ago I did some research for my children’s South London primary school about a local hero called Dr Lettsom – an eighteenth-century Quaker physician born in the West Indies who freed his slaves as soon as he inherited them in 1767, set up a soup kitchen and a dispensary for London’s poor, and gave away his wealth almost as fast as he made it. A ‘good’ and inspiring story from history. keep reading
Category Blog | Tags: abolition, Catherine Hall, Dog Kennel Hill, Freedom Sculpture, Lettsom, Slavery, UCL
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Dying for dreams
4January 24, 2013 by Lydia Syson
Numbers on labels, pinned to the soil. A handful of molars in a plastic bag. The riverine meanders of sutures running across a cranium, joining frontal to parietal bones, temporal to occipital. They are transected by a fracture, leading from a bullet hole. keep reading
Category Blog | Tags: Clemente Bernad, Desvelados, Dying for Dreams, Kept Awake, Memory, Spanish Civil War
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RIP David Lomon, 1918-2012
2December 22, 2012 by Lydia Syson
When Ellathebookworm from the Guardian Teen Book Club asked me this week what I would have found hardest if I’d been a soldier in the Spanish Civil War, I immediately thought of David Lomon, and what he had endured after being taken prisoner by Mussolini’s forces in Spain in the spring of 1938. Richard Baxell interviewed him for his new book, Unlikely Warriors - read more here. Very sadly, David died yesterday.
Category Blog | Tags: David Lomon, Guardian Teen Book Club, International Brigades Memorial Trust, last British International Brigader
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News and an offer
0December 14, 2012 by Lydia Syson
Tucked into a corner of King’s Cross Station, just beside the sign for Platform 9-and-3/4, there’s a newish bookshop called Watermark which is well worth seeking out. Thanks to Laura, its fantastically enthusiastic children’s bookseller, that’s where just over half my writing group kicked off this year’s Christmas celebrations last night.
Category Blog | Tags: Adventure Walks, Atticus Claw, Guinea Pigs Online, Jewish Socialist, Keren David, New Books, Platform 9 3/4, review, Village Books, Watermark, Wrtiers' Forum
