Posts Tagged ‘Paris Commune’
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The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia: book review
0May 8, 2016 by Lydia Syson
Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with Louise Michel, teacher, poet and revolutionary heroine of the 1871 Paris Commune, but she’s not exactly a well-known figure in the English-speaking world. Yet. If The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia, the new graphic biography by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot, has anything like the success of their remarkable first collaboration, Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes – and it certainly deserves to – that could be about to change.Michel is hardly obscure. In fact she’s legendary. She’s iconic. In France (and indeed New Caledonia) there have been schools and streets and squares named after her, not to mention two International Brigade battalions and a Metro station. She romanticised her own life in her keep reading
Category News | Tags: Bryan Talbot, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, Graphic novel, Liberty's Fire, Louise Michel, Mary M Talbot, Paris Commune, The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia, Utopia
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31st March 2016: Children and Socialism series, Marx Memorial Library, London
0March 8, 2016 by Lydia Syson
New Ways to Tell Old Stories: putting the political into historical fiction for today’s young readers
Lydia Syson and Meirian Jump in conversation at the home of the International Brigade archives.
Lydia, a former BBC World Service radio producer, is the author of three critically-acclaimed novels for young adults. A World Between Us (2012) tells the story of three British volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. Sparked by research into the anthem of the International Brigades, Liberty’s Fire (2015) brings the 1871 Paris Commune dramatically to life for a new generation. That Burning Summer (2013) is set during the Battle of Britain in small rural community where spyfever is infectious and pacifism a dirty word. Lydia and Meirian will discuss hidden histories, unexpected heroes, archives and sources, and the ethics of turning real lives into fiction. All welcome. No need to book. £3 on the door.
March 31st, 2016 7:00 PMMarx Memorial Library
37A Clerkenwell Green
London
EC1R 0DU
United KingdomPhone: 020 725 31485Category Bookings | Tags: Children and Socialism, Historical YA, Lydia Syson, Marx Memorial Library, Pacifism, Paris Commune, political, Spanish Civil War, YA
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Gingerbread Pigs
0December 13, 2015 by Lydia Syson
My kitchen is heady with the scent of cloves and ginger and muscavado and cinnamon. The biscuity part of our gingerbread house is ready to be stuck together with icing, and adorned with sweets. We will eat it on New Year’s eve. Having managed to burn a few trayfuls during supper last night, we’ve still got more hearts and stars and snowflakes for presents and tree-hanging and emergency fuel to cut out and bake, and also, this year, pigs. keep reading
Category News | Tags: Armadillo, best gingerbread recipe, Christmas gingerbread, Gingerbread fair, Gingerbread recipe, Liberty's Fire, old-fashioned gingerbread, Paris Commune, Paris en Images, Place du Trône, Prue Leith, Roger-Viollet archive, The History Girls
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‘Resist the attempt to construct an argument’
2October 19, 2015 by Lydia Syson
This slogan flashed by while I sat enthralled by William Kentridge’s video installation Notes Towards a Model Opera at the Marian Goodman Gallery in Soho, London. It made me smile because I now spend two days a week as a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the Courtauld Institute for the History of Art encouraging students to construct an argument. Yet when I’m writing fiction, arguments are something I know I have to resist, despite my political themes. keep reading
Category News | Tags: Art, Carnegie, Cultural Revolution, Dada Masilo, Liberty's Fire, librarians, Marian Goodman, More Sweetly Play the Dance, Notes Towards a Model Opera, opera, Paris Commune, Revolution, William Kentridge
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‘The Red Virgin’
0June 23, 2015 by Lydia Syson
There is a character in Liberty’s Fire who is not named, but can be easily identified as Louise Michel, the best known of a number of impressive citoyennes featured in this blog post last month. Michel was one of many Communards who took refuge in London, and Fitzrovia in particular, to escape political repression in France in the aftermath of the Commune – even after the ‘Amnesty’ – and it was here that she met my great-great grandmother, N.F.Dryhurst, a member of the English Anarchist group. keep reading
Category News | Tags: English Anarchists, Fitzrovia, Fitzrovia Festival, French in exile, Henry Nevinson, international school, Liberty's Fire, Louise Michel, Margaret McMillan, N.F.Dryhust, Paris Commune
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Find out more about about the history behind Liberty’s Fire
1March 2, 2015 by Lydia Syson
‘What is the Commune, that sphinx so tantalizing to the bourgeois mind?’ (Marx:The Civil War in France)
Simply put, the Paris Commune was the radical municipal government elected to run the French capital in March 1871, immediately after the Franco-Prussian War and the Siege of Paris – not to be confused with the first French Revolution in 1789, or the July Revolution of 1830, or indeed the small uprising of 1832 featured in Les Miserables, or even the 1848 revolution which brought in the short-lived Second Republic. It lasted for 72 days, and historians have been debating exactly how to define it ever since.
Category Reviews & more | Tags: 1871, Books about Paris Commune, Citoyennes, Communardes, Communards, Franco-Prussian War, further reading, Liberty's Fire, Lissagaray, Louise Michel, Paris Commune, Paris Commune bibliography, photography, reading list, Revolution, Siege of Paris, Vallès, Women
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Can I get there by Candlelight?
0December 7, 2014 by Lydia Syson
If you head over to The History Girls, you’ll find some seasonal thoughts on candlelight through time, how light can affect plot, and the magical experience of watching ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore from the Musicians’ Gallery of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
Category News | Tags: candlelight, Globe Theatre, Gothic, guttering, London, Paris Commune, Political clubs, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, tallow
