Dear Anglophiles: If you have a day of leisure on your hands, you may want to watch these illuminating BBC videos, which cover the entirety of British history.  (Providing an overview of British history is no mean feat, right?!) 

The 28 videos, each about 9 minutes long, total approximately 4.5 hours.  You can watch Part 1 below; to find the remaining videos, click "Playlist" at the bottom of the video's screen to pull up the menu.

So make a pot of tea, hunker down in a comfy chair, and enjoy the show, my friends.  No quizzes or exams on these history lessons!

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Bram Stoker, the Victorian-era author who penned the horrific Dracula, one of the world's most famous Gothic stories, was a private man.  Last summer, a great-grandnephew of Stoker's discovered in his attic a notebook written by Bram over 100 years ago.  Before discovery of the journal, even scholars lacked much insightful information about Stoker.  But the notebook changed that.  The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker: The Dublin Years, written by author Elizabeth Miller and Dacre Stoker, Bram’s great-grandnephew, was published on the centennial year of Bram’s death, allowing us to finally meet the fleshed out Bram Stoker. 

Below is a 36-minute podcast, recorded at a conference at Keats House in London, featuring vampire commentators and scholars. 


                                                     LISTEN TO PODCAST HERE  

So, who was Bram Stoker?

"Bram" Stoker was actually "Abraham" Stoker.  He was born in 1847 near Dublin and educated at Trinity College, where he graduated with honors in mathematics, science, history, and composition.  There, he became interested in theater and joined the College Historical Society and University Philosophical Society and, interestingly, wrote a paper entitled “Sensationalism in Fiction and Society.”  He was also a founder of the Dublin Sketching Club.  Truly a brilliant, artistic, multi-talented "Renaissance man."

After graduation, Stoker worked as a theater critic and civil servant in Dublin.  He wrote a favorable review of Henry Irving, one of the most popular actors of the day, and later dined with him and became a close friend.  As a result of the friendship, Stoker moved to London and became manager of Irving’s immensely popular Lyceum Theatre, a post he held for much of his adult life.  During this early period of his career, Stoker wrote stories and a non-fiction book.

Immediately before moving to London, Stoker married his neighbor, the “celebrated beauty” Florence Balcombe.  Victorian women, unable to pursue careers, often go down in history as “celebrated beauties,” especially when they're associated with famous men.  In Florence’s case, not only did she marry Bram, but before their courtship, Oscar Wilde courted her.  (Of note: Wilde, often associated with his homosexuality, did in fact eventually marry and have two children.  However, several years after marrying, Wilde moved out of his home and became estranged from his wife and children.  I digress but only because of wondering about the possible outcome of a Florence/Oscar marriage.  Equally noteworthy: Henry Irving, like Wilde, married, then left his wife and children and never remarried.)  The Bram-Florence union produced only one child, a son. 

Because of Bram’s Lyceum position, the Stokers flew high in London’s cultured society, meeting some of the most famous players of the day, including Bram’s distant relative, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  When Bram began writing Dracula, he was traveling the world for work but never visited the setting for Dracula—Eastern Europe.  Instead, he researched the region and vampires mentioned in folklore.  Dracula was his first, big literary success.  After it, he wrote another Gothic fantasy, The Lair of the White Worm and a biography of his close friend Henry Irving, Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving.  Scholars debate the cause of Bram’s death in 1906—some attribute it to a stroke, others to syphilis.

Bram Stoker’s major works

• The Primrose Path
  
• The Snake’s Pas
• The Watter’s Mou’
• The Shoulder of Shasta
• Dracula
• Miss Betty
  
• The Mystery of the Sea
  
• The Jewel of Seven Stars
  
• The Man (aka The Gates of Life)
  
• The Lady of the Shroud
  
• The Lair of the White Worm (aka The Garden of Evil
  

Mark you calendars, Anglophiles!  Neil Gaiman's TV series/novel Neverwhere, which is being adapted as a six-part radio drama, will begin airing March 16, 2013, on BBC Radio.  Equally exciting, Anglophiles the world over can listen to the shows via the BBC’s iPlayer, which is free on the BBC website. 

In case you’re not familiar with Neverwhere: It’s a dark, urban story set in “London below,” which runs parallel to “London above,” and combines elements of fantasy, crime, and romance.  Especially fun for the Anglophile is Gaiman naming various characters in the story after London place names, thus we encounter the likes of Old Bailey, Islington, and Earl of Earl’s Court.  

Gaiman, an English author (now living near Minneapolis, MN), has won many prestigious writing awards, including 4 Hugos, 2 Nebulas, 4 Bram Stoker Awards, 6 Locus Awards, 2 British SF Awards, a World Fantasy Award, a Newbery Medal, a Carnegie Medal, etc.  Anglophiles, especially those with a bent toward Steampunk or Sci-Fi culture, will undoubtedly want to catch this Neverwhere radio drama.

Meanwhile, be sure to check out the BBC iPlayer Radio, where you can listen to fabulous content any time of day or night…

Dear Anglophiles: A couple of books have come to my attention that may tickle your fancy.  One is nonfiction, filed under "history," but it's the funny, entertaining kind of history book.  The other, a detective novel, is set in Oxford . . . which, of course, is conjuring up the likes of Inspector Lewis in my mind.  The publication dates for both are drawing near!

Here's the lowdown:



ACROSS THE POND by Terry Eagleton     (Nonfiction)

This book offers an Englishman's view of America.  Says the publisher: Americans have long been fascinated with the oddness of the British, but the English, says literary critic Terry Eagleton, find their transatlantic neighbors just as strange. Only an alien race would admiringly refer to a colleague as “aggressive,” use superlatives to describe everything from one’s pet dog to one’s rock collection, or speak frequently of being “empowered.” Why, asks Eagleton, must we broadcast our children’s school grades with bumper stickers announcing “My Child Made the Honor Roll”? Why don’t we appreciate the indispensability of the teapot? And why must we remain so irritatingly optimistic, even when all signs point to failure?

On his quirky journey through the language, geography, and national character of the United States, Eagleton proves to be at once an informal and utterly idiosyncratic guide to our peculiar race. He answers the questions his compatriots have always had but (being British) dare not ask, like why Americans willingly rise at the crack of dawn, even on Sundays, or why we publicly chastise cigarette smokers as if we’re all spokespeople for the surgeon general.

In this pithy, warmhearted, and very funny book, Eagleton melds a good old-fashioned roast with genuine admiration for his neighbors “across the pond.”

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition 
• Hardcover; 192 pages
  
• Release date: June 24, 2013

• May pre-order now
  

EVERY CONTACT LEAVES A TRACE by Elanor Dymott     (Fiction)

Says the publisher: Elanor Dymott’s gorgeous debut tells the story of Alex, a solitary lawyer who has finally found love in the form of his beautiful wife, Rachel. When Rachel is brutally murdered one midsummer night on the grounds of their alma mater, Worcester College, Oxford, Alex’s life as he knows it vanishes. He returns to Oxford that winter and, through the shroud of his shock and grief, tries to piece together the mystery surrounding his wife’s death. Playing host to Alex’s winter visit is Harry, Rachel’s former tutor and trusted mentor, who turns out to have been involved in almost every significant development of their relationship. Alex also turns to Evie, Rachel’s self-centered and difficult godmother, whose jealousy of her charge has waxed and waned over the years. And then there are her university friends Anthony and Cissy, who shared with Rachel her taste for literature and for the illicit.

As he delves further into the mystery surrounding her death, Alex discovers in Rachel’s wake a tangled web of sex and jealousy, of would-be lovers and spiteful friends, of the poetry of Robert Browning, and of blackmail. Brilliantly written and suffused with eroticism, mystery, and a hint of menace, Every Contact Leaves a Trace introduces a stunning new voice in contemporary fiction.

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
  
• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Release date: May 6, 2013
• May pre-order now
  

Dear Anglophiles: It's February 7, the birth date of Charles Dickens.  The great writer was born 201 years ago today, and I dedicate today's post to him.

Charles Dickens wrote so vividly about London that the town itself becomes a character in his novels.  The colorful descriptions and Dickens’ propensity for dropping place names allows London tourists today to feel connected to the writer as they stroll streets and courtyards and alleyways he mentioned. 

I once stayed in London near his 48 Doughty Street home, which is now the Charles Dickens Museum.  On my first visit to the museum, I arrived late in the evening, after hours.  Alone, in the dark, I slowly ran my hand across the door...then across the door frame...then across bricks on the home's facade...all the while hoping the great Victorian writer himself had likewise touched those spots.  It was electrifying!  Then I sat down on the front step, leaned against the door, and contemplated all the social injustices that Dickens wrote about and that he opened readers' eyes to.  I think it’s fair to say that by raising social consciousness through his writings, Dickens made the world a better place. 

Charles and his family moved to London when he was twelve, in 1824, and soon afterward, his father was thrown into the appalling Marshalsea Debtors Prison—an event that apparently haunted Charles for life.  It also provided great fodder for his writings.  After his father’s imprisonment, young Charles went to work in a factory, but over the course of several years, with Charles’ keen ability to read and write and his nearly photographic memory, he then began a career of editing and writing.  At the still-wet-behind-the-ears age of 24, Dickens became a literary star with his Pickwick Papers.  He went on to write scores of novels, plays, short stories, poems, and nonfiction, and he enjoyed commercial and literary success his entire life. 

Today, numerous tour operators offer Dickensian London walks.  (Click for INFO)  Or with a good map, tourists can go it alone.  Such an amble may include Cheapside, a busy street today but a market street in Dickens’ time.  (Pip describes the area in Great Expectations.)  Or you may stroll the streets of Saffron Hill, mentioned in Oliver Twist, and Snow Hill, referenced in Nicholas Nickleby.  Or visit the St. George’s churchyard where a small portion of the dreaded Marshalsea Debtors Prison still stands—the prison where Charles’ father languished, and where Amy’s father, in Little Dorrit, languished too.

Two must-sees on any Dickens tour should include the Charles Dickens Museum and The Old Curiosity Shop. 

<- The Dickens Museum: A previous home of the great writer and where he wrote Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist , finished the Pickwick Papers, and started Baraby Rudge.  He lived in numerous homes across London, buying larger and larger houses as his family grew—but this home, at 48 Doughty Street, is the only one that remains.  

Note: If you’re weary of the touristy areas of London, I highly recommend that you visit this little museum, located in the quaint Bloomsbury university area.  Tea and sweets or a light lunch in its charming cafe will revive you in no time!

Welcome Anglophiles!  Please tune in below to the Jane Austen Pride & Prejudice readathon, live from the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, England.  The Centre and the City of Bath College are conducting a 12-hour, real-time, online reading of Pride & Prejudice, via streaming video, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the book's publication.  The reading began today at 11 a.m. GMT/6 a.m. ET (albeit late and with some technical difficulties!)  Some 140 celebrities, authors, politicians, musicians, Olympians, and school children are reading 10-minute segments, dressed in Regency costumes.  The program also offers Regency drama, dancing, and music.  Drop in and listen for 5 minutes or 5 hours--or 12.  Enjoy!

Exciting news, dear Anglophiles!  This Monday, January 28, is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice.  To commemorate the event, the Jane Austen Centre and City of Bath College, both in Bath, England, are conducting a 12-hour, international "readathon."  Anglophiles across the world will be able to watch this event via live, online, streaming video, which begins Monday at 11 a.m. GMT (6 a.m. ET).  Drop in and listen for 5 minutes or 5 hours--or 12!  Some 140 celebrities, authors, politicians, musicians, Olympians, and school children will read in 10-minute segments--and are invited to wear Regency costumes.  Periodically, throughout the reading, the program will feature the insertion of Regency drama, dancing, and music.  What a delight!  I do hope that Anglophiles everywhere--if they have a bit of free time on Monday--will make a nice pot of tea, toast a crumpet, and watch the Pride & Prejudice streaming video readathon below.  (Don't worry--I'll remind you on Monday but I wanted to give you a heads up.)

Rejoice, dear Anglophiles!  How to Live Like a Lord Without Really Trying by Shepherd Mead, author of the highly successful How to Succeed in Business Without Really trying, is now in re-print--by Oxford University Press, no less.  The charming book was penned by Mead after he and his family moved to England and originally published in 1964.  It was written as a satirical "guidebook" for fellow Americans who planned to move across the pond.   Though the book is comedic, light reading, it does chronicle a vanishing way of life in Britain--that of the manor--thus the book's importance to British history.   

And yet more lighthearted amusement for the Anglophile.... 

BBC has produced a new 6-part, period comedy for TV called Blandings, based on PG Wodehouse's Blandings Castle stories.  The half-hour episodes, set in 1929, features the follies of the aristocratic Emsworth family, owners of Castle Crom.   The show, staring Timothy Spall and Jennifer Saunders, was filmed in Fermanagh County, Northern Ireland, and began airing this month on BBC1.  If PBS or BBC-A decide to offer it on this side of the pond, I'll be sure to let readers know.

Trailer for first episode of Blandings--"State of Emergency"

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It took her some time to decide she needed to bother with a computer at all.  She thought she could leave all that to the private secretaries.  After a period of dignified resistance, Queen Elizabeth the Second (she of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and her other realms and territories beyond the seas) reluctantly broke down and took lessons.  She had to have the magnification of her screen increased so she could see properly.  When the major internet sites were explained to her, she did not entirely understand them.  They sounded to her like nursery games, so she muddled up Miss Twitter with Yar Hoo, and Mr Google with Pastebook.  Didn’t they all lead to the same place?  On top of computer problems, none of the hard work she’d done for decades seemed to prevent the monarchy from trembling every time a new picture appeared in the sensational newspapers.  She reflected on all this and felt gloomy every once in a while.

            Added to her worries, the Prime Minister recently advised her that, along with the royal yacht Britannia, the royal train would have to be abolished.  “Too costly.  Austerity, Ma’am,” he’s said.  Having managed to find a railway timetable on her computer, she hatched a small plan.  Unfortunately, not everything worked out as she intended, and she soon found herself on a public train mistaken for Helen Mirren, and compelled to join a rather embarrassing conversation with her seatmates about Alan Bennett.

            Loyal courtiers attend her, but she purposely gave them the slip in order to sample the railway as a citizen.  One by one they discovered her missing:  an equerry who served in the Middle East and there lost an American friend; a down-on-her-luck lady-in-waiting who comes from one of the country’s richest families, but whose husband lost her fortune in the City; a Scottish dresser named Shirley; a butler whose official title is Senior Page of the Chambers; a young woman from the Royal Mews who inadvertently loaned The Queen a useful disguise; and an Old Etonian named Rajiv who moonlights as a paparazzo.  They have set out to find The Queen before MI5 steps in and creates a flap.

            That is the beginning of a new novel Mrs Queen Takes the Train.  It will be published by HarperCollins on October 16th, 2012.  You can find an excerpt here www.williamkuhn.com, where there is also a link to some of the pictures in the book.  Inspired by the story of two Victorian courtiers, Henry & Mary Ponsonby:  Life at the Court of Queen Victoria (2002), I though I’d try to imagine the life of contemporary courtiers looking after Queen Victoria’s great great granddaughter.

            I’ve always been interested by queens in history, and that led me to write my most recent book, Reading Jackie:  Her Autobiography in Books (2010).   The hundred books Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis edited in her career at Viking and Doubleday say a lot about her that she wasn’t willing to reveal herself.  Did you know, for example, that “America’s Queen” edited almost a dozen royal books and she was obsessed with the doomed wife of the king of France, Marie Antoinette?

            If you like the idea of Jackie O. on a velvet sofa with her nose in a book on Marie Antoinette, if you were riveted by films like The King’s Speech, The Queen, and Mrs Brown, and if you thought The Queen and James Bond at the Olympics last summer was fun, I really do think you’re going to like Mrs Queen Takes the Train.

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Pre-order Mrs Queen Takes the Tain

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