New members
A warm welcome to...
Tina Bettinson;
Emma Lawson;
Diana Railton of DRCC;
Cathy Bourne from Catherine Bourne Associates;
Toby Ingram; and last but not least, Writeworks’
Carol Dix. We hope you enjoy and contribute to the 26 experience. Remember, 26 is what you make it.
Oh... and also many thanks to all of you who’ve resubscribed to 26 recently. It’s lovely to think that you all want to come back for more.
Finally, for our new members...A big thank you for joining 26.
We started meeting as a group in 2002. We were eight individuals in search of others involved in the daily business of working with words. We simply wanted to share our experiences and ideas, and learn from one another. You can find out more about us at
http://www.26.org.uk/who.htmNews spread of our meetings, and it soon became clear that 26 could be, should be, something much bigger than just us. So we decided to open up the organisation to other writers, editors, language experts and anyone else with a love of language. We launched 26 formally in September 2003...
...And here you are. We’re delighted you’ve become one of 26. We hope we’ll get to explore and enjoy language together in all sorts of interesting and unexpected ways.
26 is open to new ideas from any of its members. We would be especially pleased to hear from you if you'd like to be involved in 26 talks, publications, seminars or other initiatives – even in a small way. You can reach us on 0870 121 13 26 or at
talktous@26.org.ukAs for your 26 quid... thank you very much. The funds we’re raising with your annual subscriptions will go towards running events (most of which will be free to members), developing our web site, creating an online message board for members, and bringing to life a whole range of other initiatives we haven’t even imagined yet.
A number of members have asked whether they can refer to 26 on their business card or in their emails, web site, autobiography or whatever. We think this is a great idea as it helps to raise awareness. We just ask that you use the phrase One of 26, followed by the web site address www.26.org.uk.
In the meantime, your friends and colleagues can find out more about 26 and join at
http://www.26.org.uk , so spread the word.
An offer from Cyan books
‘City Slackers – Why Hard Work Won’t Get You To The Top’ by Steve McKevittA humourous guide to succeeding in your career – without having to work too hard. In a similar ilk to ‘Hello Laziness’, this book provides an entertaining and alternative view to success at work. Funny and witty, but also serious, ‘City Slackers’ offers millions of office workers a way out of the rut.
List price £9.99, discounted for 26 members to just £4.99.
‘Great Brand Stories: Arsenal – The Story Of The Arsenal Brand’ by John Simmons & Matt SimmonsA highly original view on how Arsenal moved into the elite of world football’s financial powerhouses. Football today is as much about branding as it is about scoring goals. This book provides insight into the former via the story of the Arsenal brand. Engagingly written, this book will appeal to a wide audience: from marketing and branding practitioners to the ordinary football fan. Includes exclusive interviews with Arsenal captains – Frank McLintock, Pat Rice, Tony Adams – and other key figures.
List price £8.99, discounted for 26 members to just £4.49.
To order either of the books above or take advantage of other Cyan offers, just send a cheque made out to ‘Cyan Communications Limited’, to Cyan Communications, 119 Wardour Street, London W1F 0UW. Please include your contact details and the address you’d like the book(s) sent to. Alternatively, contact Cyan at 020 7565 6120, or email orders@cyanbooks.com. Please mention you’re a member of 26.
King’s Cross stories
Following the success of last year’s Circle Line project, London Undergound has appointed John Simmons as official writer-in-residence at King’s Cross station for the next six months. In collaboration with staff, John will create stories and prose that capture working life at King’s Cross – its highs and lows, big events and everyday details, sometimes dramatic, sometimes funny. These stories will then be posted on the TFL intranet site. This is a pilot project, so who knows, if all goes well, we could see more 26 members bringing the daily toing and froing of London’s tube stations to life.
Our next event
Branding brains of Britain
We’re lining up a brand quiz hosted by design agency 35 (so we’re thinking of calling it 61). Volunteers are needed for the 26 team. So if you know your Maltesers from your Mercedes, please email sarah@littlemax.co.uk to claim your place. The nice people at 35 are inviting us to their lovely home in Camden, so those of you who get a bit uncomfortable when you stray out of W1 should prepare yourselves in advance for the cultural scene change. We’ll be holding this on 23 or 25 May – we’ll let you know as soon as we do – so for the moment please block out both nights in red pen.
The shirt is on
One last call to all you designers out there. We’ve already had some great response, but demanding types that we are, we still want more...
We’re looking for brave, provocative, but eminently stylish and wearable T-shirt designs to feature in the soon-to-be-launched 26 online shop. Are you up to the ultimate sartorial challenge?
We’re hoping to print them on 100% organic cotton, and offer them exclusively to discerning members of 26. We’re thinking short runs to keep things interesting and collectible, with plenty of room for lateral ideas and different approaches.
And while you’re at it, if you have any ideas for other items of merchandise with 26 appeal we’d be more than happy to hear from you. Think laterally and 26-like. We’ve already had a brilliant submission for a fortnightly calendar (there are 26 fortnights in a year).
Just get in touch with Sarah at sarah@littlemax.co.uk, and we can get the ball rolling.
www.26.org.uk
It’s been months in the planning, writing, designing and constructing. And finally, it looks like our extensive new Elmwood-designed web site is all but ready to launch. All members of 26 will be entitled to their very own page on the site, to do with what they will – within the bounds of taste and decency, of course. So get thinking about that. You may want to share your sonnets, your CV, photos of your new-born baby... it’s entirely up to you, but it would be nice if it had something to do with words.
Another treat is a section called ‘Endpapers’, to which we’d like you to contribute. We’re looking for ‘found’ examples of the number 26 – a door number, grafitti, a billboard, written in the sand of a tropical beach... send them in and we’ll post them up on the web site. The best ones may even be used as the masthead of our newsletter.
Arts & Business Awards
Earlier in the month, 26 were shortlisted with London Underground for our Circle Line project at the prestigious 30th Arts & Business awards. Unfortunately we didn’t win, though we did amazingly well to be shortlisted for a project only two years into 26’s short life. Next time we’ll win.
The winner of our category, the ‘Arts, Business and Creativity’ award, was Unilever’s Catalyst programme, and it was a worthy winner. Collecting his award Alastair Creamer, producer of Catalyst and 26 member, made a point of thanking the many people involved “including the wonderful 26”. So we won really...
Well done to everyone. There were 2000 people at the Barbican that night and they’ve all now heard of 26.
Well grounded
The latest big 26 project ‘Common Ground: Around Britain In 30 Writers’ is progressing well. Thirty members of 26 have chosen writers and places that have inspired and informed their own writing; they have then written chapters to appear in the book to be published by Cyan. The editors (John Simmons, Tim Rich and Rob Williams) are raving about the quality of the writing – and the variety of places and authors covered. You’ll get an idea from the Contents list.
At the moment the book is with Cyan for design and production. The cover’s being designed by Jon Gray (who designed the amazing cover for ‘Everything Is Illuminated’) and there’s a real buzz around the book – it could be big.
Plans are in hand for a launch event at Shakespeare’s Globe in August, and we’re applying to the Arts Council for funding for ‘Common Ground: The Tour’ in the autumn. If we get that funding (we’re optimistic) we hope to have 30 different 26 events all around the country, each based on a chapter of the book. Fingers crossed.
‘Common Ground’ – Contents1.
How Camest Thou in Such a Pickle? Shakespeare’s Stratford by Jim Davies
2.
Still Not Much Going On: Edward Thomas and Adlestrop by Richard Medrington
3.
A Legendary Lazy Little Black-Magical Bedlam by the Sea: Dylan Thomas’s Laugharne by Niall Griffiths
4.
Footnotes: Living a Richard Long Life by Peter Kirby
5.
Notes in the Margin: H.W. Tilman and Molecular Connections Between Falmouth and Everywhere Else by Penelope Williams
6.
A Nameless Luminous: Dorset, Word-tunes and Mary Butts by Molly Mackey
7.
Growing Pains: Living With Thomas Hardy and Dorset by Sarah Burnett
8.
Through the Looking Glass in Wiltshire: Jasper Fforde’s Swindon by Maja Pawinska Sims
9.
Tunnel Vision: the Reverend W. Awdry’s Box by Will Awdry
10.
Lost and Found: Looking for John Milton in Chalfont St Giles by John Simmons
11.
(Notes for) (My) Manifest Promise: Me, Julian Barnes and Metroland by Rishi Dastidar
12.
This Train Calls At Earl’s Court, Hangover Square and Maidenhead: Stalking Commuters with Patrick Hamilton by Laura Forman
13.
Considering Phlebas: T.S. Eliot and the City of London by Jonathan Holt
14.
Playing Polo With Pinter by William Easton
15.
On a Monkey’s Birthday: Into the Heart of Belloc’s Sussex by Tim Rich
16.
Unpretending Orlando: Virginia Woolf and the Downs by Elise Valmorbida
17.
Ours was the Marsh Country: In Darkest Kent with Dickens by Robert Mighall
18.
The Essex Factor: Rocking in Colchester with Giles Smith by Tom Wilcox
19.
Ecstatic Boredom: Will Self and the Great British Motorway (With Special Reference to the M40) by Justina Hart
20.
Your Time Starts Now: Questioning What’s Real in David Lodge’s Birmingham by Lorelei Mathias
21.
Unriddling the World: Alan Garner and Cheshire by John Mitchinson
22.
A Sense of Ulster: Van Morrison’s Belfast by Stephen Brown
23.
How to Find Your Voice in Burnley: Raising a Glass to Paul Abbott by Rob Williams
24.
I’m Grim Up North: Lying Reminiscences with Keith Waterhouse’s Billy Liar by Roger Horberry
25.
Variations on a Serenade to Teesborough: Links That Bind F.W. Lister, My Dad and Me by Sarah McCartney
26.
The Rules of Modernity: Not taking the bus round Glasgow with Stuart Murdoch by Neil Taylor
27.
Wet Sand and Gasoline: Beachcombing in Fife with John Burnside by Richard Clayton
28.
Kidnapped: Stevenson, the Highlands and a Story Under Every Stone by Jamie Jauncey
29.
Cromarty & The Black Isle: Hugh Miller’s Voices by Ali Smith
30.
Northern Light: Finding George Mackay Brown and Orkney by Stuart Delves
26 members recommend for April
26 is now an official Amazon affiliate. That means if you order a recommended book or CD by following the links to Amazon, 10% of what you pay will end up in 26’s coffers, helping us to put on more events and recommend more books. A virtuous circle, if you like.
......................................
‘Ringleader Of The Tormentors’ by Morrissey (Attack, £8.49 on Amazon)I know the estimable Roger Horberry disagrees. But I think Morrissey is a true pop genius, with the wry observation of an Alan Bennett and the turn of phrase of a Noel Coward. How can you resist a line like “Beware I bear more grudges than lonely high court judges”? For me, each new release is a nerve jangler; I’m so desperate for it to be great, that I can hardly bear to listen. The good news is that ‘Ringleader Of The Tormentors’ is utterly wonderful. Every track a winner. Bursting with the passion, wit and eccentricity that so many of us know and love. And those lines you wish you’d thought of yourself: “As I live and breathe, you have killed me”; “I will lie down and be counted” ( a reference to his extremely tardy sexual awakening).
JD......................................
‘Will And Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life’ by Dominic Dromgoole (Allen Lane £17.99 list, or £10.78 on Amazon)You can’t get away from that bard-boy at the moment. Questionable likenesses at the National Portrait Gallery (see below); every single one of his plays being performed at Stratford during the course of the year; a new 146-mile path walk from Stratford-upon-Avon to the Globe Theatre on Bankside in London. And now a personal, and refreshingly unacademic take on the main man from the artistic director of the Globe. Actually, this book is probably more about Dromgoole than Shakespeare, but it’s a rambling, scurrilous and sometimes touching account of his lifelong obsession with the great Swan of Stratford.
JD......................................
‘Lullaby’ by Chuck Palahniuk (Vintage, £7.50 list or £6 on Amazon)Brilliantly original and idea-packed story from the nice man who brought you ‘Fight Club’. Superb prose style - muscular and effective, but with enough embellishments to avoid charges of minimalism. An uncomfortable read in places but well worth it. It ain’t chick lit.
RH......................................
‘How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul’, by Adrian Shaughnessy (Laurence King, £17.95 list, or £11.84 on Amazon)OK, this is aimed at the felt tip fairies out there but much of what he says is 100% relevant to us writers. Books that tell it like it is and hand out practical tips that actually work are rare as hens’ teeth - if you’re a freelancer or otherwise self employed this one is well worth a look.
RH......................................
‘District And Circle’ by Seamus Heaney (Faber and Faber, List price £12.99 or £6.49 on Amazon)Anyone familiar with 26’s last book, ‘From Here To Here’, will no doubt have been struck by Simon Armitage’s opening poem, which eerily foreshadowed the London bombings. This new collection from Seamus Heaney is an interesting counterpoint – full of post-July-seventh unease and paranoia. A few lines from the title poem gives a sense of the mood: “Again the growl / Of shutting doors, the jolt and one-off treble / Of iron on iron, then a long centrifugal / Haulage of speed through every dragging socket.” Maybe not one to read on the Tube.
NA......................................
‘Extra Virgin: Amongst The Olive Groves Of Liguria’ by Annie Hawes (Penguin, £7.99 list or £4.79 on Amazon)First, I have to admit a connection: I’ve just stayed in Annie’s house, which is central to this book. But if you’re looking for a read to get you in the mood for that tantalisingly close summer holiday you really should try this. Annie finds herself buying a wreck of a hillside house way up in the hillside olive groves of Liguria, and then the adventures begin... There’s plenty of sun, landscape and delicious food in here to help you escape grey British skies, but this is also an unromantic and keenly observed description of real Ligurian life, all spiced with terrific anecdotes and wry wit.
TR......................................
‘Phaidon Design Classics’ (list price £100 or £66 on Amazon)Extremely weighty three-volume tome just out from Phaidon, bringing together 999 of the greatest industrially manufactured objects – from the paperclip to the Apollo moon lander. All beautifully designed by Alan Fletcher and full of interesting background detail. Endlessly fascinating, but you’ll need a reinforced coffee table to hold it.
NA......................................
‘Worried Noodles (The Empty Sleeve)’ by David Shrigley, £18 from AmazonComes packaged like a classic gatefold LP, but instead of a record, it contains more of Shrigley’s deeply disturbing doodlings – mostly in the form of weird song lyrics. ‘Baby Dawg’ is a fine example. “Baby dawg / I wanna play with you / Baby dawg / I wanna give you a bone / Baby dawg / I wanna take you home / Say how much is that baby dawg / How much? / That’s too much / I don’t want that baby dawg”. Someone should put it to music.
NA......................................
‘The Ballad of Peckham Rye’ by Muriel Spark (Penguin £8.99 list or £7.19 on Amazon) and
‘The Accidental’ by Ali Smith (Penguin, £7.99 list or £6.39 on Amazon)Muriel Spark died last week. Coincidentally I’ve just finished reading her novel ‘The Ballad Of Peckham Rye’. Put it with her ‘The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie’ and ‘Memento Mori’ as great short novels of the 20th century. No one writes as economically; she crams in story, character, wit and sheer sparkiness. There’s a stranger, Dougal Douglas, who proves a catalyst for honest and sometimes disastrous self-analysis in the community. I wondered where else I’d read something recently that had a similar unsettling humour and realised it was Ali Smith’s prize-winning ‘The Accidental’. Try reading them one after the other – both brilliant.
JS......................................
‘Happiness: Lessons From A New Science’ by Richard Layard (Penguin, £8.99 or £5.39 on Amazon)Be unafraid that this book might not be for you. The clue here is in the subtitle. This is no airy-fairy self-help tome; instead a rigorous analysis of why, despite ever-increasing levels of wealth, people are not feeling happier. Layard, founder of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, uses insights and tools from psychology, philosophy, public policy and economics to show why increasing national happiness should be as important increasing national income. His thinking is provocative and optimistic, his writing spry and persuasive. He has plotted a way to revive the common good, and perhaps, laid the foundations for a new progressive politics. And he’s even relegated all the equations to the endnotes. Read it; and then make your MP read it.
RD......................................Web 2.0Everyone’s talking about it, and without getting techie, it means the Internet has never been more useful. Add your thoughts to the feature on copywriting in Wikipedia (it could use some work)
wikipedia.org/wiki/copywriting, work collaboratively across the web using
Writely, store a backup of your work online at
www.box.net, blog your business with one of the tools from
Six Apart or break away from Microsoft with the free
Open Office.
MB......................................A game of ‘Guess The Real Shakespeare’ at the National Portrait GalleryPart of me can’t help feeling we’d be better off writing something new (or at least going to see a Christopher Marlowe play) than continually trying to work out if Shakespeare and Elizabeth I were in fact the same person. The exhibition is on until 29 May. See
www.npg.org.uk.
MB
......................................This month’s plugs by Jim Davies, Rishi Dastidar, Roger Horberry, John Simmons, Nick Asbury and Matthew Blackbourn. These are not necessarily the views of 26, but we hope they’re not far off the mark. Any contributions gratefully received.
