Marie Curie by Paul May

One of the first books I read when I set out to read all the Carnegie Medal winners several years ago was The Radium Woman by Eleanor Doorly. Like, I suspect, most people, I knew roughly who Marie Curie was but didn't know much about her life and work other than that she discovered the element, radium. (She also discovered polonium and named it for her native country.) Marie Curie died in 1934, and Eleanor Doorly's foreword is dated March 1939, so she must have started working on the book with Curie's death a very recent memory. She says:

'The life of Madame Curie has been written by her daughter with a charm and beauty never surpassed. It is therefore with the deepest humility that I have ventured to make out of that lovely book a shorter tale for young people.'

I have just finished reading a short book by the Spanish novelist and journalist, Rosa Montero, called, in Spanish, La ridicula idea de no volver a verte, which means something like, The ridiculous idea of never seeing you again. After Montero's husband died her editor sent her a copy of the diary which Marie Curie wrote after the sudden death of her husband, Pierre. (He fell under the wheels a heavy cart in a Paris street and his skull was crushed.) The editor wanted Montero to write an introduction to the diary, which was only a few pages long, but hoped that reading the diary might prompt Montero to write something more substantial, something to which the diary would become a 'complement' or addition. And that is what happened.

Montero went out and bought as many biographies as she could find.  It turns out that Rosa Montero corresponded with Ursula K Le Guin. What she actually says in her book is: 'I have had the immense good fortune and privilege of developing a certain friendship with Ursula K Le Guin, who is one of the writers whose influence over my work I consciously recognise.' As an aside, I was once talking to Jan Mark about science fiction and mentioned Ursula Le Guin and I can still hear the thrill in her voice when she said 'She's my friend!'

Anyway, Rosa Montero had written to Le Guin that she wanted to write a book about Marie Curie, and part of Le Guin's reply was as follows:

'I read a biography of Marie Curie when I was about 16 or 17 . . .  Perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me but what I remember is that, after Pierre died in the street, she kept a piece of cloth with which she had tried to clean his face. Some of his blood and his brains had remained on the fabric and she kept it, hiding it from everyone, until she had to burn it. That image has haunted me anxiously all these years.'

Rosa Montero had read Marie Curie's diary but had assumed that when she referred to burning Pierre's clothes and 'kissing what was left of him' she was doing so immediately after his death and was kissing 'metaphorically'. Then she managed to get hold of a copy of Eve Curie's 'lovely book' and discovered that it was two months later that these events took place. I found myself wondering what Eleanor Doorly had made of this in her book. Unsurprisingly, she left it out.  Pierre's death and its aftermath is treated like this:

When Eve grew up, she told us, in the lovely life she wrote of her mother, that from the moment she spoke the words 'Pierre est mort,' a cloak of solitude and secrecy enveloped Marie, and that from that April day for ever she was a person apart and lonely.

Eve is being a little melodramatic here. There are very many ways in which Marie was engaged with other people. For example, here she is at the inaugural Solvey Congress which ended coincidentally on 3rd November 1911. This was where she first met Albert Einstein, who is standing behind her and was a friend for the rest of her life. Einstein stands between her lover, the physicist Paul Langevin (furthest right) and Ernest Rutherford. Also omitted from Eleanor Doorly's book is any mention of Marie's and Paul's affaire. On their return to Paris after the conference, a massive scandal broke out as the press revealed details of Marie's correspondence with Paul, portraying her as a scarlet woman, a foreigner, a jew and an imposter. That same year she won her second Nobel prize. As Eve Curie pointed out bitterly :

Each time Marie Curie was acclaimed for her talent in other countries, when they praised her with previously unheard-of elegies, then immediately she became for the same newspapers and beneath the bylines of the same journalists, the 'ambassador of France,' 'the pure representation of the genius of our race' and 'a national glory.'

Here's how Eleanor Doorly dealt with the scandal:

'But unfortunately there is a strange disease which causes certain people to feel very cruel when they hear of someone being very successful or very beautiful. Marie was both, and suddenly people began to write her anonymous letters and to tell extraordinary lies about her and to accuse her of doing wrong things of which she had never dreamed . . .'

Certainly, there is no danger of a child reading The Radium Woman and being haunted like Ursula Le Guin for the rest of their lives by a gruesome detail. They might, however, be envious of the education Marie's children received. For a brief space of time Marie and her friends engaged in an exercise in home-schooling, or rather, in a kind of shared tutoring ;

'... they decided to pool their children and teach them for themselves. The lucky children were to have one lesson a day, but it was to be given by the best specialist in Paris.' Who knows whether all those eminent scientists and artists were great teachers. The experiment didn't last:

'Unfortunately, however, parents have to be busy earning the family income and have no time to give their own children enchanting lessons.'

But this paragraph concludes with a sentence that I suspect was dear to Eleanor Doorly's heart. (She was a headmistress.)

'(The children) said in after-life that from those early lessons they learnt to like work, to be indifferent to money, and to be so independent that they were convinced that they could pull themselves out of any difficulty.'

Eleanor Doorly was an interesting woman. To some extent she was a woman of mystery, said by some (apparently, . . . maybe . . . ) to have served in the Special Operations Executive during WW2 and reputed to have spoken 7 languages. She was headmistress of the King's High School for Girls in Warwick from 1922 to 1944, but before that was Headmistress for nearly 7 years of the Twickenham County School for Girls, a tenure which ended in controversy after an encounter with a representative of the Girl Guides Association. You can read an excellent account of these events by Tom Barney on the Archives for London website, but, in short, Miss A Fradelle-Pratt, District Secretary of the Girl Guides for Twickenham requested of Miss Doorly that the Guides should be allowed to start a company in her school. Miss Doorly enquired about the Guide Promises. She had no problem with Honouring God and the King, or with Helping Others, but when it came to the Guide Law she was not happy. After this meeting, Miss Fradelle Pratt informed the Governors that, on being told that "A Guide follows orders" Miss Doorly "Made the very greatest objection to the teaching of obedience & said she did not permit of it being taught in the school – & therefore with her objection also of a uniform the idea of the Girl Guide Company could not be thought of."  

This is a wonderful scene. I suspect that the intelligent and extremely capable Miss Doorly allowed her disdain for Miss Fradelle-Pratt, and her dislike of militarism, to show through. This was, after all, just a few short years after the end of the war. 'Following orders' is not the same thing as 'being obedient' or, as we are more likely to say today, 'well-behaved'. How, in any case, would you 'teach obedience'? There's plenty of evidence that the girls in Miss Doorly's school were very well behaved, but Miss Doorly clearly did not suffer fools. The controversy cost her her job, but she appears to have found little difficulty in obtaining a new position.

I like to imagine a meeting between her and Madame Curie. I feel sure they would have had much in common.

The Twickenham controversy on Archives for London.

Draft Number ... by Joan Lennon

We'll all have Patrick Stewart in our thoughts just now and if I've managed to embed it properly,* here's a snippet of him helping the Count.

My difficulty at the moment is with drafts. Not, like the Count, with the first, but with the second. This is for a novel that I have brought out and put away again more times than I can remember as other things got in its way. This year I finally brought the first draft to a finish! 

It's a heady feeling. We say the words, 'It's only a first draft - of course, it's rubbish - but from here I can really work on it!' while in our hearts we are saying, 'This time I've done it - this time I've written the book perfectly from the get-go - this time... this time...'

Not this time. I would love to be able to say to Draft 2, 'Get yourself organised! Get yourself re-written! Make yourself better! Make it so!' But, yet again, I'll just have to do the bloody work.

I'm going in... 

* If I HAVEN'T done it properly, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNatvLe18ro

 

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

AND ALL OF A SUDDEN, IT'S NOVEMBER? by Penny Dolan

October 2026 became busy, with an ‘Afternoon Tea in Queen Victoria’s Carriage’ on the Embsay Heritage Railway; an unexpected but welcome visit from ‘long-lost’ cousins, a day wandering the Walls of York with a friend, a fine film about the Life of Caravaggio, and an Azuma to Kings Cross and back, seeing dear family people. All the experiences very spirit lifting – and with a wonderfully empty week to look  forward to as well.

Better still, the week would be one of those rare gaps where there was nobody-and-nothing going on. There would be no ‘Visiting Men*’ in or around the house, no people mending things, installing things, collecting or delivering essential things. Just nobody, not even the person needed to repair the dishwasher. No. Men.

The week would be the perfect week for catching up on ideas or projects. Heavens, what bliss!

And then?

And then . . . a revolting, coughing-wheezing-cold-in-the-chest bug descended. The ‘empty’ week was spent under layers of heavy bedding, along with the rattling and rustling of medications and endless coughing and spluttering. Quiet and peaceful, it was not! 

Days passed, and nights, and at last the miserable bug has started shifting. I am Still Standing, though more often sitting, lolling or dozing and have done nothing word-wise for days. October, you promised so much! What just happened?

I look at the calendar. Saturday 31st October! Already? But it is Halloween and, very thankfully, I am still on the right side of That Midnight Door - and hope to remain so.

Plus I do have a few hasty words written now. These: November's Awfully Big Blog Adventure post!

Hoping you had the Halloween you wanted, that you're enjoying a fine All Hallows Sunday, and that you'll have a cheering and healthy November! With enough time and brain-space for your words during those weeks ahead.

Penny Dolan

*nb. Our visiting Repair People are all men.

Better late?

Not that it represented a threat to world democracy, but I do apologise for missing my blog date of the 25th. The reason? I'm currently editing a book for a former manager. He hails from Japan, speaks good English but can't, as he very readily admits, write it.

Well, he can put the words down in English on paper, but what we end up with is something like this:

Why dangerous? First, thinking “a failed product will succeed if the times catch up,” a company re-launches the previously failed product with the same desire story—but what has in fact arisen in society is a completely different desire. Second, “imitating only the outward form of a successful competitor”: Ray-Ban Meta is selling, so we too will release a product with the same form. But the essence of success is not the form; it is the positioning against a different desire that has risen in that era. Third, “misreading the signs of the future”: absolutising a past failure, we miss the new desire of the AI era—“to get the right answer without interrupting my life.”

As he himself says, what emerges from his pen is Janglish, and it needs a proper English speaker and writer to knock it all into legible - and comprehensible state. So, for years now, I've been editing the short articles he writes for a blog and they've been hard work but also fun. I can manage one in three hours. They're also intended to be read online, so his initial drafts are far simpler in execution. Thus, easier to edit and polish.

This book, however, is on another plane. It's about Design and oh boy, people who work in Design often make incomprehensible French philosophers read like Enid Blyton. I was once asked by a departing colleague - from the same Design department - to write accounts of four projects she'd managed. She wanted her successor to be able to bring himself up to speed with what he was taking over. So I did, and she was happy and, so I heard later, was the successor.

So happy, in fact, that he thought one of the articles should be submitted to an academic Design journal. Off it went. And back it came, with the observation that, as interesting as the subject was, the text wasn't in a style befitting the journal. This translates as - and I've been backed up in this by others, so it's not just sour grapes on my part - it didn't read like an academic article. Or to put it bluntly, it was too easy to read. 

So I'm currently halfway through a tome about Design and it is HARD WORK. I can manage to 'translate' 5 pages a day, 3 days a week, and when I'm finished each day my brain feels as though it's been boiled in a vat with rusty cannon balls. And then poached.

And that's the reason I missed my October 25th date.

CREATIVITY -- PART OF BEING HUMAN by Sheena Wilkinson

‘If you can’t get another publishing deal,’ my husband said cheerily last week, ‘will you just stop writing?’ 

Ouch. Also no. I’ve been writing stories since I was eight and I’m now fifty-eight. Stories have always been how I make sense of the world. But I have always wanted readers. Little Sheena touted her stories around whoever would read them, and big Sheena’s exactly the same. As regular readers will know, I self-published the sequel to Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau. (Miss McVey Takes Charge, Writers Review Publishing, 2025) but I’d be lying if I said this would be my first choice in future. At the moment I have a book about to go on submission, an almost-complete first draft and an unexpected novel idea that will soon be at new-notebook -buying stage. And if I don’t get a publishing deal for any of them … well, I’ll worry about that another day.

MY ACTUAL BOTTOM DRAWER FULL OF WRITING PROJECTS 

Recently, some friends and I have been chatting about the importance of creativity in our lives, and how we need to separate the joy of the writing from the not-always-joy of the publishing industry. We are all published writers though some, like me, are currently out of contract; most feel there's something missing in our lives when we aren't making something. Especially when, for whatever reason, we aren't writing. 

It doesn’t need to be with words. Emma Pass is an award-winning author, who can certainly knit magic with words, but she’s also become extremely nifty with yarn. ‘I taught myself to knit just before the Pandemic hit, and it's become one of my favourite things to do!’ Emma says. ‘However, I've consciously made the decision to keep it as a hobby and only make items for other people as gifts, rather than trying to sell pieces and turn it into a "side hustle". For me, it's a way to relax, and if it became a "job" I wouldn't enjoy it anymore.’ 

EMMA AND I KNITTING 

Fellow novelist Rachel Ward has garnered quite a following on social media for her daily photographs. I’m not the only person whose morning is always brightened by one of her beautiful pictures of Bath. Rachel says, ‘I take photographs, paint and draw, and while I do sometimes sell and exhibit these, nowadays the point is very much to enjoy creating as an end in itself. With painting, I often deliberately choose a subject with colours that will nurture a good mood. It feels like bathing in colour and light, and is a real tonic, whatever the weather or whatever life is flinging at me that day.'

BLUE AND WHITE, AND ORANGE (RACHEL WARD) 

I don’t have the talent of either Emma or Rachel, but I do love making things. Recently, when a good friend died, I wanted to buy her daughter a ‘Mrs Rabbit’ toy (from Peter Rabbit), but decided it would be more meaningful to make one. Now I am no seamstress, and although I own a sewing machine, I have not mastered its wily ways, so my Mrs Rabbit was made by hand, from scraps. She’s a bit rough and ready, but I know she meant more to my friend’s daughter than if I had simply gone out and bought a mass-produced toy. 

MRS RABBIT

In the past few years I've joined the local Women's Institute. Apart from making friends in a new place, it's helped to reconnect me with that love of creating things. The WI actively encourages creativity through its celebration, not only of traditional home crafts, but of music, drama, the spoken word, and other activities. 

MONEYMORE WI'S ENTRY IN THE BELFAST AUTUMN FAIR -- SO MUCH CREATIVITY 

Last week I visited the National Museum of Ireland's Museum of Country Life in County Mayo. This collection highlights the everyday objects people made and used throughout centuries of (mostly rural) life. Many of these things were necessities – baskets, small boats, furniture, tools – but all are characterised by attention to detail and form following function – which is surely at the heart of all good design. These sturdy objects reminded me that, even in the harshest times, in societies where the focus is purely on survival, humans have always expressed their creativity. A tin lamp was functional, but also beautifully carved. Fishermen’s Aran sweaters were warm and water repellent, but their patterns, as well as being unique to each clan and therefore a useful means of identifying a body washed ashore, were intricate and intrinsically beautiful, and in turn influenced by ancient Celtic patterns, with their own symbolism. We have always told stories, made music and art, as a way of making sense of, and sometimes expanding, our worlds.

That’s one of the many reasons why some people’s desire to use AI to ‘make’ a picture, a story or a song is so baffling. Apart from the serious ethical and environmental issues, why would someone not want to make the thing themselves? It’s a fundamental human need. I want my books to be published and to do well, because I made them, grew them from an idea, nurtured and wrestled them through multiple messy drafts to finished book. It’s the process that gives value to the product. 

A COLLAGE I MADE AT A RECENT WRITING COURSE WITH JEN ALEXANDER -- THIS HAS SPARKED A WHOLE NOVEL IDEA

And the process is what we need as humans. Indeed, creating – anything from a loaf of bread to a sonnet – is partly what makes us human.  

Warne's Adventure Book For Girls - by Sue Purkiss

I was doing a bit of sorting out in the hut recently, and came across this book, gathering spiders' webs in a corner. It's called Warne's Adventure Book for Girls. It has no date, (nor is the illustrator credited) but I'm guessing it was published in the early 1930s. (Frederick Warne and Co. were the publishers of Beatrix Potter's books, and later of the Observer series of beautifully illustrated non-fiction books.) I think I may have got it from the big second-hand book shop in Dulverton, Exmoor, just down the road from Seven Fables, the jewel of a book shop which has close links with Jackie Morris and specialises in nature books.

Anyway, I decided to have a proper look at it. It has sixteen stories, and I ended up reading all of them. They're set in several different countries, including Scotland, Africa and Australia as well as England; some of them are historical - such as The Countess in a Cage, by Grace Aguilar, which tells the grim story of the Countess of Buchan, said to have placed the crown on Robert the Bruce's head, who was imprisoned by King Edward of England in a cage hung from the battlements of the castle of Berwick-on-Tweed. The language for this one is archaic and fanciful: she is described as having that beauty which is the holy emanation of the soul that lingered still with power to awe the rudest heart, to bow the proudest in voluntary respect. Would you see this kind of language in a modern children's book? I think not.

But this story is an outlier. Most of them use contemporary language, and while the attitudes of the time are clearly - inevitably - there, they are stories with girls/young women at the centre, driving the story - riding motorbikes and piloting planes, and definitely with agency. Raven Rock, by Mary Shrewbury, tells of a group of Sea Guides, who have nowhere to meet in the winter. Peterson, a retired coastguard, could have helped them, but doesn't believe in girls having a Patrol. But then they are called on to rescue a boy who has fallen over a cliff called Raven Rock. The narrator, Loot, takes her life in her hands to rescue him, and in the process, she finds a very precious memento of Nelson which old Peterson has lost. So of course, Peterson's attitude changes: he sees what girls are capable of, and he can't do enough to help them.

This story is told in a very matter-of-fact sort of way: Loot doesn't see herself as a hero, she just does what has to be done. But it's tense and exciting - especially if you're someone who's afraid of heights, as I am.

Then there's another one about hunting. Vivien, 15, has come to live with her cousins on their farm in the countryside: as nowadays, the farm is not making money. When the hunt sets off, there isn't a horse for her, so she follows on foot. By mistake, she finds herelf in the grounds of General Carew's house. The fox dashes past her into a greenhouse: horrified at the thought of it being torn apart by the hounds, she locks the door to keep it safe. The General appears as the hunters are crashing about and sees them off angrily. 

Vivien's cousins are furious with her. But she strikes up a friendship with the General, and in the end, everything comes right.

I enjoyed reading the stories. Certainly there were some aspects which felt uncomfortable - one set in Africa, for instance, was imbued with the acceptance of Empire and colonialism. But it also demonstrated respect for the culture and traditions of the Africans - that was part of the point of the story. Which was interesting, and a bit unexpected. 

And what struck me was - generalisations coming up - that we tend to assume a certain lofty superiority to past attitudes. We're critical, for instance, of it being the girls who do the washing up etc in The Famous Five books, or of Susan being ultimately interested in make-up in The Chronicles of Narnia. But in these stories, the girls are very definitely the heroes, and very active ones too. They climb mountains, they rescue prisoners from brigands, they save children from poisonous snakes - they are certainly not passive.

It's often said that we are living in a golden age of children's books. And I think that's true. But perhaps - just possibly - sometimes, our assumptions about attitudes in the past are not entirely justified. 

Halloween thoughts - by Rowena House

A post about different approaches to non-fiction as art gave me a fresh perspective about my seventeenth-century witch trial work-in-progress this month, and how unknowable historical facts blended with memoir in a type of speculative writing that is both fiction and something else.

The article was by Sean Glatch, an American educator and writer whom I’ve quoted here before. I’ve put the link at the end because it’s rather long.

In it he says, ‘Speculative nonfiction describes nonfiction that heavily incorporates speculative elements ... It’s kind of like educated guessing. The writer uses what they know to guess at what they don’t, using invention, wondering, and speculation to uncover deeper truths.’

Drop the ‘non’ before ‘fiction’ in this quote and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past six years or so, uncovering what I think is a deeper truth within a witch trial pamphlet: that is, it takes serious critical thinking to reject the orthodoxy of one’s times, so I shouldn’t be too quick to judge the pamphleteer who inspired my protagonist.

This echoes the last post by Mr. Glatch which I quoted here in August about the generated idea within a story: something inspires you to write it, but then you discover something else.

For me, the something else was how good our brains are at forming and holding onto irrational beliefs. When those beliefs are backed by the force of religion, political orthodoxy, and social norms, it takes courage and a lot critical thinking to reject them. 

 

I tested this hypothesis against my own past experience as an economics journalist working within powerful media and governmental organisations. For example: orthodox western economics insists that growth is a social good – the ‘right’ way for people and countries to escape poverty – regardless of the fact that it also exhausts irreplaceable natural resources like forests or fossil fuels, doing irreparable harm to the physical world on which we as a species depend for our survival.

Rational? I think not. Point that out, though, and you’re some kind of eco-freak.

Point out that a ‘witch’s’ cat or dog isn’t a demon conduit for the devil’s power and you’re also out of a job, right?

There is no way of knowing if the real pamphleteer on whom I based my character sincerely believed in witchcraft, nor if the trial judges did, or the jury that heard the cases, or the original pamphlet’s readers, or the poor souls who went to the gallows for impossible crimes.

But as Halloween approaches and witchy things are a bit of fun – or grounds for a feminist retelling of a shameful period in our history, one that tragically echoes in too many parts of the world today – I do hope people will also think about superstition rationally, and false beliefs in general.



Link to 'Making Art from Life' by Sean Glatch

https://writers.com/feature/making-art-from-life?ck_subscriber_id=1593143874&utm_source=convertkit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Making+Art+from+Life+-+23709393&fbclid=IwY2xjawVEcdxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBwZG9mAXNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR7KEhVZyeKeDniR0rX7EJ-wE_QBgxeaeCUIKDzX0ppOQ2FzGLGk3EHMZEql_Q_aem_rQ3HiCb3M1lzpbabFWDdKw