'Our Story': David Attenborough exhibition at the Natural History Museum - Sue Purkiss

I recently ventured out of Somerset to go up to London for a day - quite the adventure for me! All those people... The lure was a meeting-up with old friends, one from Essex and one from Brighton. One of us has problems with mobility, and can't walk or stand for too long - so we decided to opt for a sit-down experience: namely, the David Attenborough immersive exhibition at the Natural History Museum. It's called Our Story.

I don't know if you've been to one of these immersive exhibitions. I had, to the Van Gogh one, so I knew roughly what to expect. A large space is lined with boards/screens, on which are projected a series of moving images. The audience sits in the middle, while the 'story' plays out all around them. There's also, importantly, a soundscape - so you are, indeed, immersed in the experience. I would dearly love to know how these things are put together, how they work: I have no idea, so to me it all seems quite magical.

I've been to the Natural History Museum many times before. But it really struck me this time what an extraordinary building it is. It's huge, for one thing. But - the detail of it! It's composed of differently coloured bricks, inside and out. This is practical as well as ornate - you don't have to repaint every few years. But the thought that must have gone into designing the patterns and the shapes - the arches, the cornices, the windows - everything - and the references to the purpose of the building: the carvings of animals, birds, everything to do with the natural world. And now it's all set off by planting which references the botanical history of life on earth - so clever!

The museum was last year the most popular visitor attraction in Britain, with over seven million visitors. It's certainly buzzing, and busy. But the Attenborough exhibition is a welcome haven of peace and quietness - only a few people are allowed in at a time. It starts with darkness. Then gradually things start to happen. Points of light expand and coalesce: stars and planets are born. Then, tiny at first, something new appears: a blue planet, wreathed in trails of white cloud, serene and beautiful. And there we are. The whole thing only lasts for about 45 minutes, so of necessity it's a rather hasty gallop through the history of the planet. But it's enough to showcase the extraordinariness, the sheer improbability of what we have - and what, at the moment, we seem hell-bent on destroying: some of us, of course, more than others. I was particularly drawn to an image of the handprints found in caves in France and Spain: I have seen some of these for real, and as I gazed at them in a cave in the south-west of France, I felt a tangible sense of connection - quite spine-tingling - with the individuals who were moved to make these marks, to leave these messages, thousands and thousands of years ago. ( Back to the exhibition - one thing surprised me: the dinosaurs didn't appear. Something stirred in a primeval forest, and we all watched with bated breath - but it was a gorilla, not a diplodocus. I couldn't help but feel that this was a missed opportunity: children, in particular, are fascinated by dinosaurs.)

At the end, Sir David appeared, and spoke, quietly but clearly, of the threats facing Earth. This was well done. He didn't sugarcoat the dangers. But he ended with a message of hope - that we are the ones who've messed up, but we are also the ones with capacity to put the brakes on and find solutions. We can only hope he's right. 

Sorry - this is not a very good picture of the outside of the museum, but it's the only one I took.

The red planet

Home

Handprints - greetings across the ages

The human race marches on.

Dear Diary - by Rowena House

It’s been full-on for the past week as I try my hardest to meet an academic deadline to get the development edit into my PhD supervisors by Easter, plus Draft 1 of a B-plot which, after five years of working on this one story, came to me last year.

My back can’t take much more sitting down, so here’s a selection of recent morning musings on my Facebook live diary about writing the seventeenth century witch trial work-in-progress.

Happy Spring Equinox to anyone else who’s always surprised when it’s not on the 21st.

March 20th. 05.58 approx. Today I'll attempt to pull together ideas for an All is Lost chapter for Tom's plotline out of the mess of multiple chapters I left as dross in Draft 1, with the new thoughts informed by my new fear that the Draft 1 ending is wrong. Not totally wrong. The basic idea is salvageable, I think, but it needs to be more nuanced if it's to be plausible. I'd like to type it, but I think that's just the urge to get it done. Rushing this won't solve the problem. My March ABBA post is due tomorrow so maybe I can think this problem through 'on paper' for that. Not yet six am.

March 19th. 06.58. A day of life jobs. I'll go back to Alys if I get a moment. Then I should write an ABBA post. Hmm. Not ideal if I'm still even vaguely thinking I might make the Mar 31 deadline, though the request was 'by Easter', so, what if I say Tom's development edit & Alys's Draft 1 will be done & dovetailed by the close of Easter Monday? Doable? Pic: yesterday's dog walk. Twas lovely. 

March 18th. 06.05. Woken to a desire to put the work-in-progress aside after yesterday's dismal discovery of yet more major revision being needed. After three months plus of solid concentration it felt like a kick in the teeth to find I'd left chapter after chapter essentially at the Draft Zero stage of meandering half-discovery with a veneer of nice writing that utterly fails to tell a story. I should have flagged it up as needing wholesale rethinking. Surely, I knew it did. That's the end-March deadline blown.

March 17th. 06.31. Waking up to a big question. Is this 'a' development edit or 'the' development edit? Unfortunately, the answer isn't the one I want it to be, nor the one my PhD timetable expects it to be. By definition, if I'm still writing Draft 1 for Alys (or horror of horrors, Draft Zero, fumbling more or less blindly towards her story) then this cannot be 'the' development edit, and whatever I deliver to my PhD supervisors will be preliminary.

Is that conclusion an opportunity to break free from the self-imposed pressure to get it 'right' right now or a threat of more (endless) procrastinating because I don't have a deadline? Is craft a strength (let's get this done) or a weakness (let's package Alys & Tom's stories into industrial-shaped containers)? I guess the answer is personal. The deadline is hugely motivating, but I am fumbling in the dark for the dovetailed ending, hoping my storytelling instincts are good enough. With The Goose Road the denouement was the thing that my editor said she bought the manuscript for. That's a truism for any book: it's only as good as its ending.

So, a lot to play for but how do I play it? Plough on or step back & plot? In other words, what have I learnt about myself as a writer since starting out seriously to write fiction in 2007?

March 16th. 06.55. NB, I need a table charting Tom's shifting opinion of the trials from brilliant examples of justice to fiascos by the time he meets Beth, and ultimately to examples of injustice by the end. I probably need to add an explicit statement about each change of heart to keep myself & the reader aligned with this arc [so that the Act 3 deviation between his beliefs and what he's writing is clearly shown, rather than the reader needing to be told].

NB 2, identify the exact point Tom's story enters its Act 3. There will be opportunities as well as constraints from Alys's story taking some of the weight of the James denouement. Keep an open mind where Tom act break might be [e.g. this chapter you're working on!!!] [NB it wasn’t. All is Lost & the Dark Night of the Soul chapters are still to come.]

NB 3. Don't get frustrated. Tom's story has changed a lot because of the introduction of Alys's plot. Don't expect it to be simple to dovetail the two.

Re the development edit in general, it's interesting that I remembered the current London sequence as being aligned with the Draft 1 denouement, but yesterday I found a whole chapter that make absolutely no sense. From memory, I'd layered into this chapter Tom's evolving thought process about the past, having not known what it needed to be in Draft Zero, the very first full draft in which I was working out what the story might be.

Basically, the story was more evolved in my head than on the page.

I'll have to be meticulous about expunging this old story DNA from the development edit lest it damages the beast that is 'becoming' on the page. It will almost certainly take a fast read through of a printed version to see if I have made this arc clear. But that will have to wait till after I've dropped this version into the PhD system.

Re writing in general, this story needed to be edited at speed to establish coherence. Hopefully, being forced to draft Alys's story at speed will limit its incoherence. Overall lesson about discovering a stream-of-poo when you thought you were almost 'there'? Don't be fooled into thinking any of this is easy.



Rowena House Author on Facebook.

Forget the news and think about sheds - by Lu Hersey

  Last night I dreamt an old journalist friend called me: Lu, did you know you're in the Epstein files?

No way!

Yes! Five times!

Don't be stupid.

Seriously, it's OK. If you're not in there, you probably don't exist.

I laughed myself awake. I've obviously been spending far too time obsessing about the news, which as we know is currently dominated by wars, genocide, sleaze, looming eco disaster and power-mad billionaires. It's difficult not to fall into a despondent, powerless slump just thinking about it. And now it was creeping into my dreams.

It was time to start concentrating on something positive instead. My campaign to bring down Elon Musk single handed on X wasn't going well, and the platform is full of hate and Nigel Farage, Time to stop going down that rabbit hole and write something new. (The essential first step on the road to getting something published.)

Which means this week I have mostly been thinking about writing sheds, on the basis it's nice to have somewhere to write. Who doesn't love a shed? Some of my favourite writers have enviable writing sheds and like every other shedless writer, I covet one. So what kind of writing shed to choose? A new rabbit hole opened before me as I created an entire Pinterest board devoted to the subject. I'll share a few with you here, so you understand the complexity of choice...

I really like this one. It has a face, and lets a lot of light in. Also I think it's by the sea, which would be nice

This one has a lovely aethetic but is also probably full of spiders. Good for horror writers.

This looks practical  - and I like the colour.

Good for hobbit fan fiction

Love this but would probably spend too much time staring out at the forest. Also, you'd need a forest to put it in.

Incredibly practical for any writer - and comes with its own outside bench for thinking

Peril at sea adventure stories? At least you wouldn't get interrupted much. Except possibly by passing whales

Definitely one for the fantasy writer

Nice design for those who like to cater for an unexpected turn of events

For those of us yearning to write romantic fiction

Great for the cosy crime writer

Here you could definitely write Great Expectations - if someone hadn't already written it 

Perfect for anyone planning train-based detective fiction. Or maybe another sequel to Thomas the Tank Engine

 One for me, and one for all of you. Perfect. 

You get the idea...

Just one problem. I couldn't fit even the tiniest shed in my tiny garden, so it's back to writing on the kitchen table. Though perhaps a little look at Rightmove first... Oooo!

Turns out I'm only £2 million short of being able to buy an entire Scottish island...

Lu Hersey

https://www.lu-hersey.com/

A word in your shell-like By Steve Way

 

Hello. Since some readers have kindly told me that they were tickled by my suggestion that we should say, “Pull along a chair”, rather than “Pull up a chair” in order to avoid the need for calisthenics, it made me think about other utterances we sometimes hear that make for interesting analysis.

I have noticed that when someone says to you, “I want a word with you!” that they don’t actually mean one single isolated word. They generally share quite a lot of words, most of them delivered passionately and peppered with a considerable number of adjectives not of a complimentary nature. It makes me wish I had the wherewithal – armed possibly with a helping of pompous over-confidence – to interrupt my interlocutor before he/she embarks on the inevitable tirade and exclaim, “What, only one sole word from the whole lexicon of the language of Shakespeare? Well, I advise you to choose it wisely…”

We’re all allowed to dream… (Though perhaps also wise not be a Smart Alec, particularly in such circumstances.)

I’ve also noticed that someone isn’t actually interested in beginning a philosophical debate on the nature of identity when they declare, “Who do you think you are?” In a similar vein to my fantasy above, I would love to possess the steely demeanour to reply, “Well, I think I’ve Steve… (though of course it could be an illusory construct) … who do you think you are?”

On fortunately rare occasions, I’ve come across an aggressive person, who’s been staring in my face and asking, “Wot yew lookin’ at?” It doesn’t seem an appropriate moment to point out that currently looking into the face of an apparently unfriendly person (almost exclusively not blessed with a pleasing visage) who is otherwise blocking what could only be a more pleasing view, however uninspiring, or in the words of the great P. G. Wodehouse is, “taking up space I need for other purposes.”

I think I’ve managed to avoid being on the receiving end of the question, “Are you looking at me or chewing a brick?” but I imagine on most occasions a brick is not readily available for consumption. Also, the presenter of the question possibly wouldn’t want a conversation initiated about the difficulty of chewing a brick, despite, I understand, early versions of AI probably suggesting we incorporate one into our diet and providing a recipe illustrating how to do so (perhaps spiced with non-toxic glue*).

Finally, I want to share with you an occasion when my eldest grandson, at around the age of ten, surprised me by uttering another notorious phrase. I need to prefix the tale by mentioning that he was suffering from slight sunburn on his arms at the time.

We’re lucky enough in our garden to have two trees that are the ideal distance apart to be used as a goal. On this occasion, I was bravely trying to guard the gap between the mirabelle and pear posts.** My grandson, the ball at his feet, clearly decided that he wanted to shift me away from my defensive position and tempted me with the statement, “Come on then, if you think you’re hard enough,” Never having heard him made such a surprisingly worldly statement before, I just had time to wonder where he had picked it up from before he paused and touched his arm, where his sunburn was clearly paining him. In that brief moment, he transformed from mock pub bully to vulnerable ten-year-old and uttered a plaintive, “Ow” of the kind that would make any parent or carer rush to comfort him.

Except on this occasion his grandad.

This was because, in this unintended way he achieved his aim of making my goal vulnerable because I had fallen to the ground giggling helplessly!

Moments later Man U were one up against Leeds.

*That did actually happen!

**There’s no crossbar as such, only a few high up branches, so any shot that penetrated my defences above shoulder height was worth disputing, though my grandson was never won over by my claims that he had overshot the goal. Honestly, the youth of today, no respect for grandparents trying to pull a fast one!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The young Queen Petunia has a problem. A magic spell means that her husband, King Popple, spends the whole day reading or making up football results (and the Chamberlain can only sing and not speak). Further magic means that a kind of purply wax drips out of everyone's ears all day and all the children under the age of five in the kingdom think they are cows and stand about in fields all day eating plants. Fortunately, ingenious use of the football results saves the day!

Available on Kindle via Amazon.

ASIN: B0GFCRF6DX (the 0 is a zero)

My Soul, A Shining Tree, written by Jamila Gavin, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

I love Jamila Gavin's stories and writing, Coram Boy being a particular favourite. So I treated myself to her recently published, much admired, new book ... and found myself admiring it but wondering quite what readership it is aimed at.

This story cleverly weaves together experiences of three different young characters whose lives are horrifically affected and changed by the outbreak of the First World War as Germany invades supposedly neutral Belgium. Homes and families are destroyed and die, but the humanity of the three characters, brought together by the walnut tree that stays standing amidst the destruction, overrides the hatred of war. They save each other. 

The very beautiful book cover evokes a kind of fairy tale feel, sanitising the blood and filth and hunger and fear into pristine clothing and hairdos in stark contrast with the reality. That cover suggests a nice story for primary school age children. So, too, does the attractively short length of this chapter book. My Soul, A Shining Tree, opens with a first person account by ten year old Belgian girl, Lotte. So I was expecting this to be firmly middle grade, perhaps for children of about eight to twelve. But then we have first person telling by fifteen year old German soon-soldier, Ernst. And then by fully adult Indian soldier from a British regiment, Khudad Khan. Even Lotte speaks to us like an adult, eg, 'I felt a sudden urgency to descend' rather than a more childlike, 'I wanted to get down.' Her knowledge of the complex politics of the time feels unlikely, and the assumed knowledge of readers to recognise places and incidents referred to is going to leave child readers who have not 'done' World War One feeling left out of the story. Will they even know without more context or example what 'conscription' means, or what 'a retainer' is (as in servant rather than for teeth!), or what 'sadistic' means? 

So, this is a book I'm glad to have read, and will read again, but would only fully recommend for children already interested in, and with some knowledge of, the First World War. 

Having said that, this book has now won the Nero Book Award for 2025, and is one of the Telegraph's 50 best children's books of all time, calling it 'flawless', so maybe I'm wrong to quibble? 

BRINGING CORNISH MAGIC TO MIDDLE GRADE FICTION. by Sharon Tregenza

 

It was a no brainer really. Being brought up surrounded by stories of mermaids, giants and mischievous piskies they were always going to seep into my work. Cornish folklore has a wonderful cast of magical beings so why wouldn't I use them in my stories.

The series I'm working on now consists of five or six books for middle grade each a collection of myths based on a particular legend but with a child-friendly take. There's some VERY bloody and gruesome stories mixed in with the legends so I had to pick and choose. 

The Cornish landscape is a gift too. The rugged cliffs, misty moors and ancient standing stones for starters and then there's all those secret sea caves and castles - perfect for a mystery story. I've added a contemporary touch to some and others I've left to do their own thing. 

There's humour and charm in many of the stories and I was able to make good use of that. And I'm using the Cornish language itself. Unusual place names and story-telling rhythms add authenticity and interest. 

It's a lot of fun revisiting many of these local myths and learning more. It's quite the undertaking and I'm only on the second book but enjoying it immensely. I hope the kids will too.

www.sharontregenza.com

sharontregenza@gmail.com

Members' News March

 No news to report for March. Wishing safe and happy travels to everyone doing school visits or going to the London Book Fair. If you have any news you'd like publicised in April, please send it to Claire Fayers.