by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 19th December 2023
Christmas is a time for remembering. Here, we remember a particular Friend to the Library. In mid-October, one of our supporters Joseph Boughey led a Remembrance Event for his beloved wife, Sara Richards, at the Library.
by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 06th October 2022
British Dyslexia Association Dyslexia Week 2022 is this week! It runs until Sunday 9th October, with the theme of 'Breaking Through Barriers'.
Having dyslexia and working in a library could seem a bit of a contradiction - after all, one of the best-known symptoms of dyslexia is a difficulty with spelling, reading, and writing. However, Reading Room Assistant James has other opinions...
Part one of a two-part series by James.
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 08th February 2022
Many volumes in the Gladstone's Library collection are contemporary, but sometimes even those that were printed a century or more ago offer unique insights into current affairs. Author Melissa Harrison witnessed this first-hand when she happened across an anti-vaccination book while drafting a new novel in our Reading Rooms.
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 09th November 2018
On Saturday, 10th November, Alan Cadwallader delivers this year’s Robinson-Spong public lecture, considering the challenge of material culture to metaphysical readings of the Bible.
by Rhian Waller | Wednesday, 01st August 2018
Miranda Kaufmann is the author of Black Tudors: The Untold Story, and one of the wonderful guests joining us for Gladfest 2018. With just a month to go until the festival, we caught up with Miranda to find out what to expect from her new work, as well as glimpses into her writing life.
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 17th July 2018
In the run-up to Gladfest 2018, we caught up with author Joanna Cannon to discuss her latest book Three Things About Elsie as well as her favourite reading memories and top tips for thriving in the world of publishing!
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 16th March 2018
At the beginning of April Gladstone’s Library welcomes Debbie Lewer from the University of Glasgow to deliver a course exploring art, faith and failure within visual art from the Middle Ages to the present day.
Debbie is an art historian who lectures on topics across the field, including on wider media such as photography and architecture. As we edge closer to April, we spoke to the her to find out a little more about her ideas, her work and what we can expect from 'Utterly Human: Art, Faith and Failure'...
by Rhian Waller | Wednesday, 07th March 2018
Emma Rees was Gladstone’s Library’s Political Writer in Residence in 2016 and returns to Hawarden on Friday, 11th May to lead a two-day residential course on reading Shakespeare without fear.
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 20th October 2017
Will Harris was born in London, of mixed Anglo-Indonesian heritage. He has worked in schools and as a tutor, co-edits the small press 13 Pages and is one of the organisers of The Poetry Inquisition. His poems have appeared in The Poetry Review, The White Review and The Rialto, where he is Assistant Editor. He is also part of the editorial team behind Swimmers and helped put together the first-ever Poetry Magazine Fair. He is a fellow of the Complete Works III, and will be published as part of the Bloodaxe anthology Ten: Poets of the New Generation. His debut pamphlet, All This is Implied, was published by HappenStance Press in June 2017.
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 20th October 2017
Krishan Coupland is a writer, editor and digital nomad. His debut collection of (very) short fiction, When You Lived Inside the Walls, was published by Stonewood Press in 2017. Other poems and stories have been published in Ambit, Aesthetica, Litro and elsewhere. In his spare time Krishan runs and edits Neon Literary Magazine.
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 20th October 2017
Sam Guglani is a poet, novelist and consultant oncologist who specialises in the management of lung and brain tumours. He has a background in medical ethics and chairs the Gloucestershire Hospitals Trust law and ethics group. Director of Medicine Unboxed since he founded it in 2009, Sam uses the arts and creative industries to illuminate challenges in medicine. He is a published poet and writes for The Lancet, and his debut novel Histories is released in 2017.
by Rhian Waller | Monday, 07th August 2017
Louisa Young was born in London and educated there and at Cambridge University. She was a freelance journalist for many years, including for the Guardian, Marie-Claire and the motorcycle magazine, Bike. An interview with Johnny Cash led to the realisation that she couldn’t be a journalist any more, and she moved into fiction, biography, history, and recently, songwriting. Her first book was a biography of her grandmother Kathleen Scott, sculptor and widow of Captain Scott of the Antarctic, who lived in the house where Peter Pan was written, and in which Louisa grew up with five siblings and six cousins.
by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 20th July 2017
Kate Hamer grew up in Pembrokeshire and, after studying art, worked in television for over 10 years, mainly on documentaries. Her debut novel, The Girl in the Red Coat, was published by Faber & Faber in February 2015 and has sold in eight other territories. Kate won the Rhys Davies short story prize in 2011 and the story One Summer was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She has also had work published in short story anthologies such as A Fiction Map of Wales and Seren’s New Welsh Short Stories. She lives in Cardiff with her husband.
by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 13th July 2017
Dan Richards was born in Wales in 1982 and grew up in Bristol. He has studied at UEA and Norwich Arts School. Dan is the co-author of Holloway with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood, published by Faber in 2013. The Beechwood Airship Interviews, a book about the creative process and the importance of art for art’s sake, was published by The Friday Project / HarperCollins in 2015.
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 13th June 2017
Lyn Bechtel is a feminist Hebrew Bible scholar.
Over the week of 26th – 30th June, Lyn leads a course at Gladstone’s Library entitled ‘Genesis Redux’. The course examines three disturbing stories from the Book of Genesis which represent a theology that is foundational to the theology of Jesus; Deuteronomic theology. These stories are Lot and his Daughters (Genesis. 19), Dinah and Shechem (Genesis. 34) and Tamar and Judah (Genesis. 38).
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 09th May 2017
Rachel Mann has worked as Teaching Fellow in the Philosophy Department at Lancaster University and holds qualifications in Theology and Creative Writing / English Literature. She began writing poetry, liturgy and short stories in the late nineties and has also written feminist liturgical theology, cultural history and is a regular contributor to the Church Times. Rachel has published three books; Fierce Imaginings, Dazzling Darkness and The Risen Dust as well as contributing to many others.
by Rhian Waller | Monday, 03rd April 2017
Michael Nobbs is the author of Drawing Your Life and publishes an illustrated journal called The Beany. Michael is an artist, podcaster and tea-drinker. At the end of the 1990s he was diagnosed with ME/CFS, a chronic illness that severely limits how much he can do each day. Over the years he’s learnt a lot about living the best life he can by accepting what he can’t change and working with what he can.
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 28th March 2017
Nicholas Draper is Director of the new Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership at UCL. Prior to this he was Co-director of the recent Structure and Significance of British Caribbean Slave-ownership 1763-1833 project, and was a founder member of its precursor, the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project (2009-2012).
by Rhian Waller | Tuesday, 02nd August 2016
Ian Parks was one of the first Writers in Residence at Gladstone's Library in 2012. His collections of poems include Shell Island, The Landing Stage, Love Poems 1979-2009, and The Exile's House. He is the editor of Versions of the North: Contemporary Yorkshire Poetry and was Writing Fellow at De Montfort University, Leicester from 2012 - 2014.
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 15th July 2016
On 22nd -24th July, author and Professor at Baylor University Texas, Greg Garrett leads a course at Gladstone’s Library exploring depictions of the afterlife in contemporary film, music and literature. The course is entitled Entertaining Judgment: The Afterlife in Popular Imagination and follows Greg’s book of the same name...
by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 21st April 2016
In June we welcome Timothy Sedgwick of the Virginia Theological Seminary to deliver a course exploring just that. Considering a history of the transformation of desire, body and society, and the aftermath of the revolution, this course runs 13th – 14th June 2016 and will be an open forum for ideas and discussion.
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 11th March 2016
How important is the relationship between art and religious belief? At the beginning of April we welcome Debbie Lewer of the University of Glasgow to the Library, to deliver a fascinating course on the connections between the two.
by Rhian Waller | Thursday, 25th February 2016
Natasha Pulley is our February Writer in Residence here at Gladstone’s Library. This means that for the entire month, Natasha has been living in, working on her current project, reading, conversing and just generally giving us all a lot to think about over dinner!
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 23rd October 2015
Throughout the month of October, philosopher Jane Dryden has been staying at the Library as our Theologian in Residence.
On a not-so-sunny day mid-month, we sat down with her to find out what she’s been working on, tucked away at her favourite gallery desk…
by Rhian Waller | Friday, 03rd July 2015
Last month Gladstone’s Library welcomed in its new Chair of Trustees, Professor Michael Wheeler.
Just after his first Management Committee as Chairman, we talked to Michael to find out about his background, his involvement with the library over time and to get his first words as the new Chair “who just happens to have been around here for four decades…”
