FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY (12) - SHEILA HANCOCK (2022) 'OLD RAGE'

 Jo Wren, a Quaker Elder at the Marazion Meeting House, donated a copy of Sheila Hancock's latest book to our Marazion Quaker library a couple of weeks ago, saying that since Sheila was a Quaker her story should be of interest. Jo had just finished reading her own copy and was impressed. I have now finished reading these 258 pages and agree. This is a work that many will find inspiring. Joan Bakewell, reviewing the book in the Guardian, wrote: 'Her gift for directly communicating the open-heartedness and spirit of adventure with which she confronts her life ... is the stuff of bestsellers'. 

Sheila was born in February 1933 and is now 91 years old. 'Old Rage' is structured around diary entries from January 2016 to June 2021 which serve to relate events from her life during that period and present her commentary on national matters that are shaping the wider world. Within all this, there are many reflections back to other episodes in her past - these are the thoughts of an octogenarian weaving together the threads of her long life. The book, however, starts in November 2020 when Sheila receives the official communication from Downing Street telling her in strictest confidence that she has been recommended for the honour of DBE - she will become a Dame of the British Empire if she accepts the offer. 

Sheila Hancock, aged 90

I was hooked straightaway. Sheila writes: 'I feel sick with inadequacy. A lifetime of getting away with it does not merit reward ... Should I turn it down? It's hardly in keeping with my Quaker belief of equality.' I am thinking: Please, please, do turn it down - as Benjamin Zephaniah did'. I turn to Wikipedia and discover that Dame Sheila had accepted the honour. Alas! I return a little disappointed to the story of her recent and past life - but then I am a paid-up Republican and a proper 21st century socialist in the Corbyn tradition. I find in later pages that Sheila loves the royal family and has no time for Corbyn. Well, we are all shaped by our experiences and influences. And there's still much to admire, enjoy,

REVOLUTIONARY NONVIOLENCE - WITH THANKS TO MILAN RAI, NOAM CHOMSKY, AJ MUSTE, AND PETER LE MARE

Milan Rai is nearly 60. I have come to appreciate him through his work over the last seventeen years as editor of Peace News, the newspaper I used to sell on the corner of Carfax in Oxford on Saturday mornings in 1968 and 1969 as a member of the Oxford University Peace Action Group. In September this year he wrote his editorial goodbye:

'I first bought, and started selling, Peace News when I was at school. Its vision of revolutionary anarcha-feminist nonviolence has had a deep and lasting impact on me.

It has been an enormous honour to have been co-editor, with Emily Johns, and then the sole editor of PN. Emily, you’re a star. 17 years have flown by.

It has also been an honour to be the first sole editor of colour.

I’m so glad to have carried the banner of revolutionary nonviolence alongside Emily, Emma Sangster and Gabriel Carlyle and, earlier on, Claire Poyner, Rebecca Dale, Nik Górecki and John Mcallister. I’m grateful to Ippy and to all the previous PN staff for having built the paper and for having kept this show on the road.'

Milan Rai

Milan Rai had earned his credentials as a nonviolent activist:

Rai first became politically active in the campaign against Pershing II and Ground Launched Cruise Missiles - nuclear weapons scheduled to be deployed in Western Europe in the late 1980s.

Along with fellow activist Maya Evans, he was arrested on 25 October 2005 next to the Cenotaph war memorial in London, for refusing to cease reading aloud the names of

MALGORZATA MIRGA-TAS - A POLISH-ROMA ARTIST OF DISTINCTION - HER TATE ST IVES EXHIBITION IN 2024/5

We visited the exhibitions at Tate St Ives celebrating the work of  Outi Pieski and Beatriz Milhazes earlier this year - see my earlier blogposts: 

Rob Donovan - Author: EXPLORING NEW WORLDS - OUTI PIESKI AT TATE ST IVES - AND REDEFINING BOUNDARIES

Rob Donovan - Author: BEATRIZ MILHAZES AT TATE ST IVES - A PORTUGUESE CELBRATION OF LIFE

Our friend, Stephen Vranch, took us round the latest show at Tate St Ives which is celebrating the art of Malgorzata Mirga-Tas on the morning of 1 November. It was a birthday gift for Louise. Stephen took the photographs that appear in the second part of this blog-post - they tell their own story. 

Malgorzata Mirga-Tas

In the first part below, I am indebted to the Guardian newspaper for the following insight into the artist and her Roma identity, as told by the Guardian's Charlotte Higgins:   

"Her dazzling textile works caused a sensation at Europe’s two most important art events. Mirga-Tas talks about defying centuries of anti-Roma prejudice – and turning her mother’s old dresses into art.

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas is the sort of person who hugs a visitor even before she says hello. She welcomes me into her home in the village of Czarna Góra, at the foot of the Tatra mountains in southern Poland, with a high-wattage smile. The artist’s house is right next to her aunt’s and her mother’s. The modern buildings huddle together, facing each other protectively round a flower garden. Mirga-Tas loves being close to so

MARK WAISTELL, QUAKER SINGER/SONGWRITER FROM DEVON - A CREATIVE VOICE

 A couple of weeks ago, I attended a concert given by Mark Waistell, a Devon Quaker, at the Penzance YMCA which is where the Penzance Quaker Meeting is held. There were around 30 Quakers in the audience. My new hearing aids found it difficult to cope with the acoustics of the room and the sound system seemed too loud but heh that sounds a grumble and what Mark was able to communicate through his playing and voice was poetic and thought-provoking. He took as his theme the wisdom to be found in the Quaker Advices and Queries, linking these with his own songs. I was inspired enough to buy a couple of his CDs at the interval and the all-important collection of his lyrics: Without Music (2020).  

Mark Waistell - the image from the CD cover of 'Latecomer'.

I am a writer and I was already realizing that Mark has the feeling and skill to shine as a word magician. Here's a taste of what we experienced - this song is called 'My England of Long Ago' and Tom Carroll

MARIE DE HENNEZEL - POUR LIRE LA VIEILLESSE - HOW BEST TO UNDERSTAND AGEING - AND THE INSIGHTS OF CARL JUNG

Stephen, a Quaker friend, recommended I read Marie de Hennezel's book, published in France in 2008 and then translated into English and published in the UK as The Warmth of the Heart Prevents Your Body from Rusting in 2011. The book was read on BBC Radio 4 and became a best seller; another Quaker friend recalls reading it when it was first published. The subtitle reads: Ageing without growing old. 

The Mail on Sunday heralded the work as 'Timely and admirable ... her essential idea is that old age should be a stage of life as full of potential as any other'. The Glasgow Herald said it was 'An exceedingly tender, wise book'. Some online reviewers were less flattering: 'I work in a Hospice, so I know all about death and dying, not only in old age. This book uses far too many quotations and passages gleaned from other writers works on the subject of old age and approaching old age. There is no epiphany, no true inspiration. It was depressing and dire...'.

Marie de Hennezel - French advocate for fresh thinking on ageing 

The subject of ageing and death does stir the emotions and in differing ways it seems. I did find the book worth reading; the subject matter is - to make an obvious point - of existential importance. De Hennezel's concern to highlight the transforming possibilities in growing older and understanding how best to approach death is admirable. Yet the way the book is written - its style - grates at times. Too often the pages become a scrapbook collection of sayings - usually wise - about ageing and dying, cut and pasted from books in French written in the first decade of this century. All interesting and usually admirable but it is not always easy to follow the path that has taken de Hennezel, the experienced clinical psychologist, to her present viewpoint.

Marie de Hennezel is two years older than me so she was born in 1946 and is now 78, making her 62 when this book of hers was first published in 2008. She graduated in English and then returned to higher

CATCHING UP WITH THE LABOUR AUTUMN BUDGET 2024

 I have been steering clear of political blogposts since the electorate in the UK showed the door to the Tory Party in the July election this year. There was no surprise that at last the British voters realized that there was something rotten in the Party that had been misgoverning us. In my less analytical moments, I have been known to mutter that Donald Duck could have won that election if he had been standing as the leader of the Opposition Party. Instead it was Sir Keir Starmer who became the prime minister, the man who lied his way into winning the leadership election within the Labour Party by claiming he was a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn's ten principles. In your dreams! One savage and toxic brand of neoliberal politicians who believe in prioritizing the market and the pursuit of profit has been replaced by another type of politician, less nasty but still in tow to capitalists who look down on those they exploit. The water companies are still safe in their privatized industry as they pump our sewerage into our rivers, knowing that this new government has refused to renationalize the water industry. Remember, this so-called Labour government has also declined to end the two-child benefit cap introduced by the Tories that means over a million children living in poverty - and they have actually ended the universal winter fuel allowance which will lead to some impoverished pensioners dying as they juggle choices between food and heat.  

Donald Duck - the inevitable PM?

I am a member of Transform, a new political party formed a year or two ago to challenge the Tory maladministration. This blogpost was triggered by the mailing I received today from them. Here it is:

Hi Rob,   Welcome to issue 14 of the Transform newsletter. This newsletter was written before the results from the American election started to come in. Like millions around the world, we await

MY 'MINE TO DIE' (2024) - REVIEWED IN THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER: 'THE ST IVES TIMES AND ECHO' BY ITS EDITOR, TONI CARVER

 I think most authors must be interested in the journey of their books after publication. I remember how calm I was when, a couple of years ago, I took the 600 surplus copies of my first book: The Road to Corbyn (2016) to the local recycling centre at St Erth for disposal in the skip. In my enthusiasm, I had ordered a print run of 1,000 copies. A big mistake. I have learnt the lesson. Actually that trip to the St Erth dump gifted me an encounter which was priceless. The guy employed to oversee the skip into which I was casting my books asked me what the book was about. He was in his late-thirties or early-forties, weather-beaten, a hard, tough physique. Not a man to cross. I explained. He paused. "Did you write this?" "Yes", I replied. He paused again. "Can I have a copy?" "Yes!" "Will you sign it?" "Yes!" - and then he explained that he was part of a Traveller community which was based in the Camborne area and on the three occasions that Jeremy Corbyn had come to Heartlands to speak in political rallies between 2016 and 2019, he and his family had been there to hear and applaud him - just as I had. We got on like a house on fire.

Published in May 2024

My latest book: Mine to Die had an initial print run of 200 copies. I have learned to be careful, although there may well be another print run of 100 ordered soon - see this recent blogpost here: Rob Donovan - Author: MINE TO DIE GETS CLOSE TO ANOTHER PRINT RUN  The latest event in the book's journey since publication in May adds further encouragement and increases the likelihood of making that