On Tuesday 10th October we launched my new Worple Press collection Beyond the Gate in the beautiful crypt (or Forum) of the newly refurbished St John’s Waterloo, in London. I love book launches. And because this one had been postponed from July, I’d had extra time to plan, in a very bossy way: notes and…
Category: Event
‘Eric Gill: The Body’ at Ditchling Museum of Art & Craft, until 3 September
Ever since I first came across Eric Gill’s work for The Golden Cockerel Press when I was a student of fine bookbinding, I have admired his art whilst feeling an intuitive ambivalence about his portrayal of the female body. So when Fiona MacCarthy’s biography of Gill was published in 1989, revealing (from Gill’s meticulous diaries)…
Welcome 2017 and bring on the Parsnip Soup!
Three weeks into the New Year and I haven’t broken a single New Year’s resolution. But that’s because I don’t much like resolutions and I didn’t make any. Resolution implies something that can be decided on, put to bed, removing all doubt. I don’t think life is like that. And one of the earlier meanings…
‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in.’
I’ve always liked that line from Robert Frost’s ‘The Death of the Hired Man’. The Poem-a-Thon in Brighton on Sunday 11 December is raising funds for the Refugee Council which does excellent work helping refugees and asylum seekers – who have suffered terrible losses – find the openings they need in order to feel at home…
Illustrated talk for University of Kent symposium on Artists’ Books and the Medical Humanities on 21st April 2016
http://www.kent.ac.uk/english/research/conferences/artistsbooks.html This talk/article has also been posted on the BMJ Medical Humanities blog. I had been so looking forward to this wonderful symposium devised, designed and immaculately planned by Stella Bolaki, and to seeing the exhibition of Martha Hall’s and other book artists’ work – which is still on until 14 August (Prescriptions Beaney House of…
Bodies on show
‘The Ethics of Display: exhibiting vulnerable bodies’ At the Centre for the History of Medicine, the University of Warwick, 21 March 2016 When I signed up for this symposium I was still thinking about the tricky questions thrown up by Lucy Lyons’ ‘Drawing Parallels’ workshop at UCL last year. The experience of that day spent trying…
StAnza 2016 – a festive table
What a privilege to be invited to take part in StAnza 2016, the 19th annual poetry festival in St Andrews. Heartfelt thanks to Eleanor Livingstone and to all the members of the team who every year organise and programme this outstanding festival. StAnza extends such a warm welcome to everyone who attends – it really…
The film of ‘Take Me With You’
It’s already three weeks since Tim and I put on Take Me With You: the Museum of Friendship, Remembrance and Loss at Brighton and Sussex Medical School on 18 February. Many thanks indeed to all who came along and joined us that evening. We really enjoyed the event, although (just like real life) it didn’t…
Take Me With You: the Museum of Friendship, Remembrance and Loss
Take Me With You: the Museum of Friendship, Remembrance and Loss 6.00-8.30 pm, Thursday 18 February 2016 at the Chowen Lecture Theatre, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Falmer Campus BN1 9PX Museum open from 6.00 pm Clare Best and Tim Andrews in conversation (+q&a) 6.30-7.30 pm Drinks reception from 7.30 pm Museum open until 8.30 pm…
An evening at Drew University’s Caspersen School of Graduate Studies on the 21st of September 2015
I am most grateful to Philip Scibilia – who heads up the Medical Humanities programme – and to Elizabeth Fehsenfeld for their invitation to speak last week and for their enthusiastic welcome and generous hospitality. Thank you to Tara Jenner for the warm introduction. I was delighted to meet Sean Nevin who is Director of…
Clare Best 