Showing posts with label 'Daily Mail'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 'Daily Mail'. Show all posts

Thursday, 19 March 2015

CS Lewis, The Last Battle and The Total Eclipse

Back in 1999 when Britain was getting ready to watch only the second total eclipse of the twentieth century, the Daily Mail ran an article about the first one which took place on June 29th 1927.
The best place to view it was the Yorkshire Dales, and to quote the paper, people arrived there 'by plane, ship, railway, car, charabanc, omnibus, motorcycle and pushbike'.
Virginia Woolf even arrived by train with other members of the Bloomsbury set.
The Mail included the report of their very own correspondent who described seeing the total eclipse through a break in the clouds with a crowd of fifty thousand on Richmond racecourse.
He (or she!) described the increasing chill in the air as the light 'insensibly decreased', until the sun hung in the east like the brightest and most splendid new moon. The world now waited, dark and cold in a 'ghastly grey-yellow, gloom'.
'The waves of blackness, accompanied by an icy breath, were rushing on faster and faster as though the sky was full of groups of lights that were being put out one by one, and suddenly, as if with one fell swoop, it was night - night dense, sinister, an muffled in silence'.
Anyone watching the eclipse could not help believing, for the few minutes of totality, that the end of the world was at hand.
It was interesting to read that amongst the crowds heading for Yorkshire, the Daily Mail correspondent mentioned that there were some 'college dons'.
Now, in 1925, CS Lewis became a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Magdelen College, Oxford, so it's quite possible that he made the trip up to witness the eclipse.
This is even more likely if you read his account of  the end of Narnia, in The Last Battle.
In the chapter, Night Falls on Narnia, he describes the moon coming up close to the sun and how the sun's great red tentacles reach out for it and surround it until they were like one huge ball of burning coal. Then Aslan asks a giant to squeeze the sun as he would an orange. And instantly, there was total darkness.
It's nice to think that that CS Lewis might have witnessed the eclipse in 1927 and made some notes to be used nearly thirty years later in his final Chronicle of Narnia.

Friday, 9 March 2012

Good News! Article in Teignmouth Post A Success! Plus Liebster Blog Award!

I was just going to the shops yesterday when I had a phone call from Rhona at the  Quayside Bookshop in Teignmouth, wanting some more copies of Gipsy Moth. I'm really pleased that the article in the Teignmouth Post generated some sales! Wonderful! So I was able to parcel up some more copies and send them straight away. Jonathan Cainer in the Daily Mail said that I should look out for co-incidences and I suppose that it was a co-incidence that I was just going out and able to post the books at the same time.
Then today, the lovely Debs Carr awarded me the Liebster Blog Award. It's the second time that I've received it and I'm glad that you no longer have to find five others to award it to, but you do have to list five random facts about yourself, so here goes:

  1. My mother had a teacher who was related to Captain Scott who perished at the South Pole one hundred years ago.
  2. She left me outside the post office in my pram when I was six months old, queued up to post some parcels, came out out, and forgot I was hers!
  3. David Seaman smiled at me in the local supermarket the other week.
  4. I went to the loo at Ascot once and come out with my skirt tucked into my knickers! Thank goodness a friend spotted me before I got too far!
  5. I was made to stay in at break when I started school because some boys had taken my skipping rope. Perhaps I lashed out irrationally! 
I'm going to pass the award to Debbie White, the Bluestocking Mum, for her inspirational blog.

What are your random moments?

Monday, 23 January 2012

Good Luck with New Beginnings, Rebecca Emin, it's the Chinese New Year!


Today, in the Daily Mail, Jonathan Cainer, the astrologer, says that it's an auspicious time to start something new because the Chinese New Year corresponds with a new moon!
So I wish the very best of luck to Rebecca Emin for her Web Splash to launch the official publication date of New Beginnings.


About New Beginnings
Sam Hendry is not looking forward to starting at her new school. Things go from bad to worse as the day of truth arrives and all of her fears come true... and then some.

When Sam meets a different group of people who immediately accept her as a friend, she begins to feel more positive.

With her new friends and interests, will Sam finally feel able to face the bully who taunts her, and to summon up the courage to perform on stage?


Rebecca has been very kind to me in helping to get my book into a real book shop - The Wallingford Book Shop, in Wallingford (!) so, it's only fair that I reciprocate.  Join  us over on Rebecca’s blog Ramblings of a Rusty Writer to find all of the details of how she is planning to celebrate today, or you can read some reviews of the book itself on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com