Category: Twitter

Hookland 10/1/21 1:40:18

@NuitsdeY I am on record as telling everyone that @edward_parnell’s Ghostland is one of the two great English ghost books of the 21st century. The other being @Skionar ‘Natural History of Ghosts’.

Hookland 10/1/21 1:36:36

@NuitsdeY @MartinB_Archaeo If you have faith in your words and the way they work alone and they way they are alchemised by illustration, you don’t let yourself think that way. Besides, all control of interpretation is lost as the moment of publication/hitting send – best to be gracious about that fact.

Hookland 10/1/21 1:34:04

@NuitsdeY @MartinB_Archaeo Yes and no. I enjoy a wonderful relationship with the illustrator of the first Hookland book which is entirely collaborative. Imaginative equity makes a lot of those issues redundant.

Hookland 10/1/21 1:32:01

@NuitsdeY @MartinB_Archaeo There is also an element of Uttley seeing herself as an author and other people seeing her as someone who did words to go with pretty pictures. That sort of patronising approach to her tales riled her.

Hookland 10/1/21 1:30:36

@NuitsdeY @MartinB_Archaeo You can label Uttley’s insistence that things should look a certain way as controlling or fiercely pursuing her vision as author. I take a profoundly different approach when working in collaboration with artists, but the sheer power of an author’s vision can cause conflict.

Hookland 10/1/21 1:27:45

@NuitsdeY @MartinB_Archaeo My understanding is they didn’t like it each other. She had a vision of her stories and Margaret Tempest wasn’t always delivering that vision, but rather her own vision, so there was professional conflict on both sides.

Hookland 10/1/21 1:22:13

@NuitsdeY @MartinB_Archaeo The article paints a somewhat unfair take on the diaries in my view because the headline equivalent of children’s author nasty’ is easier than ‘woman who loved nature, science and weird things didn’t suffer fools gladly and faced sexism with a fierce spirit’.

Hookland 10/1/21 1:19:04

@NuitsdeY @MartinB_Archaeo My reading of her diaries allowed me to take away her complexity, her absolute grit and her joyful wonder in the universe that was wide enough to encompass quantum physics and faeries. If she is savage with honesty, no-one gets both barrels more than herself.

Hookland 10/1/21 1:13:20

@AlboStep The gothic paintshop which is Hookland also has shades which show of the black wonderfully. Also, it’s tongue-in-cheek as the moment Little Grey rabbit has to cut off her tail to pay the owl … pure horror.