21 Tuesday Jun 2011
Posted in Literacy News
Source: princeofwales.gov.uk
Camilla will meet children and staff at a school in Chiswick to meet people she sponsors through the Volunteer Reading Help charity.
She will tour the school, visit its recently developed library and watch a reading session.
20 Monday Jun 2011
Posted in Literacy News
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The British Library has sorted out a deal with Google.
It will allow readers to view and copy the out-of-copyright works of about a quarter of a million texts dating back to the 18th Century.
The search engine has similar arrangements with about forty libraries around the world.
20 Monday Jun 2011
Christianity and the church are central themes in "Borvo"
As mentioned in Part I, Christianity is the world’s largest religion. It has the greatest number of followers with approximately two billion around the world and forty million in the UK alone, with many different types of Christianity being practised. It is a belief system that over the years has had immense cultural and political consequence across nations, with major divisions occurring between Western Christianity – itself divided into Roman Catholicism and Protestantism – and Orthodox Christianity, and from the 16th and 17th centuries onwards it was a religion that developed missionary movements which established its beliefs throughout the world.
Central to Christian beliefs and practices is the Bible, split into the New Testament that details the life of Jesus and the Early Church and the Old Testament which is identical to the scriptures that Jesus would have referred to as a practising Jew. Other important texts are the Creeds: the Apostles ’ Creed and the Nicene Creed which are both summaries of the beliefs formulated in the early years of Christianity.
In 1054, a formal division opened up between Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, caused by Christianity spreading throughout the world, with different groups disagreeing over different aspects, thereby causing the Church to begin to split into various branches but prior to this, as mentioned in Part I, it was the Pagan beliefs that were the first direct conflict with Christian values.
Just as in the famous poem “Beowulf” where the two sets of beliefs are accommodated, with Paganism promoting the earthly good and Christianity asserting heavenly salvation, Denny Bradbury also combines the pagan values of bravery and loyalty through her pagan hero Borvo in her soon to be released second novel of the same name. She combines the healing powers of the young boy with the Christian values of forgiveness and peace and a spiritual life through her portrayal of King Alfred, fighting to introduce Christianity to an England being invaded by the marauding Pagan Danes, illustrating how the pagan belief system and Christian traditions are alike in some respects.
Like the book “The Mists of Avalon” released in 1983, in which the chief character is a Pagan Priestess whose half brother is King Alfred, Denny Bradbury also has a main protagonist from a Pagan background finding his way at a time when patriarchal Christianity is taking hold.
The Church, Royalty and ideas collide in the new book "Borvo"
Nowadays, Christianity is responsible for the way our society is organised and for the way thousands of people currently live. Its influence can be found in laws, economics, politics, art, music, literature, and architecture, to name just a few and it is a religion split into Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Protestant, Anglican, The Free Churches and Pentecostal, with its impact is felt across all manner of fundamental areas of life such as Human Rights, Marriage and Family, the Governing of countries, and the emergence of scientific laws .
As King Alfred himself showed through his dedication to bringing the written word to his subjects, regardless of class, great emphasis is placed on education through the beliefs of Christianity.
Historian J.M.Roberts, from the book “What’s So Great About Christianity?” by Dinesh D’Souza writes: “We could none of us today be what we are if a handful of Jews nearly two thousand years ago had not believed that they had known a great teacher, seen him crucified, dead and buried and then rise again”.
Elizabeth Bridgefield
To purchase one of Denny’s books please click on the images below or contact Denny directly at email denisebradbury@btinternet.com.
17 Friday Jun 2011
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A look at two similar artforms, Structure of Music, Structure of poetry, The Link Between Poetry and Music
Poetry and music
Originally, poetry and music were one of the same. The composition of the words would help generate the rhythm of the piece and therefore the tone. For example if you were to write something upbeat and positive then short sharp words would execute the piece quickly. If you were writing something mournful then it would be the opposite. Unfortunately in the fabric of history musical relics are scarce, excluding classical music. So we are left with just the words. However reading the antiquities that have been left behind, we can piece together their purpose and deduce that music and poetry do indeed go together. It’s a known fact that Ancient Greeks considered to two as one. A lot has changed since ancient times and both music and poetry have established their own independence. Poets would have written their work without taking music into consideration. Moving through history, say the Renaissance, sonnets and poems were rife. They were composed but not in a musical sense.
Interestingly, in contemporary society and culture, music is big business for many artists. Music today carries more associates than just music. Today music could mean fame and fame means money. The consumer, your everyday listener is more likely to remember a song lyric than a poem. The reasons for this are numerous. It could be because the listener enjoys the song; it could be that they have been bombarded with the sound in their surroundings, through the radio, in shops, the internet and even the television. Ironically this is why the phrase “I can’t seem to get that song out of my head” has been coined. Music has a number of genres but is no less human than poetry. It does indeed come from the mind of a person. Since the birth of literature, if you look through history; music and poetry are very similar in many ways but their origins differ. In Medieval literature poems were crafted through grammar and rhetoric. Whereas music started from science and maths, this is because beats per minute were taken into account more with music than with poetry. Poetry comprises more of a representation of reality. The language of music is more abstract and separate from that of words. Steering away from the original and constructive differences; repetition, pulse, rhythm, accent, sequence and dramatic climax are common features present in the two art forms.
Unless you look at the two art forms under a microscope and strip down the two to its bare bones the similarities and differences are not always immediately obvious to the audience.
To purchase one of Denny’s books please click on the images below or contact Denny directly at email denisebradbury@btinternet.com.
16 Thursday Jun 2011
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Colum McCann has won the International Impac Dublin Literary Award.
It’s for his book Let The Great World Spin.
It scoops the world’s most lucrative literary prize worth £88,000.
The story of colliding cultures set in 1970s New York was described by judges as a “remarkable literary work”.
Denny Bradbury Books 