Authors Electric

‘We are the music-makers, We are the dreamers of dreams, ... Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world forever, it seems.’ O’Shaughnessy   didn’t explicitly mention writers, but they are here by implication in his Ode. Of course they are. I’m not sure how many of us forsake the world to go wandering under the pale moon and sit by desolate streams, but we do our share of moving and shaking, especially when we get together. There are many fine examples of books with the theme of wanting to make a difference; to change things for the better. Here are two I know well. In 2003, as an angry and horrified response to the Iraq war, Mary Hoffman and Rhiannon Lassiter contacted every writer and illustrator of children’s books they could reach to invite them to contribute to a book of poems and stories. Contributions poured in from all over the world. The anthology is called Lines in the Sand. All profits and royalties were for UNICEF ‘s emergency appeal for the ...

I want to write about online porn this month, and this is why. A few days ago I was writing a post for My Tonight From Shrewsbury on the subject of punishments meted out in our town in the fourteenth century for ‘scolds’ – ie cantankerous women [always women] who refused to shut up, back down or desist from loudly and frequently expressing their opinions.   By a slightly circuitous route this led me to Google Images looking for appropriate engravings to go on my post.   Plenty came up, and a few I’ve used.   Amusingly, a photo came up, too, of a flame-haired Rebecca Brookes, whom I guess somebody must have seen as the modern incarnation of the medieval scold.   But also, and not amusingly at all - in fact unbidden, unwanted, unasked for and completely unexpectedly - up came two photographs in black and white. One was of the anal rape of a young woman with others looking on. The other was of what I can only describe from the equipment it included as the torture o...