Authors Electric

  The Curative Power of Art A Reading of  Art Cure  by Daisy Fancourt This book is proof if any were needed that an engagement with the arts is good for us. The Art that the author Daisy Fancourt refers to in it belongs to several different creative areas, such as music, dance, poetry and storytelling, and she has followed the first of these throughout her life as an accomplished piano player. In her prelude to the book, she says that behaviour connected to the arts can have a big influence on our health. For example: ‘If children engage with art workshops, choirs, book clubs, dance classes, drama groups or bands they are less likely to be lonely or develop behavioural problems…’ Nor is this book just a speculative account. Throughout it the author tells us about her engagement with specialist academic teams in areas of Psychobiology and Epidemiology, for which she is a Professor at UCL, researching how biological processes relate to human experience such as the emotions....

Research... books ‘De-cluttering’ - as throwing out once-loved possessions is now called - is not really, as they say, my bag . That is, our home is set about with all kinds of delightful objects, all   much loved: books (in bookcases, more than ten, now I stop to count), and ornaments, cushions (great fun to throw around if you’re a visiting grandchild), paintings, pot plants, and of course, not forgetting, The Cat. None of these is ‘clutter’ except, perhaps,The Cat when he insists on sharing the screen and ‘helping’ with   a Zoom call. However, the delight when something precious suddenly moves from one category - necessary research - to another - old information never again needed! Having just spent an hour or so browsing through super-stuffed lever-arch files, casting a last look over wonderfully informative scientific articles and sociological comment pieces on lifestyle today, it’s possible to say of nearly all these that they’ll not be needed again!   Once much lov...

Daisy reading 'Spinderella' by Julia Donaldson and Sebastien Braun recently - she's almost word perfect, I'm told. A few months ago I told you about my little granddaughter’s beginning to tell stories. A few months, of course, is a long time when you’re only two, and in that time Daisy's language use and conversational abilities have progressed enormously. She now seems to have a handle on all the various English tenses (no mean feat, that) and has begun to ask a whole variety of questions, though she is only just getting started on ‘why’ – that’s a pleasure still to come for us all. Still, Daddy teaches physics and Mummy teaches sociology, RE and law, so perhaps between them they will cope (?) We were at the park, Daisy and I, last week. She had been on the swings: ‘Even higher, Nana!’ – and we'd spent fifteen minutes going up and down a ramp. Her next port of call was a climbing net that gave access to a high, enclosed slide, clearly designed for ...