MEETING OTHER AUTHORS - LISA HORNER

I do enjoy meeting other writers and learning how they first entered this strange writerly world of ours. So, it is with great pleasure that I introduce my followers to yet another of my author friends, Lisa Horner, who is an accomplished artist as well as being a published author of two best-selling books.  She is a familiar face at Billericay Library, where she works.

 

When interviewed recently, Lisa said:

'Writing is something I started later in life. Before this, fitting around family life, I worked through quite a few art courses, culminating in a Degree in Art and Design. I did find that the areas that I shone in on my degree course was writing and illustration. I have always been driven to find balance and to be able to give my family quality time, so it's natural that I've had more time to concentrate on art and writing later in life.'

Generally, many aspiring writers have great difficulty in finding a traditional publisher, but Lisa was surprised (and happy) when one of our top history publishers, Amberley Publishing, approached her to write a book about Basildon in Essex. A high honour indeed!

She was previously a contributing researcher to the late Frances Clamp, one of the county’s best-known authors; also the President of the Brentwood Writers' Circle for twenty years. Lisa had worked with Frances on the book Basildon, Our Heritage.  Lisa’s first title was Basildon Through Time, which was published in 2014. This was followed by Lost Basildon in 2019. With so much research material available, she included the Geraldine Evans's family story about The Barge in Vange in the book, and also a more detailed article, which was published in the Essex Life Magazine in 2020.

As an author, Lisa has given talks and appeared on the Phoenix FM radio station and on other radio stations. In 2023 she joined the Basildon Writers' Group, where her story was featured in their successful second anthology, It Happened in Essex 2: Tall Tales from the Basildon Writers' Group.  All proceeds went to Basildon Hospital Radio (BHR 87.7). The author commented: 

'I'm very proud that my story based around the great North Sea flood of 1953 - the worst natural disaster in modern British history - was included in the fund-raising book. My story focuses on the Canvey area.’

Lisa’s writer's website: https://www.lisajhorner.com/

Lisa’s art website: https://lisajanehorner.wixsite.com/artportfolio

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY- CELEBRATING IN BILLERICAY - MY CONTRIBUTION WITH THANKS TO LIBRARY

 How I love our Essex Libraries and, in particular, Billericay Library, which is one of the busiest and most welcoming libraries in this area.  

Yours truly and Lisa Horner on International Women's Day 8 March

So happy to meet one of their librarians Lisa Horner (herself a popular author (more about her in next missive), but such fun to be interviewed by her recently. She wanted news of my latest writing projects connected to the world's most famous women's writing organisation - The Society of Women Writers and Journalists (founded in 1894) and my current traditionally published books (12), my features (4,000+), eight anthologies and an update on my own interviews with the famous and (frankly notorious) characters over the last 33 years.  

WORKING HARD ON A NEW TOPIC LINKED TO EARLIER RESEARCH ON PATHE NEWS (AND THAT FUNNY OLD COCKEREL)

VE Day's 80th Anniversary Plans Unveiled

In The News

The upcoming 80th anniversary of VE Day will be marked with 4 days of nationwide events and commemorations, it has been announced. Our VE Day collection has some of the best and most iconic footage of 8 May 1945 and its context.

VE Day Collection

Just lately, one of my research projects required a little help from Pathé News, the producer of newsreels and documentaries from 1910 to 1970 in the United Kingdom.

Their founder Charles Pathe was a pioneer of moving pictures in the silent era. The Pathé News archive is known today as B Its collection of news film and movies is fully digitised and available online. 

Often, researchers and archivists have chosen Pathe News to widen their studies and many of us choose this area to learn more about this team of film-makers. Their roots lie in 1896 in Paris when Societe Pathe Freres was founded by Charles Pathe and his brothers Emile, Theophile and Jacques all living a the time in France. Charles Pathé adopted the national emblem of France, the cockerel, as the trademark for his company. After the company, now called Compagnie Générale des Éstablissements Pathé Frère Phonographes & Cinématographes, invented the cinema newsreel with Pathé-Journal. French Pathé began its newsreel in 1908 and opened a newsreel office in London's Wardour Street in 1910.

The newsreels were shown in the cinema and were silent until 1928. At first, they ran for about four minutes and were issued fortnightly. During the early days, the camera shots were taken from a stationary position but the Pathé newsreels captured events such as Franz Reichelt's fatal parachute jump from the Eiffel Tower and suffragette Emily Davison's fatal injury by a racehorse at the 1913 Epsom Derby. 

Duration: 3 minutes and 29 seconds.

During the the Great War, the cinema newsreels were called the Pathé Animated Gazettes, and for the first time this provided newspapers with competition. After 1918, British Pathé started producing a series of cinemazines, in which the newsreels were much longer and more comprehensive. By 1930, British Pathé was covering news, entertainment, sport, culture, and women's issues through programmes including the Pathétone Weekly, the Pathé Pictorial, the Gazette and Eve’s Film Review.

In 1927, the company sold British Pathé (both the feature film and the newsreel divisions) to First National. (French Pathé News continued until 1980, and the library is now part of the Gaumont-Pathe collection.) Pathé changed hands again in 1933, when it was acquired by British International Pictures, which was later known as Associated British Picture Corporation.  In 1958, it was sold again to Warner Brothers and became Warner-Pathé. Pathé eventually stopped producing the cinema newsreel in February 1970. However, I am so fond of their team and am always keen to refer to them from time to time in my column work.  

Shenfield Library Time Lapse

WARMEST WISHES TO FINOLA HOLIDAY, ONE OF OUR SWWJ BEST POETS ON HER ONE HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY.

Both East and West Sussex enjoy a remarkable literary past. Their list of legendary writers and poets includes Hilaire Belloc, William Blake, HG Wells, Lord Tennyson and a host of other illustrious characters who once lived and worked in this area.  

Finola Holiday pictured in London receiving a new award

In modern times, numerous members of the prestigious Society of Women Writers & Journalists have excelled themselves in publishing their best selling books across all genres. The latest collection of poetry emanates from Hove resident Finola Holiday, who celebrates her centenary on 23 February. Finola's work spans a lifetime of award-winning publications.  

Finola has long enjoyed success in regional and international poetry competitions. She won the ‘Sussex Poet of the Year’ prize and the ‘Edna Bourne-Jones Cup – an award of the Downland Poets Eastbourne - as well as the ‘Slipstream’ and ‘Ver Poets’ competitions and on three occasions, the prestigious SWWJ Lady Elizabeth Longford. 

A ‘Nest of Tigers’ is the title of Finola’s latest collection of poetry, crafted over years spent in remote places in different continents.   Some of her poetry belongs to the landscape of art and others to the tangible world of tide and change, while others exist only as images reflected in a darker glass. Finola’s latest eclectic work has brought reviews from respected leading poets: 

Susan Skinner: Finola Holiday presents the people or the objects in her poems with an eye for enchantment and an ear for rhythm that combine to give her poems an appealing vision.” 

Stella Davis: They are stand-alone good, and clearly the work of a poet who knows what she is doing!   A good strong voice with things to say and a confident sense of form in which to express them. 

Publisher: SWWJ/SCRIPTORA

Available on Amazon

Price: £7.00

 

CAN IT BE SIXTEEN YEARS SINCE HILARY MANTEL PAID US A VISIT IN BILLERICAY

Tonight on our regular BBC 4 radio programme Front Row and mention, yet again, of books, films and authors.  The work of Hilary Mantel was discussed, particularly her best-selling book Wolf Hall which our Billericay BookTalk group also coincidentally discussed today. Here is Hilary in 2009 at Billericay where we shared a lovely evening talking books, reading and writing, and of course, the Essex Book Festival. Looking forward to this year's events during the summer. Will keep you posted. 

THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE REMEMBERS OUR WONDERFUL POET FLEUR ADCOCK

 

The Royal Society of Literature members will remember our British poet Fleur Adcock on Wednesday 19 February at the London Library. Sadly she died in November 2024, but her poetry lives on. 

Wonderful to meet her and other respected poets at an ALCS evening gathering a few years ago.  Here she is with Sir Derek Alcott and Wendy Cope at the House of Lords. We enjoyed a super evening.   

In  remembrance of Fleur, the RSL is hosting a discussion of her writing and legacy with a panel of speakers including Neil Astley, Wendy Cope and Lorraine Mariner, chaired by Rachel Long, and interspersed with recordings of the poet reading her own work. This event, developed in partnership with the London Library, will mark Adcock’s 91st birthday.