Hearth interview: Krishan Coupland

20 October 2017

Hearth interview: Krishan Coupland

Krishan Coupland is a writer, editor and digital nomad. His debut collection of (very) short fiction, When You Lived Inside the Walls, was published by Stonewood Press in 2017. Other poems and stories have been published in Ambit, Aesthetica, Litro and elsewhere. In his spare time Krishan runs and edits Neon Literary Magazine. 

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Hearth interview: Sam Guglani

20 October 2017

Hearth interview: Sam Guglani

Sam Guglani is a poet, novelist and consultant oncologist who specialises in the management of lung and brain tumours. He has a background in medical ethics and chairs the Gloucestershire Hospitals Trust law and ethics group. Director of Medicine Unboxed since he founded it in 2009, Sam uses the arts and creative industries to illuminate challenges in medicine. He is a published poet and writes for The Lancet, and his debut novel Histories is released in 2017.

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Class mark K

19 October 2017

Class mark K

I know what you’re thinking, the title ‘Class mark K’ is pretty vague, but I just didn’t know how else to describe this magical corner of the Annex, where I lost a good hour of my day because of the sheer number of books that I just wanted to delve into...

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Humanising Gladstone

11 October 2017

Humanising Gladstone

This is an account of an intern, fresh off the back of her first month working at Gladstone’s Library…

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On rhythm by Penny Boxall

31 August 2017

On rhythm by Penny Boxall

‘…Eyes like [what?] and [something] splinters:

A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.’

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Musical Mary Drew

24 August 2017

Musical Mary Drew

The contents of Mary Drew’s diaries have been something of a surprise to me! But the daughter of a four-times Prime Minister, whom later acquired the position of Private Secretary to William Gladstone, did not hide her love of music. So much so, she wrote reviews about the music she listened to, the orchestras she went to see, and her own public and private performances.

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Breaking the silence by Caroline Shenton

17 August 2017

Breaking the silence by Caroline Shenton

‘At last, my friends’, Gladstone told the electors of South Lancashire in July 1865, ‘I am come amongst you. And I am come…unmuzzled.’

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Democracy by James Kirchick

7 August 2017

Democracy by James Kirchick

Staring at me from the desk in my bedroom at Gladstone’s Library during my recent residency was a postcard inscribed with a bit of the namesake’s wisdom: 

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear. 

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Things I learned while not editing my novel by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

7 August 2017

Things I learned while not editing my novel by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

I met my first Wikipedia surfer, almost 10 years ago. It was my first year at university. The polo-shirted boy explained that he spent hours clicking link after link. It wasted days of his life, he said and smiled. Back in my dorm, tucked into my duvet, I settled in with Wikipedia. I clicked a link. I read for a while, and then stopped. The site seemed useful, but I wasn’t entranced by the hyperlink pathway.

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Gladfest interview: Louisa Young

7 August 2017

Gladfest interview: Louisa Young

Louisa Young was born in London and educated there and at Cambridge University. She was a freelance journalist for many years, including for the Guardian, Marie-Claire and the motorcycle magazine, Bike. An interview with Johnny Cash led to the realisation that she couldn’t be a journalist any more, and she moved into fiction, biography, history, and recently, songwriting. Her first book was a biography of her grandmother Kathleen Scott, sculptor and widow of Captain Scott of the Antarctic, who lived in the house where Peter Pan was written, and in which Louisa grew up with five siblings and six cousins. 

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