24.5.2009

Apt Author

    Apt Author

    The Encyclopaedia of Association Football, Maurice Golesworthy.

 http://www.netsaga.is/media/files/glue%20of%20the%20world.svenni%20og%20mesonyx.mp3

    Double Cover-l

    In Des 1990 two books released within a week of esch other carried as a cover illustration The man in Black (1925) by Napier Waller (1893-1972). The books were Frank Moorehouse's Lateshows (Picador) and Margaret Scott's The Baby-Farmer (Collins A&R). There was a further coincidence. One of the stories in Lateshows, The Disciplining of Other People's Children, tells of the author's efforts at babysitting. In M. case the illustration is clearly meant to represent a debonair man about town, with his black suit, hat and white silk scarf. Scott's novel is set in the 1870s and concerns a murderous trade in baqbies in Victorian London, thus giving the illustration a very different meaning.

 

    Double Cover-ll

    In 1988, two books were published whose contents were very different yet whose covers were remarkably similar. The cover for Marianne Wiggins's novel John Dollar features a blue dolphin, black and white compass and a map. The cover for Tim Robinson's guide to Ireland's Aran Isles, stories of Aran, features a blue dolphin, a black and white compass and a map. The colour motif in each is reddish-brown with a grey background. Both are collages created with the help of Canon colour copiers. Publishers brought out both books almost simultaneously. Oh and the artists are different! Neither saw the work of the other. Peter Dyer, Secker and Warburg's art director, made the point that the Dollar cover had been widely published within the trade months before it was released. -I was annoyed abd upset, he said. We'd had our jacket for eight months before publication-it had appeared in three catalogues and in a design magazine. The idea grew from a very lovely scene in Dollar featuring dolphins, and the map came from the author herself.

    Viking's artist John Caple said all the elements in his design were mentioned in the brief he had been given, which grew from the contents of the book. -I was told to include the dolphins, the compass and obviously the stones of Aran, and interpreted those in my own style. He strenuously denied having seen Secker's cover before completing his work. Fiona Carpenter, art director of Viking, said it was just completely accidental, one of the miracles of our time. -Ours was finished long before we first saw the Secker book and the fact they were so similar came as a complete shock, -she went on adding, I agree it is extraordinary but it's just a very unfortunate coincidence.

 

    Little League of Nations

    Following the Man in Black business, Frank Moorehouse spent most of 1991 working on a novel about the old League of Nations, living in Geneva and France to do his research and writing.

    M. chose as his central character Edith, a young Australian who joins the League's secretariat in the 1920s.

    He wanted a model for E. to give hin an underpinningcareer path on how L. people worked, lived, played and whatever else they did in Geneva from 1920 to 1946. An archivist directed him to the files of a Canadian woman in the secretariat, Mary Craig McGeachy, and he went through all her letters, records, expenses claims and other documents until he felt he knew her personally.

    Towards the end of his research M. moved to live in Besancon, a French town midway between Paris and Geneva. One day he was talking to Canadian visitors about his book and happened to mention McG. This is when the small world coincidence came into play. The Canadians said they used to live next door to a McGeachy and, a further surprise, she was alive and living New York state. M.couldn't resist hopping on a plane to meet his heroine, then aged 92. A case of life creating art?

 

    Apt Author

    Grace of God, A. Lord

 

    Mirror Death in Reflection

    London scriptwriter Steven Moffat completed the first episode of a new fictional series, Press Gang, early in 1991.

    It concerned a media mogul dying suddenly and leaving his family to take over his business, which has a financial crisis looming. 9 months later the UK Mirror Group media mogul Robert Maxwell died suddenly and surprisingly, in strange circumstances, and his family were left holding the reins in the midst of a huge financial scandal.

 

    Penned in Pen

    Oscar Wilde, Adolf Hitler and Cervantes all wrote major works while in jail.

 

    Is This a Record

    Colin Wilson, in his book Strange Powers (1973), tells an odd tale of artistic timing.

    He was reading a review of a recording of Verdi's opera Attila in which he saw a reference to a ballet called the Lady and the Fool, put together from an early Verdi opera. To his surprise he found the Lady record on his shelves. He did not know he had it and had certainly never played it. From the details on the jacket he found the ballet had been arranged by John Cranko.

    The record notes mentioned that C's other most popular ballet was Pineapple Poll, arranged from the music of Arthur Sullivan. He had the Poll disc, so took it out and played it after he had played the Lady and th Fool. Immediately after playing both records he turned on his radio to get a programme he had planned to listen to at 8,30 pm. It was 8,25 and the radio happened to be turned to the wrong station. A newsreader was announcing the death that day of John Cranko, whose best-known ballets were the Lady and the Fool and Pineapple Poll.

    He had never played the Lady and had not played Pineapple Poll for years. Furthermore, he did not Poll was by Cranko. They had been the only two records he had played during the evening before hearing the news of his death.

 

    Apt Author

    Landscape Painting was written by William Splatt.

 

    The Twain Shall Meet

    A cluster of literary comings and goings occurred between 21 and 24 April. American author Mark Twain, who was born on 30 Nov 1835, a year which Halley's Comet appeared, died on 21 April 1910, when the comet next made its appearance.

    Another literary figure Vladimir Nabokov was born on 22 April 1899. The death date of two of the world's greatest literary geniuses, WilliamShakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quixote), is 23 April 1616.

    Shakespeare was baptized on 26 April 1564-his actual birth date is unknown.

    Finally, on 24 April 1815, English novelist Anthony Trollope was born.

 

    For Whom They Tolled the Bell

    Ernest Hemingway, Somerset Maugham and Walt Disney all did their bit in WW l - as ambulance drivers.

 

    Apt Author

    Electronics for Schools, R.A.Sparkes

    The book Sunrise is a work of fiction by Sylvia Story.

 

    Ode to Eighteen

    Henry Longfellow (1807-82) wrote 18 volumes of poetry, graduated from Bowdoin College at 18, married his second wife 18 years later, was a professor at Harvard for 18 years and died on 18 March.

 

    On the Side of the Angels

    Sophy Burnham, author of the best-seller A Book of Angels, relates in an HQ magazine interview how, in her research for a four-line quote from the Koran one afternoon, on a sudden whim she wandered into a bookshop, sure that she would find the quote there. As she picked up a copy of the Koran, she suddenly realized just how huge the book is.

    Also she had no idea where the quote was; she could have been searching for ever to find it. So she offered up a brief prayer, then allowed the book to fall open-and looked down. On the page before her was the four-line quote.

 

    Apt Author

    Australian Freshwater Fish was written by John Lake.

 

    Coming Clean

    An editorial assistant on the staff of Inside Soap, the magazine with all the stories about the TV soaps, is called Melissa Bath.