Hay 2014

BRYONY GORDON
THE WRONG KNICKERS: A DECADE OF CHAOS

Event 381 • Saturday 31 May 2014, 11.30am • Venue: The Oxfam MootLike Carrie Bradshaw, Gordon may have had a column in a national newspaper, but her twenties weren’t one long episode of Sex and the City. They were a decade of hangovers, heartbreak, and hideously awkward mornings-after, all over her overdraft limit. She tells the tales to Georgina Godwin.

MONIQUE ROFFEY AND MITCH CULLIN
FICTIONS – INVENTIONS

Event 389 • Saturday 31 May 2014, 1pm • Venue: Good Energy StageSet on the fictional Caribbean island of Sans Amen, Roffey’s House of Ashes tells the story of three characters, a gunman, a hostage and a boy soldier, caught up in a botched coup d’etat. Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mindintroduces a nonagenarian Sherlock Holmes. In the twilight of his life, as people continue to look to him for answers, Holmes revisits a case that may provide him with answers of his own to questions he didn’t even know he was asking – about life, about love, and about the limits of the mind’s ability to know. The authors talk to Georgina Godwin.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON
THRIVE: THE THIRD METRIC TO REDEFINING SUCCESS AND CREATING A HAPPIER LIFE

Event 410 • Saturday 31 May 2014, 7pm • Venue: The Tata TentThe Huffington Post founder argues that a successful life is made up of more than just money and success and must also include what she calls The Third Metric: personal care, health, and fulfillment. She talks to Georgina Godwin.

ALEX MONROE
TWO TURTLE DOVES: A HISTORY OF MAKING THINGS

Event 430 • Sunday 1 June 2014, 10am • Venue: The Oxfam MootGrowing up in 1970s Suffolk in a crumbling giant of a house with wild, tangled gardens, the celebrated jeweller was left to wreak havoc by invention. Without visible parental influence but with sisters to love him and brothers to fight for him, he made nature into his world. Creation became a compulsion, whether it was go-karts and guns, cross-bows and booby-traps, boats, bikes or scooters. And then it was jewellery. He talks to Georgina Godwin.

ATEF ABU SAIF AND ABDALLAH TAYEH
FICTIONS – THE BOOK OF GAZA

Event 444 • Sunday 1 June 2014, 1pm • Venue: Good Energy StageThe novelist Atef Abu Saif introduces his groundbreaking anthology of ten Palestinian writers who have been translated into English for the first time. Each story takes place in a different part of the Strip and provides a ‘literary map’, navigating its readers around the cities. He is joined by one of the contributing short story writers, Abdallah Tayeh. They talk to Georgina Godwin.

Here are a few highlights you can expect on The Weekend Edition on Saturday 12th April. Between 8 and 9 London time I'll be going through the papers and playing some relevant music.

At 12.30 an ABBA special on the 40th anniversary of their Eurovision win. We feature the Swedish Cultural Attache from Paris and the Ambassador to London talking about the Soft Power effect of music and how social democracy in Sweden meant the group were always lauded more abroad. I talk to the author of a new book about ABBA backstage stories, hear from their manager, lighting designer, and the publisher of a photographic tome about the group. I speak to producer Pete Waterman, interview a Swedish Vicar about how he whirled Queen Silvia round the floor at his wedding, to the tune of Dancing Queen, talk to Katrina of Katrina and the Waves about her Eurovision win in '97, and ask Frida herself what ABBA's favourite ABBA tune is.

Then, at 14. 15 I speak to Maureen Freely. She has just been appointed President of English PEN. She's also an author and the translator of Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk.

Those are just some of the highlights you can expect on Saturday on The Weekend Edition on www.monocle.com/24. Hit listen live....and it would be great if you felt like voting for us in the Webby Awardshttp://pv.webbyawards.com/2014/web/general-website/radio-podcasts

Election Eve by Xanthe

My 13 year old daughter, Xanthe, wrote this the night before the 2013 Zimbabwe elections.

I watch my mother cry for a cause I barely know.

Zimbabwe,her life, her love, her home.

An identity lost with politics and war.

A country I was born in, but hardly ever saw.

I'm British born and bred, that’s what everyone sees.

but that’s not really true, that’s not really me.

Who am I then?

And where do I belong?

Zimbabwe or England?

Which do I call home?

My mother’s heart lies in Zimbabwe, but she wears a British mask.

School runs, work and drinking tea, but I can see right past.

She waits for the elections, she weeps for her country.

She could go back home or she could remain in safety.

Zimbabwe, England, my mother and me.

Should we be who we are, or who we're supposed to be.

Saturday 7th July Weekend Edition

Another busy Weekend Edition on Saturday 6^th of July coming up. News on the hour, every hour as well as a rustle through the international papers and a selection from our global playlist between 8 and 9. The Curator, highlighting the best bits from the week follows and then The Stack, with a package on Vanity Fair launching in France and a focus on typography. At 11, London time, I’ll be playing some music that is joining our playlist – and as well as a few jazzy pieces from Japan, look out for some classic disco. The Review brings recommendations for books, music and a to do list if you find yourself in Bilbao this weekend and then at around 14.15 London time, 9.15 in New York, John Burnham Schwartz, the American writer, will be telling me how his parent’s divorce inspired Meryl Streep in Kramer v Kramer and how Dustin Hoffman used to read his school books out aloud to him. We’ll also explore his own work, including the hit novel and now film, Revolutionary Rd and the Sun Valley Writers Conference, one of America’s primary literary events. Tune in if you can….

Laurie Anderson on The Weekend Edition

Tomorrow, Saturday the 22^nd of June, I'll host The Weekend Edition on Monocle 24 as usual. It is going to be a really interesting day. Between 8 and 9, London time I'll be flicking through the stories that have made the papers internationally this week, as well as playing a selection from our global playlist.

At 9 Design Editor Hugo MacDonald selects the week's highlights on “The Curator” and at 10, The Stack celebrates print media with our editor in chief Tyler Brule.

At 11, London time, I'll be back live with an hour of new music, showcasing the tracks joining our Monocle 24 playlist. This week those include Canadian Band Austra who played live at Midori House this week, Dutch band Room Eleven, Spanish singer Buika and some chart topping K-Pop.

The Review at midday focuses on film and then I'm very excited by my guests at 14.00.  

A few weeks ago I was in New York and went to what I believe is one of the most inspirational and creative performance spaces in the city, The Kitchen on West 19^th Street.  It has been going since the 1970s, and for decades has provided a platform for artists to experiment and take unusual creative risks. The Executive Director and Chief Curator is the charming Tim Griffin  who says “The Kitchen is important to the cultural life of New York because at some level it is New York’s soul”.

 I visited the venue to hear about its past and its future, both of which contain the artist Laurie Anderson who began her career at The Kitchen and now serves as a board member. Laurie very graciously hosted me at her Canal Street studios and gave me an insight to the unique venue and also into her unique style. She told me that failing, which she alleges she has done many times, is very important and that when creating new work, nothing quite matches “The God like thrill of making something that no one has ever made before”.

I'll be playing a couple of Laurie Anderson tracks as well as a piece from the Kronos Quartet with whom she is sharing the Barbican stage on June the 28^th.

So a packed Weekend Edition, with news every hour. I hope you can join me for some or all of it.

On Saturday the 14th  of June I'll be presenting The Weekend Edition on Monocle 24 as usual, but there will also be around 2000 other people in and out of Midori House during the course of the weekend. That is because it is the Monocle Country Fayre, http://monocle.com/ Monocle's own take on an old English tradition. It will feature Monocle's favourite nations, retailers and delicacies, a petting zoo, summery aperitifs, the Monocle tombola, games and a host of guest musical performers. I'll be on air most of the time, popping out to interview people or inviting them in to the studio to describe what is going on. We'll have our usual new music hour between 11 and 12, playing the latest additions to the playlist and around 1400 I'll be talking to Sophie Hall, the Director of the Flowers Gallery on Cork street about the Artists Of The Day exhibition and one of the featured artists, Pru Kemball. http://www.flowersgallery.com/exhibitions/flowers/2013/artist-of-the-day/#.Ubsar_n6Uxg
On Sunday the 15th of June the Country Fayre continues, and The Weekend Edition will vary slightly in format. Instead of being on air with Gwenan Edwards from 1600-1800, instead I will be in the studio from 1000-1200 and then again from 1400-1500, bringing all the flavour of the Fayre to those who can't physically get there. I hope you can join us then.

First Post

I have been tipped into profound depression today by an email from local supermarket.

I am lucky enough to live near one of central London’s best and biggest sellers of premium largely organic impeccably sourced groceries, and I, along with all the yummy mummies in the area fill a trolley there a couple of times a week, either in person or online. The supermarket knows that I use soy milk and like purple sprouting broccoli. It has logged my preference for Prosecco over Cava and noted that when it is sunny I usually buy Rose. It has clocked that whenever I purchase avocado, I always get mozzarella and basil too. My supermarket, I sometimes feel, knows more about me than my partner. Why then has it just sent me an email offering me an opportunity to WIN in very excited capital letters, tickets to see Cliff Richard? I have nothing against the man personally, but he does represent a demographic that I hope I am not, or at least not yet, a part of. How could the place I trust with my daily dietary needs get my cultural preferences so unutterably wrong? Or, does buying organic mean over the hill? Is wanting ethically farmed poultry synonymous with dad dancing, wooly jumpers and Living Doll? Must my love of a good Rose d’anjou on a sunny day necessarily have to mean I sing along to Summer Holiday?  Sadly, this shop is not alone. I am not averse to sensible suggestions, buy why does my preferred search engine believe that browsing for vintage DVF mean I’d like to meet Muslim singles? Can my occasional foray into online auction catalogues of rare books and antique furniture really indicate a love of pre-fabricated garden sheds? I sincerely hope not, but something in my electronic history must point to it. And come to think of it, I could do with somewhere to store all those old Shadows records.