Monday, January 7, 2019

January 2019


January 2019

Happy New Year! ‘Joy, gentle friends! Joy and fresh days of love accompany your hearts!’ That’s a quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream so it’s the wrong end of the year but the sentiment fits well with the beginning of a new year.

Not a lot of Shakespeare going on over the holidays for us, so on to the report.

But first, as always, I appeal to visitors of this blog that Shakespeare Calling – the book is available for purchase. Please help promote the book by buying it, of course, and telling your friends about it, by liking and sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Bokus…. And please encourage your local book shops and libraries to buy it. Thank you! Your support is needed to keep this project alive.

Available for those of you in Great Britain and Europe on this site:

Or in Sweden
or Adlibris. Or contact the publisher info@vulkan.se

Shakespeare sightings:
  • In Tana French’s excellent The Trespasser the coroner describes the victim as a fan fiction kind of girl. In one of her (the victim, not the coroner) favourites, Juliet wakes up early and she and Romeo live happily ever after.
  • In This House Is Haunted by John Boyne, the main character Eliza threatens to bring along The Complete Works of Shakespeare in case she’s made to wait for her appointment with the lawyer.


Further since last time:
  • Finished reading aloud with Hal: New Boy by Tracy Chevalier, based on Othello
  • Saw: the play Shakespeare in Love at Stockholm’s Stadsteater. It could never live up to the film and it was annoyingly slapstick but the two leads were good and the décor and staging were brilliant so it was well worth seeing.
  • Had: several signings in the Stockholm area with my alter ego Rhuddem Gwelin of Shakespeare calling – the book and The Merlin Chronicles.
  • Planned: the official launch of An Isle Full of Noises – The Merlin Chronicles Volume 3 at the English Bookshop in Stockholm.
  • Booked: Tickets to Macbeth with an excellent local amateur acting troop.
  • Started reading: Radical Tragedy by Jonathan Dollimore in which he analyses the radical politics of some of Shakespeare’s plays. It’s quite exciting.


Posted this month
  • This report


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