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Ian McEwan at Royal Festival Hall

The scene is an alternative 1980s London: Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. Charlie, who has been drifting through life and dodging full time employment is in love with Miranda, a bright student with a secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam one of the first synthetic humans. With Miranda’s help he co-designs Adam’s personality. This near-perfect human is beautiful, strong and clever, and a love triangle soon forms.

The novel poses fundamental questions; what makes us human? Could a machine understand the human heart? Hear Ian McEwan as he reflects on his life in writing and Machines Like Me – his latest novel published 18th April 2019 at this pre-publication talk at Royal Festival Hall this spring. No doubt popular, early booking is advised.

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Learning to Love: A One-Day Festival from The School of Life

The course of love never did run smooth. How do you find it, judge it’s viability, make it last? These are questions that have been explored over the past decade at The School of Life. Now for the first time they’re pooling all their knowledge into an immersive one-day festival. Founder Alain de Botton and faculty lead, Raul Aparici will be giving talks, and there’ll also be lectures, films, exercises, interactive games and group discussion at this sociable festival. Expand your emotional intelligence and discover a new toolkit for navigating the course of love, whether you’re in a relationship or not.
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Practical Tips for Depression

There’s much talk of mental health these days and a plethora of books on the topic to go with it. Singing in the Rain offers a unique and practical take on the issue, acting as a ‘wellbeing workbook’ with all sorts of useful things you can do each day. There are chapters on everything from eating for calm to dressing to change your mood, getting up early and more. Here author Rachel Kelly explains how she used her personal experience to create the book:

‘When I was in my thirties, I suffered two severe depressive episodes that left me suicidal. As I’ve slowly got better, I’ve benefitted from experts, be they psychiatrists dispensing medication or therapists listening to my woes.

But there’s been a third, more recent leg on the stool of my recovery that finds me calm and well at 53: a belief in my own agency. Feeling passive and a victim, and powerless to do anything about my condition, was part of being depressed. The more I discovered my ability to take action, the better I felt.

This insight is the basis for my current approach to managing my own mental health. Every day I remind myself that I can make a difference. This begins as soon as I wake.

The first thing I do is to make my bed, the white duvet perfectly aligned and my pillows plumped. A small gesture to be sure, but one that reminds me that if I take control of small decisions in this way I will feel my own power to affect larger decisions.

In addition, I can take care with the language I use. Instead of saying ‘I’m at the mercy of my depression’ I might say ‘I can choose how to respond to my low mood’. Or rather than ‘I can’t deal with this stress and worry’, I might say ‘I can’t deal with this stress and worry yet.’

My approach has evolved with the help of many others, both mental health nurses, psychiatrists, therapists and psychologists, but also those who come to my wellbeing workshops. The result has been Singing in the Rain, a workbook full of practical stuff you can do for your wellbeing, whether that’s listing your strengths, cooking with your mental health in mind, using visualisations or composing a poem to process difficult feelings. I can guarantee you will feel empowered, though you may not end up singing like Gene Kelly.’

Rachel Kelly is a writer, mental health campaigner and ambassador for Rethink Mental Illness and Sane. Singing in the Rain, her fourth book was published in January 2019 by Short Books. 

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Mollie’s Motel and Diner from Soho House

The Soho House empire has expanded once again, this time not to a glamorous far-flung location but to the side of the A420 in Oxfordshire. In the past decade M&S and Waitrose have transformed motorway petrol stations, Jamie Oliver and Wagamama have popped up at the airport, so it suddenly seems obvious that roadside hotels would be next in line for an upgrade. Enter Soho House and Quentin Restaurants, who plan to open Mollie’s Motels across the UK, starting with the first in Buckland, Oxfordshire that has just opened.

As you might imagine, the Nick Jones take on a motel is a million miles from the Travelodge experience. Think king size beds with Egyptian cotton sheets, Cowshed products in the bathrooms and slick WiFi workspaces with tea and coffee on the house. Then there’s the Diner part where the menu includes cocktails – try a Mollie’s Mule or Espresso Martini – along with free range rotisserie chicken, mac ‘n’ cheese, and even a vegan beetroot burger. In the morning order a Flat White with your avocado on toast or healthy grain bowl. If you’re passing through there’s a drive-through and takeaway counter too, so you can stop off for anything from a House Press Juice to a proper meal to go.

Bookings are done via the Mollie’s app – which also allows guests to check-in and out, order food and unlock their rooms with keyless entry. Slick service, and all for the nifty price tag of £50 for a double room for the opening three months – or £75 from May 2019. Book now. Family rooms (bunks that sleep 4) are currently £75.

 

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Don McCullin, Diane Arbus & Alexander McQueen – 3 shows not to miss

There are three excellent exhibitions on at the moment that we urge you not to miss out on.

Think of the photographer Sir Don McCullin and it probably brings to mind his images of war torn countries – his photograph of a shell-shocked marine in 1968 from The Battle of Hue is perhaps his most well known.  This comprehensive retrospective at Tate Modern (on until 6 May), however, shows as well as being one of the UK’s foremost war photographers, working primarily for the Sunday Times Magazine, recording images in Vietnam, Northern Ireland and more recently Syria, there is also so much more.  With over 250 photographs displayed, all printed by McCullin in his own darkroom, there are extensive other images such as those of working class life in London’s East End (born in 1935, he grew up in North London and got his first break when a newspaper published his photograph of friends who were in a local gang), British seaside holidaymakers and in the final room, beautiful landscapes near his home in Somerset.  It is an extremely moving exhibition and one that you will remember long after your visit.

The Guvnors in their Sunday Suits, Finsbury Park, London 1958, @DonMcCullin

Equally striking but with a harder psychological edge, Diane Arbus’ photographic work is filled with people on the periphery of urban American society.  From children to carnival performers, from strippers to giants, Diane Arbus: in the beginning includes nearly 100 photographs that focus on the first half of her career, from 1956 – 1962, with over 50 images that have never been shown in Europe before.  Sometime reminiscent of a darker Edward Hopper – there is even an empty, lonely diner under a tungsten light – Arbus found her subjects everywhere from Central Park to Coney Island and they still capture our imagination just as much now as they did over fifty years ago.

Jack Dracula at a Bar, New London, Connecticut, 1961 (detail) by Diane Arbus @ ESTATE OF DIANE ARBUS

Unlocking Stories is a small gem of an exhibition on the top ‘experimental’ floor of the newly opened Alexander McQueen flagship on Old Bond Street.  Revealing the inspiration behind Sarah Burton’s Spring/Summer 2019 collection and the process involved in reaching the final pieces, it is a treasure trove of toiles, mood boards, research narratives, fabric swatches, embroidery, books and photographs.  Perhaps most beautiful are the life sized paper dresses that Burton makes before each show.  Aimed at inspiring students but open for all, the exhibition will finish in April when new talks and events are planned.  Watch this space!

 

 

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Spring Fashion Shopping Edit

Some prolonged sunshine has shed light into the cracks in our cocoons. Shop windows have started winking at us again as spring comes within grasp. Here’s what you can expect in the coming months – our highlights from the many season’s trends. If you want to make life simple, make a bee-line to this season’s best highstreet labels, Arket and surprise contender Toast. The pick of the designers has to be Marni. Shop our spring edit now:
Beige …. doesn’t need to be boring 

1. Beige corduroy midi dress £59 at And Other Stories
2. Cotton linen wrap skirt £165 at Toast

3. Buttoned corduroy jacket £49 at Mango

Satin dresses and slips … to team with trainers and an oversized cardi 

1. Crinkled silk crepe dress £230 Samsoe & Samsoe
2. Satin slip £144 at La Perla

Floral … again

1. Match your top and bottoms with this Liberty print shirt/maxi skirt combo, skirt £149 at Brora
2. Floral and dot showstopper, £315 at RIXO
3. Isabel Marant Etoile floral shirt dress £295 (pictured with the season’s hot small hip bag)
4. Floral jersey cotton dress £79 at Arket
5. Poplin ellebore print £800 at Marni

Ultra feminine boiler/jumpsuits

1. Garland boiler suit £275 YMC
2. Kimi jumpsuit £765 at Seren
3. Primrose Park Lottie jumpsuit £215 Anna
4. Kachel Juanita jumpsuit in chambray £130 at Anthropologie

Wide-legged trousers

1. Carpenter jeans £125 at Toast
2. Masculine linen cotton trousers £385 at Forte Forte
3. Vincent pants €149 at Bellerose

Headbands and mini bags

1. Floral bandana £70 at Rag & Bone
2. Seattle Rope Tote Bag, £27 at Toyshop
3. Rixo has some pretty small bags too. Frankie – Retro floral trapeze bag £250
4. Leather belt bag £55 at Arket
5. Shanghai mini bag £20 at Topshop

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Valentine’s Day Wishlist

The prettiest things around this Valentine’s Day…

Les Billets-Doux (sweet notes) with hand-drawn illustrations and well-known French love phrases like Coup de Foudre and Je Ne Regrette Rien, £25 for set of 12, Luke Irwin

Blue eyed heart mug, £35 at Big Tomato

The Sun Will Come Up, embroidered pillowcase, €49.95 at Anna + Nina

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not T-shirt, £95 at Chinti + Parker

Limited edition ‘Love Plaques’ £120 at La Rousse Illustrations

Poetry from Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers, £14.99 at Amazon

Flowers in a Glass Jar, from £75 at Grace & Thorn (15% off when you order before 8 Feb)

Jammy Dodgers, £2.95 each at Konditor & Cook 

Scrunchie made from vintage Hermès scarf, £125 at Cutter Brooks

Hourglass limited-edition Confession Lipstick Set for Valentine’s Day, £62 at Harvey Nichols

New Damascena rose candle, £53 at Diptyque

Christian Dior A6 Notebook, £5 at V&A Shop

Add a monogram to this Marianne Rose Silk Dressing Gown, £340 at Yolke

Oil Bath for the Senses, £44 at Susanne Kaufmann

Tuberose and white musk Carnal Flower scent, £122 by Dominique Ropion at Frédéric Malle

Telegram chocolates bars, £39.99 at Melt

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Things to Do this Half Term in London

Keep children happy this half term with plenty of fun activities all over London:

Imagine Children’s Festival at the Southbank

The Southbank’s annual children’s festival is jam packed with exciting goings-on from theatre to storytelling, comedy and dance. We particularly like the sound of Woof Woof Wag Wag Puppy Poems for dog lovers everywhere aged 5-7, and Storytelling with David McKee, the creator of Elmer for ages 8-12. Get ready to Laugh Your Socks Off with comedian Jeremy Strong or spend the whole day immersed in the land of Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon with a free, day-long storytelling event. There’s also origami workshops, picture a poem illustration, Fun DMC hip hop, sing-along We’re Going on a Bear Hunt screenings with a live orchestra and much more!

13 – 24 February 2019, many events free but book ahead, southbankcentre.co.uk

New Mail Rail Family Trail at the Postal Museum

If you’ve not yet visited The Postal Museum now is the time. Ride on the Mail Rail, a miniature train that used to whizz letters about London underground and follow the new Family Trail with an illustrated children’s guide from Salvatore Rubbino. There’s also arts and crafts workshops and storytelling too.

From 18 February, 10am – 5pm, ages 5-8, postalmuseum.org

The Winter’s Tale at The National Theatre 

Introduce children aged 8-12 to Shakespeare with this special adaption of The Winter’s Tale that’s just an hour long. We also like the sound of the Winter’s Tale Family Design Workshop – create a banquet fit for royalty from fantastical food to golden goblets.

6 – 21 February 2019, £12 (£8 under-18yrs), nationaltheatre.org.uk

Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams at the V&A Half Term Tour

Running brilliant art tours especially for children, The Little Grand Tour invites keen fashionistas aged 7-12 to see Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams this half term. Look at Dior’s inspirations including extensive travel, flowers, garden design and art, find out about his first career at an art collector during the heyday of Picasso and Modigliani and discover the continued influence he still has on design today. Design your own Dior dress based on Dior’s original sketches. 

21 February, 10am-12pm, ages 7-12, £40 per child thelittlegrandtour.co.uk

Knight School at The Tower of London 

Off with his head! Spend a day as a medieval knight at The Tower this half term – join the knight school where first you’ll train as a page, then a squire before becoming a fully-fledged knight and joining the garrison to defend the tower. Dress up in medieval garb and try on armour, and create your own shield and helmet with the arts and crafts activity pack.

16 – 24 February 2019, Knight School 11am, 1pm and 3pm, Defend the Tower 11.30am, 1.30pm, 3.30pm, other activities 11am – 4pm, ages 5-11, hrp.org.uk

Texture Terrariums at Dulwich Picture Gallery 

This half term there are workshops for all ages inspired by the new Harold Sohlberg: Painting Norway exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery. This two day workshop for ages 10-12 show you how to design and create flowers that can live forever! Make your own terrarium using pressed leaves, paper and acetate.

21-22 February, 10am – 12.30pm, ages 10-12, £35 dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk

Nature Explorers – Wild Skills in Hyde Park

Spend the day away from screens and get outdoors exploring Hyde Park as you learn wilderness skills. Learn to build a fire without matches and cook your own bread over it, safely cut hazel rods to create a green mask.

19 February, 10am – 3pm, ages 8-11, £20 shop.royalparks.org.uk

Cookery Classes at 26 Grains

A hands-on kids cooking session with 26 Grains founder Alex Hely-Hutchinson. Each session runs for an hour and children will make a couple of recipes with cards to take home at the end in the lovely Neal’s Yard cafe.

Monday 18th February 4-8 years, 4.30pm, Tuesday 19th February 9-12 years, 4.30pm. To sign up email tessa@26grains.com with date, age of child and any allergies. £5 payable on the day for each child.

Puddle Jumping at London Wetlands 

Pull on your wellies and splash about in the Puddle Jumping obstacle course at the Wetland Centre this half term. The greatest splash wins!

16-24 February 2019, 11am and 2.30pm, free with entry to the Wetland Centre, wwt.org.uk

Fantastically Great Women Who Worked Wonders at The Globe

Illustrator, author and suffragette descendant Kate Pankhurst tells the stories of some of the most amazing women who blazed the trail for women in the world of work. Discover insects with naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian, take action with The London Match Girls and swim through pages of ground breaking sports moments with Annette Kellerman and much more.

19 February 2019, 11am, ages 5-8 shakespearesglobe.com

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Prada’s Marchesi Bakery comes to London

We’re counting down the days until April, when Prada’s iconic bakery is set to open its doors on Mount Street. The iconic Pasticceria Marchesi was born in Milan in 1824, later acquired by Prada Group and now set to arrive in London. With Wes Anderson-esque interiors, queue for old-fashioned pastel dragées, sweet nut spreads, gianduja chocolates and sourdough panetonne and knock back a coffee at the espresso bar like a true Italian.

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Win Tickets to Candice Carty-Williams at the Southbank

It’s been hailed ‘the buzziest debut of the year’ (The Guardian), and 2019’s answer to Fleabag and Bridget Jones. Candice Carty-Williams’ Queenie tells the story of a 25 year-old black woman living in London.  She works at a national newspaper and is the first in her Jamaican family to go to university or hold a professional job.  Queenie is funny, intelligent, outspoken and apparently confident; she has a loyal group of friends (“the Corgis”) and a busy social life.  She is also struggling – she feels neither black enough nor white enough, lonely, and devastated after a break-up from her white boyfriend.  She throws herself into online dating, to the initial hilarity and growing concern of her friends.  There are hints of a fractured relationship with her mother and a traumatic childhood that threatens to overwhelm her.

In a rare and exclusive London event, Candice will be in conversation about Queenie with June Sarpong on 17 April at the Southbank. Enter our competition below for your chance to win a pair of tickets and signed copies of the hardback (which comes in four colours to choose from):

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January Book Review

We chose Tara Westover’s memoir Educated to kick off the A Little Bird book club because we felt that, although her particular circumstances are unusual, this is a book that will be resonant for many readers. This week, it was longlisted for the prestigious Wellcome Book Prize. Westover already numbers among her fans former US President Barack Obama, who called the writer to discuss her book.  He praised Westover’s first book as a “remarkable memoir of a young woman raised in a survivalist family in Idaho who strives for education while still showing great understanding and love for the world she leaves behind”. The last point is significant – whilst Educated can be seen as a clarion call for education, Westover’s motivation (perhaps surprisingly) does not seem to be sheer rage. 

The first half of the book deals with Westover’s childhood as the youngest of five children in a radical survivalist Mormon family and is full of warm memories. She often depicts herself laughing and is amused when her father angrily rebuffs his mother in law for suggesting his children wash their hands after they go to the toilet. His wisecracking response is ‘”I teach them not to piss on their hands”’ which maxim Westover comforts  herself with once she leaves home and her roommates disapprove of her attitude to basic hygiene.

This is one of the ways in which she demonstrates how deeply her family’s beliefs and habits are embedded in her. Her birth was not registered until she was nine years old and she is barely educated as a child, not attending school and hardly being home schooled. Her family also avoid conventional medical treatment, instead relying on tinctures of herbs that her mother makes. When Westover – a keen singer – develops tonsillitis, her father instructs her to stand outside in the winter sun with her mouth open to cure it. She does this every day for a month. More seriously, Westover and her siblings were expected to help their parents with their work. When she was small, she would accompany her mother on long walks, looking for yarrow or rosehips to make tinctures with but as she grew older, she was expected to help her father sort scrap. This latter occupation was full of danger, initially because her father was liable to accidentally hit her with bits of scrap he tossed away. The injuries to Westover and her siblings soon became far more serious: “We had been bruised and gashed and concussed, had our legs set on fire and our heads cut open.” One of her brothers, unsurprisingly becomes increasingly violent and unpredictable after he plunges 12 feet headfirst onto a rebar in a workplace accident supervised by father.

What stops this from reading like a misery memoir is Westover’s affection for her family but also, the developing sense that she is working to escape the confines of it. Her autonomy is heart-breakingly hard-won which is partly what makes it seem so real. There is an enormous upswing of hope in this narrative but Westover is also repeatedly defeated in her attempts to win minor freedoms for herself. When she joins a local dance class, her father furiously condemns the modest outfit she wears as whoreish. This is a word that the men in Westover’s family attack her with whilst she is still a child and one can only wonder how much work she has done to unpick the psychological damage of this.

Westover does eventually leave home and makes it to Cambridge to study. A professor there  is astonished when she admits she did not attend school and he compares her to Eliza Doolittle, saying “It’s as if I’ve stepped into Shaw’s Pygmalion.” The most jaw-dropping scene in the book may be when she asks what the word “Holocaust” means during a lecture and is assumed to be mocking the subject because no one can believe she really doesn’t know what it means.

Westover is clearly a remarkable person but her great skill is to make her upbringing and her need to escape her family chime with so many others. Few of us may have had to defy our families in order to survive but each of us has had to leave home.

What did you think? Please leave your comments below…And find details about our February book club here.

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Book now to see Marina Abramovic at the Serpentine Galleries

The last time Marina Abramović, the performance artist, presented a new piece at the Serpentine Galleries in June 2014, people were queueing for hours, crying and comparing it to a ‘religious experience.’ Entitled 512, the artist spent 512 hours interacting with the public, in contrast to her 2010 MoMa retrospective, The Artist is Present, in which she shared a period of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her and which also drew long queues of visitors including Lady Gaga.  The Serbian performance artist, writer, art film director and producer often uses her own body or self to examine the relationship between the body and the mind, and the performer and the audience. And her latest work at the Serpentine Galleries, from 19th – 24th February only, continues with these themes but this time with the help of technology.  The Life is a new performance piece lasting 19 minutes in which the visitor will experience an intimate, digital encounter with the artist in a mixed reality scenario. We can’t promise that you will be crying but we do advise that you get booking pronto before you miss your chance to encounter one of the art world’s most fascinating living artists.

It’s goodbye for now…

The team at A Little Bird are taking a break to recharge and make some exciting changes behind-the-scenes. We look forward to seeing you again soon.

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