Eye - 26 October 2012

From Dorothy's pen to prizes

Dorothy’s description

Friends House Library has a copy on the open shelves of Dorothy Richardson’s The Quakers, past and present, mentioned last week.

But Eye wonders if our librarian is aware that there is a handwritten letter from her pasted inside the front cover, describing the origin of the book? Thank you to John Lampen for unearthing the discovery!

Breaking the ice

The welcome will be chocolate-themed for freshers arriving at Birmingham University this year.

Birmingham alumnus Sheila Fox discovered that, as part of the Great Read At Birmingham (GRAB), all new undergraduate students this year have been sent a copy of Chocolate Wars by Deborah Cadbury in their welcome packs and have been encouraged to read it before arriving.

As a city with a distinguished history in chocolate, the staff and students of Birmingham University selected the book, which tells the story of Cadbury’s from the company’s early days through to its purchase by Kraft, because of its ‘positive portrayal of Birmingham and its links with a wide range of disciplines, from Business Management to Chemical Engineering and Theology.’

The GRAB scheme is relatively new, having been launched last year, and aims to help students ‘begin to engage with academic ideas and enjoy a shared experience with other freshers when they arrive’. But this is not simply a reading assignment! Freshers will be attending events and seminars relating to the theme of the book, ‘from examining the methods of chocolate making to the psychology behind eating chocolate treats.’

A lip-smacking start to the semester!

Prizes and pens

This week we take a break from Quakers portrayed by pens to take a peek at those who have put pen to paper themselves.

Travelling Towards War: John Ashford’s Journeys from Norfolk to Central Europe, 1938 and 1939, has been shortlisted for the EDP-Jarrold East Anglian Book Awards 2012 in the biography and memoir section.

Edited and introduced by Vanessa Morton, an attender at Beccles Meeting, the book focuses on John Ashford’s eyewitness accounts of the small groups of Friends in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia struggling to deal with their situation on the eve of war, and on the efforts of Friends and others to help the thousands of refugees as frontiers closed (see the Friend, 23 March).

Yvonne Fuller – John’s daughter – still lives in Aldeby, Norfolk, where the story began. Together with Richard Crozier of Pakefield Meeting and Jill Allum of Beccles Meeting, she uncovered the journals and correspondence which form the focus of the book, and which Vanessa was able to illuminate through research into the FSC papers and other archives at Friends House Library.  Travelling Towards War was officially launched at a packed event at Beccles Meeting House in March.

Joan Condon is also celebrating as she has scooped the first prize Jilly Cooper Trophy as part of the National Association of Writers’ Groups creative writing awards for her short crime story, A Present from the Professor.

She says: ‘The story is a send-up of the Sherlock Holmes stories, in which professor Moriarty, the master criminal, administers a love potion to Sherlock Holmes and the housekeeper, Mrs Hudson, with interesting results…’

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