Born in Brighton in 1973, children’s author Frances Hardinge grew up in an isolated house in the village of Penshurst, Kent, where her parents worked in book-selling. She studied English at Oxford University, where she founded a writers’ workshop, and afterwards won a short story competition. She wrote her first novel, Fly By Night, while working as a technical author for a software company; it was published in 2005 and won the Branford Boase award. Her seventh novel, The Lie Tree, about a 14-year-old girl who attempts to uncover the truth behind her father’s mysterious death, won the 2015 Costa Book award, the first children’s book to do so since Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass in 2001.
1 | Event
The Goblin King’s Masquerade Ball
A Curious Invitation specialises in darkly alternative events and this latest ball took the film Labyrinth as its inspiration, in a nod to the late David Bowie. It featured some fine bands, fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, a brilliantly surreal puppet tribute to Jabberwocky, and a disquieting Grand Guignol act involving a bird-skull-headed woman and some large scissors. Everybody dressed for the occasion, so we were immediately immersed in a dark, unshackled fairytale. Mortals were dragged past in chains by slinking, sinister fairies; dryads danced in vine-covered cages and horned goblins drank with masked unknowns in period finery.
2 | Lecture
This lecture evening at the Royal College of Physicians was discovered by a friend of mine with a nigh-supernatural ability to track down quirky things happening in London. John Dee took his Renaissance man duties seriously, becoming an internationally acclaimed expert in mathematics, geometry, alchemy, history, Greek, navigation, astrology, astronomy, occult theory and talking to angels. The lecturers agreed that he probably wasn’t a spy, but it’s just about the only trick he missed. The accompanying exhibition displays volumes from Dee’s vast personal library, covered with his fascinating and oddly endearing notes and doodles. The obsidian mirror, engraved gold disc and scrying crystals alleged to have been used in Dee’s occult experiments still have an alluring mystique.
3 | Cosmic event
About 13 times each century, Earth has a view of Mercury silhouetted against the sun. On 9 May, several telescopes were set up at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich so that the public could watch the transit for free. I was lucky enough to turn up during a clear interval, just before the sun retreated to its trailer and refused to come back to the set. Through the telescope I could make out the surface of the sun, textured like orange peel. Against its glow, sunspots the size of the Earth were dark wisps and Mercury was a tiny, perfect, black circle. Even on an ordinary day there is plenty to do at the Royal Observatory. Where else can you touch a 4.5bn-year-old meteorite?
4 | Exhibition
The Crime Museum Uncovered at the Museum of London
I have a confession to make. Crime fascinates me, particularly period crime. This exhibition was packed with items from historical cases, all of which would usually be hidden away in a teaching museum for police trainees. It offered a fascinating insight into the development of police procedure, but there was also an undeniable frisson to seeing a letter from the Victorian mass-murderer Amelia Dyer, a pistol used in an assassination attempt on Queen Victoria, shackles said to have been worn by the 18th-century jail-breaker Jack Sheppard, and the 19th-century mugshot and arrest card of a 12-year-old boy caught “housebreaking, stealing biscuits”.
5 | Book
This is essentially a story sandwich, with two entirely pictorial narratives flanking 200 pages of text. The monochrome pictures are sensitive and vivid and the story they tell fast paced and larger than life, so it’s a shock to realise that the book is actually about lies, loss, Aids and the ways that myth-making can keep truths and memories alive. The Marvels is a children’s book, but I suspect it has a different resonance to me now than it would have done when I was young. After all, it’s a story about personal history and I have a lot more of that than I once did. It won’t be for everyone, but it’s unique.
6 | Game
My partner and I have a serious board game addiction and our collection has now reached slightly terrifying dimensions. Over the last five years, we have become particularly fond of cooperative games, where all players are allies in their battle against the game itself. One of our more recent acquisitions is Sentinels of the Multiverse, a tongue-in-cheek, card-based game in which each player is a superhero, with their own deck tailored to their abilities. The heroes battle ingenious supervillains while trying to survive incidental dangers such as hungry dinosaurs and crashing monorails. Cooperative games tend to be gripping but good humoured – I’ve seen epic battles in which heroes have sacrificed themselves at the 11th hour, so that the last hero standing can strike the telling blow.
7 | Music
At the moment I’m listening to a CD that I impulse-bought from a band busking near Oxford Circus in London. I’m somewhat prone to such impulse purchases, so my musical collection is a little… eclectic. On previous occasions I have bought CDs from a man with a fold-up piano, a group singing 17th-century street ballads, and a band playing didgeridoos and using assorted scrap metal as percussion. The Turbans describe their music as combining traditional near-eastern and eastern European styles.
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