Black History Month: Celebrating Fashion Designers Willi Smith and Duro Olowu.

The Costume and Fashion Special Collection at Chelsea Library celebrates Black History Month this October.

Chelsea Library is home to the Costume and Fashion Collection, a treasure trove of books and magazines chronicling the history of Costume and Fashion. This also includes an archive of British Vogue dating from 1923 to the present.

The Costume and Fashion Collection is supported by the digital resource Bloomsbury Fashion Central (https://www.bloomsburyfashioncentral.com/library-card-log-in?linkPassUrl=https://www.bloomsburyfashioncentral.com/), a comprehensive research tool for students, professionals and anyone interested in fashion and is free to use online with your library card.

For this year’s Black History Month, we are featuring the work of two designers: Willi Smith (1948-1987), whose important legacy has often been overlooked and Duro Olowu, the Nigerian born, British designer, who in 2003 opened his first boutique in the North Kensington. Both featured in major exhibitions in 2020.

The cover of Willi Smith: Street Couture

Willi Smith

It has been over thirty years since Willi Smith’s death and last year saw the first retrospective of his work – Willi Smith: Street Couture at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York.

 Willi Smith was born in Philadelphia in 1948. Initially he studied fashion illustration but later went on to study Fashion at Parsons School of Design in New York. Early in his career he worked for Arnold Stassi, a designer known for his high society ball gowns. He then worked for Digit Inc. Sportswear, where he quickly made name for himself and was nominated for the prestigious Coty Award in 1972. After Digits Inc. went bankrupt in 1973, he unsuccessfully set up a company with his sister Toukie Smith and then in 1976 while in India, inspired by the cotton fabrics and street fashion, he and his friend Laurie Mallet came up with the idea of setting up WilliWear Ltd and by the time they return he had designed a capsule collection that was ready to go.

WilliWear quickly captured the interest of the fashion industry. His designs crossed over from sportswear to couture. His clothes were oversized, colourful and gender fluid. He was the first designer to unite womenswear and menswear under the same label. This is echoed in his unisex patterns for Butterwick and McCall’s, which still seem radical today.

Willi Smith’s design ethos was that his clothes should be functional, fun, affordable and cross boundaries of race, gender and social status. He was inspired by how people on the street dressed. He called it Street Couture for his seminal Fall 1983 Collection. It was urban not ballroom. He famously said, ‘Being black has a lot to do with being a good designer. My eye will go quicker to what the pimp is wearing than to someone in a gray suit and tie…Most of these designers who run to Paris for color and fabric combinations should go to church on Sunday in Harlem. It’s all right there’. (Vogue online July 2020)

Willi Smith was one of the few successful ‘non-white’ designers at the time to navigate the fashion industry on his own terms and by the time of his death in 1987, aged thirty-nine from an AIDS related illness, he had become the most successful black designer in history with annual sales of over twenty-five million dollars and selling in five hundred stores worldwide.

Willi Smith pioneered Streetwear which has influenced generations of designers. Throughout his career he worked creatively with artists, architects, filmmakers and dancers. Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer were amongst the artists who he worked with on his ground-breaking artist t-shirts in 1984 – now ubiquitous in the industry. He started collaborating with Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 1967 and in 1985 designed the worker’s uniforms for the wrapping of the Pont Neuf in Paris. The radical architects SITE created his urban street vision for his show rooms and with artists Nam June Pak and Juan Downey his fashion shows became more performance than catwalk.

So, it seems strange that his legacy has largely been overlooked. Perhaps it was because his career was cut short, maybe it was also due to ‘the negativity associated with AIDS at the time’ (James Wines, SITE, Surface Magazine Jan 2020). But it is also true, as Kim Jenkins, founder of the Fashion and Race Database says ‘…fashion history for the most part, has been white history. On the whole, we have designers of color missing from our textbooks’ (WMagazine Jan 2020).

The cover of Duro Olowu: Seeing.

Duro Olowu 

Duro Olowu is a Nigerian born British designer. In 1998 he opened his first boutique off  the Ledbury Road in Notting Hill with Elaine Golding, called Olowu Golding, where he showcased  his early designs  and Elaine Golding’s shoes. Then in 2004 he launched his womenswear label.  His  Spring-Summer 2005 Collection was an instant success and he was named New Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards, the only designer to receive the award prior to their first runway show. His empire line dress with flowing sleeves, dubbed the ‘Duro’ became a sensation, hailed ‘Dress of the Year’ by both American and British Vogue.

Duro Olowu punctuates designing with curating. He moves with ease between Fashion and  the Art worlds. Last year he guest curated Seeing at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, where he brought together over 300 works of art selected from public and private collections from around the Chicago area arranging them in thematic groups.

Previously in 2016 he curated ‘Making and Unmaking’ at the Camden Arts Centre in London. Mixing and placing works which included photographs, paintings, sculpture and fabrics. The exhibition was like wandering through his stream of consciousness. There was a sense of freedom, where seemingly unconnected work flowed from room to room in a kind of beautiful choreography. In the interview with Glen Ligon for the exhibition he explained, ‘…the process of discovery and experimentation is very empowering and that is what ‘Making and Unmaking’ is ultimately about’ .

Duro Olowu’s designs are a sophisticated  play of pattern, colour and cut, suffused with the influence of African textiles, with their symbolism and how they translate to the street fashion of a continent and then melded seamlessly with western couture to create designs that are both powerful and subtle at the same time.

The exhibition publications: Willi Smith: Street Couture, Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Rizzoli Electa, 2020 and Duro Olowu: Seeing, Naomi Beckwith, Prestel, 2020  are on display in Chelsea Library during the month of October in the Costume and Fashion Collection.

For further information on Willi Smith, the Willi Smith Community Archive created inconjunction with Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum gives personal accounts and insights into the designer by people who knew and worked with him. https://willismitharchive.cargo.site/

You can also listen to Duro Olowu in conversation with Valerie Steele, fashion historian, who also curates  Bloomsbury Fashion Central’s fashion photograhphy archive. The conversation is from the Series: at home: Artists in Conversation, Yale Centre for British Art.  https://youtu.be/71ZdF_YVVbQ

Nadia, Chelsea Library.

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Chelsea in Bloom – Part Two

Its Chelsea Flower Show this week, and here is Zvezdana again to share her hot air balloon craft activity.

Chelsea Library’s special reading events: a recap

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our readers
who participated in Chelsea Library’s reading events in 2018 and this year. A big
thank you and here’s to many more in 2020!

Our next reading event is on Tuesday 21 January when we will meet Ruth Galloway and read from ‘The Crossing Places’ by Elly Griffiths.

What is so special about Chelsea Library’s reading events? Well, we  read extracts from the books aloud; we share favourite moments and discuss relevant issues and characters. But, if you just want to listen and comment, and do not wish to read, that is fine too. You do not have to be a book club member to join us either. Sometimes readings are linked with a film or a TV series, such as Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Hugo’s Les Miserables and Gerald Durrell’s The Durrells.

An Evening with Tolstoy, in September 2018, marked the 190th anniversary of Leo Tolstoy’s birthday. That was our first such event and we focused on ‘Anna Karenina’ We watched a few remarkable moments from film adaptations, and then passionately commented about the right or wrong choices of actors in these films. We read in English, Russian. Italian and Serbian, completely oblivious that one of the guests present was one of Tolstoy’s descendants. Amazing!

In October 2018 we read from the Great War diaries and letters written by female doctors and nurses.

Last December we met to celebrate the 175th anniversary of ‘A Christmas Carol’. Since that time, this Ghost story of Christmas has become an irrefutable symbol of Christmas, and Marley and his companions – ghosts of Christmas past, present and future –have become some of the most popular ghosts in literature. So, gathered enthusiastic readers took part in reading my abridged dramatized version of Dickens’ classic and we all had a great time playing Scrooge, Marley, Bob, Tiny Tim … and eating mince pies.

For this December I decided to stay within the supernatural milieu and we read extracts from the ‘Haunted house’. If you have not read it before, it is never too late. Please, read these paragraphs to give you a flavour what you can expect. It is funny, it is witty – Dickens at his best. Serve with mince pies and brandy cream, as we did. Delicious!

“It was a solitary house, standing in a sadly neglected garden: a pretty even square of some two acres. It was a house of about the time of George the Second; as stiff, as cold, as formal, and in as bad taste, as could possibly be desired by the most loyal admirer of the whole quartet of Georges. It was uninhabited, but had, within a year or two, been cheaply repaired to render it habitable; I say cheaply, because the work had been done in a surface manner, and was already decaying as to the paint and plaster, though the colours were fresh.”

After first few weeks of living there the narrator’s state of mind became “so unchristian”. “Whether Master B.’s bell was rung by rats, or mice, or bats, or wind, or what other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one cause, sometimes another, and sometimes by collusion, I don’t know; but, certain it is, that it did ring two nights out of three, until I conceived the happy idea of twisting Master B.’s neck—in other words, breaking his bell short off—and silencing that young gentleman, as to my experience and belief, forever.”

Back to earlier this year and to honour my French readers, I chose Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’ for January 2019.

 

When I had ‘Hamlet’ in mind, the idea was to involve the Danish Embassy and talk about Helsingborg / Elsinore castle. For somebody like me, with English as a second language, the challenge of reading Shakespeare aloud (and not to kill the beauty of the masterpiece in the process) was a daunting prospect. That worry proved to be needless. Everyone present was reading Shakespeare with such ease, as if they were eating Victoria sponge cake and drinking English tea. Fantastic! (The Danish Embassy were too busy to spare anyone, but I had to go to Copenhagen and visit Hamlet’s castle. Could not find anything rotten there.)

Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ followed. We watched extracts from Andrew Davies’ BBC adaptation, laughed at Mr Collins, argued as Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy did, and even had heated discussion with a Jane Austen-expert who was in attendance. Marvellous!

Our June reading session was dedicated to holidays, to Corfu, to Gerald Durrell and his fantastic book ‘My Family and Other Animals’. Who could blame the Durrells for moving to Corfu after this kind of August in Bournemouth?

“July had been blown out like a candle by a biting wind that ushered in a leaden August sky. A sharp, stinging drizzle fell, billowing into opaque grey sheets when the wind caught it. Along the Bournemouth sea-front the beach-huts turned blank wooden faces towards a greeny-grey, frothchained sea that leapt eagerly at the cement bulwark of the shore. The gulls had been tumbled inland over the town, and they now drifted above the house-tops on taut wings, whining peevishly. It was the sort of weather calculated to try anyone’s endurance.”

So, the Durrells moved to Corfu, in 1935, ‘like a flock of migrating swallows.’ The lush green landscape greeted them on their arrival.

“Halfway up the slope, guarded by a group of tall, slim, cypress-trees, nestled a small strawberry-pink villa, like some exotic fruit lying in the greenery. The cypress-trees undulated gently in the breeze, as if they were busily painting the sky a still brighter blue for our arrival.”

Talking about people and animals we discovered that one of the readers, Emina, featured in Maria Perry’s book ‘Chelsea Chicks’, with a story that involved her very social parrot.

In September 2019 we had a guest speaker, Sir John Nott, who talked about his book ‘Memorable Encounters’, in which he selected twenty famous people who made a distinctive impression on him, from Margaret Thatcher, Enoch Powell, to Robin Day and Ted Hughes.

Sir Nott’s career in politics and business has given him a unique perspective on some of the key events in British public life. The gathered audience were obviously charmed by his witty comments.

In October I was so happy that Simon Brett accepted my invitation and included Chelsea Library in his busy and dynamic schedule. Simon is a renowned author of comedy thrillers, mystery who-done-it novels and has written to date 106 novels. He is best known for his Mrs Pargeter novels, the Fethering series and the Charles Paris detective crime series. In 2014, he was presented with The CWA Diamond Dagger and in 2016, he was awarded with OBE for his services to literature.

Simon talked about his career, his books and characters and we laughed and thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

Here is an extract from ‘Mrs Pargeter’s Principle’, which he read to the audience.
It is just after Sir Normington’s funeral.

“Helena Winthrop, in designer black, did not look prostrated by grief, but then she had been brought up in the upper-class British tradition that any display of emotion was unseemly and embarrassing. Also, her face no longer had the capacity for much change of emotion. Feeling the approach of age, she’d had some work done, which had left her with an expression of permanent surprise at how old she was.
She had acted as hostess at many public events for her husband and appeared to bring the same professionalism to this one as she had to all the others. The absence of Sir Normington on this occasion was not something to which she thought attention should be drawn… though her guests did seem to want to keep talking about him.
Mrs Pargeter, experienced in widowhood, wondered whether Helena Winthrop would fall apart into a weeping mess the minute she got back to her empty Mayfair home, but rather doubted it. Unshakeable stoicism was ingrained into women of Helena’s class. She had spent so long suppressing her emotions, Mrs Pargeter reckoned, that she wouldn’t recognize a genuine one if it bit her on the bum.”

Edited to add this part – Simon sent us this lovely quote  in response to this piece and we thought we’d share it with you.

I greatly enjoyed my visit to read and talk at Chelsea Library. The audience was acute and perceptive, a legacy of the series of events which had been set up to encourage reading in the borough. I remember, when I first started doing library talks, the plea ‘Has anyone got any questions?’ used to be followed by a profound silence and a lot of people looking at their feet. That, I’m glad to say, is no longer the case. The growth of book groups and events, like those set up by Zvezdana Popovic in Chelsea Library, have ensured a much readier and more informed response. As an author, I always find such sessions fascinating, because they always make me question – and sometimes even make changes to – the way I write. So, keep up the good work, Zvezdana.

 

I hope that you have enjoyed sharing this recap from our previous reading events. One of our future events is definitely reserved for the Brontë sisters. Tell me which book (or author) you would like to be included and we’ll go from there.

Once again, best wishes.
God bless us, everyone!

Zvezdana, Chelsea Library

Brompton Graphic Novel Reading Group- The Bad doctor

Hello and welcome to the Brompton Library Graphic Novel Reading Group.

For the next session, Monday 8 April, 6:30pm, we will be discussing Doctor Ian Williams’ illustrated anecdotes of The Bad Doctor.

Cartoonist and Dr Ian Williams takes his stethoscope to Dr Iwan James, a rural GP in need of more than a little care himself. Incontinent old ladies, men with eagle tattoos, traumatised widowers, Iwan’s patients cause him both empathy and dismay, further complicated by his feelings for his practise partners: unrequited longing for Dr Lois Pritchard and frustration at the antics of Dr Robert Smith, who will use any means to make Iwan look bad in his presence. Iwan’s cycling trips with his friend and mentor, Arthur, provide some welcome relief for him.

“The territory of doctor as patient has been visited before, but Dr. Williams’s iteration and its resolution are as subtle and thought provoking as the best of them, with the always worthwhile message that the roles into which humans sort themselves are as mutable as the rituals they accept and reject, and the calls for help they choose to hear or not.” -The New York Times

“Replete with sometimes delicate, sometimes explicit observations about the foibles of human nature and the bureaucracy of healthcare, The Bad Doctor combines wickedly black humour with subtle characterisation that never fails to engage the audience’s empathy.” -Broken Frontier          

If you have any other suggestions for the reading list, then please let me know and we’ll try our best to accommodate. So far we have the following for consideration:

• Casandra Darke
• Cry Havoc
• Full Metal Alchemist
• Barakamon
• Hellblaizer
• V for Vendetta
• Jaco the Galactic Patrolman
• The Legend of Wonder Woman
• The Flintstones Vol. 2: Bedrock Bedlam
• Uncanny X-Force Vol. 1: Apocalypse Solution
• My Brother’s Husband, Volume 1
• The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

The reading group takes place on the second Monday evening of every month. There may be a pub quiz afterwards if you want to join in!

See you there! Bring snacks.

David Bushell
Library Customer Services Officer
Brompton Library

Brompton Library Graphic Novel Reading Group

Hello and welcome to the Brompton Library Graphic Novel Reading Group mailing list!

For the next session, MONDAY 11 March, 6:30pm, we will be discussing Marjorie Liu’s contemporary fantasy adventure fable Monstress.

Set in an alternate matriarchal 1900’s Asia, in a richly imagined world of art deco-inflected steam punk, Monstress tells the story of a teenage girl who is struggling to survive the trauma of war, and who shares a mysterious psychic link with a monster of tremendous power, a connection that will transform them both.

“Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda take eastern and western comics storytelling traditions and styles, and create something wholly their own and remarkable: a beautifully told story of magic and fear, inhumanity and exploitation, of what it means to be human and the monsters we all carry inside us. Also, some of the best cats in comics. A delight.” – Neil Gaiman

“If you want big, beautiful, terrifying, violent magic, Monstress is your next favourite comic.” – Cosmopolitan

If you have any other suggestions for the reading list, then please let me know and we’ll try our best to accommodate. So far we have the following for consideration:

• Casandra Drake
• Cry Havoc
• Full Metal Alchemist
• Barakamon
• Hellblaizer
• V for Vendetta
• Jaco the Galactic Patrolman
• The Legend of Wonder Woman
• The Flintstones Vol. 2: Bedrock Bedlam
• Uncanny X-Force Vol. 1: Apocalypse Solution
• My Brother’s Husband, Volume 1
• Bad Doctor by Ian Williams
• Out of Nothing by Dan Locke
• The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

The reading group takes place on the second Monday evening of every month. There may be a pub quiz afterwards if you want to join in!

See you there! Bring snacks.

David Bushell
Library Customer Services Officer, Brompton Library

Brompton Library Graphic Novel Reading Group

For the next session, MONDAY 11 February, 6:30pm, we will be discussing Craig Thompson’s romantic and philosophical epic BLANKETS.

Wrapped in the snowfall of a blustery Midwestern winter, Blankets is the tale of two brothers growing up in rural isolation, and of the budding romance between two young lovers. A tale of security and discovery, of playfulness and tragedy, of a fall from grace and the origins of faith, Blankets is a profound and utterly beautiful work.

‘Moving, tender, beautifully drawn, painfully honest and probably the most important graphic novel since Jimmy Corrigan.’  – Neil Gaiman

‘One of the greatest love stories ever written and surely the best ever drawn.’ – Joss Whedon 

If you have any other suggestions for the reading list, then please let me know and we’ll try our best to accommodate. So far we have the following for consideration:

• Casandra Drake
• Cry Havoc
• Full Metal Alchemist
• Sleepwalk
• Barakamon
• Hellblazer
• V for Vendetta
• Jaco the Galactic Patrolman
• The Legend of Wonder Woman
• The Flintstones Vol. 2: Bedrock Bedlam
• Uncanny X-Force Vol. 1: Apocalypse Solution
• My Brother’s Husband, Volume 1
• Bad Doctor by Ian Williams
• Out of Nothing by Dan Locke
• The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir
• Monstress

The reading group takes place on the second Monday evening of every month. There may be a pub quiz afterwards if you want to join in!

See you there! Bring snacks.
David

Brompton Graphic Novel Reading Group- SLEEPWALK

Happy New Year from the Brompton Library Graphic Novel Reading Group

For the next session, MONDAY 14 January, 6:30pm, we will be discussing the stylish Adrian Tomine compilation SLEEPWALK.

An old woman returns alone to the spot where as a young girl she used to meet her lover on his daily lunch break. An unsuspecting couple find themselves drawn to a window to watch the neighbours’ kinky play turn into something more sinister. Twin teenage sisters make an awkward pilgrimage with their ageing-hippie father. A young guy misses his flight and returns to observe a kind of alternate version of his own life, one from which he seems to have vanished. Sleepwalk is a classic Tomine collection, a series of vignettes that scratch beneath the surface of seemingly well-adjusted lives.

“Like Woody Allen in his prime, Tomine is a master storyteller with a keen understanding of life’s bittersweet contradictions, and his meticulous drawing style further evokes the confusion and loneliness that his characters experience as they navigate the murky waters between adolescent fantasy and the less glamorous reality of adulthood.” – Village Voice

 If you have any other suggestions for the reading list, then please let us know and we’ll try our best to accommodate. So far we have the following for consideration:

• Casandra Drake
• Cry Havoc
• Full Metal Alchemist
• Barakamon
• Hellblazer
• V for Vendetta
• Jaco the Galactic Patrolman
• The Legend of Wonder Woman
• The Flintstones Vol. 2: Bedrock Bedlam
• Uncanny X-Force Vol. 1: Apocalypse Solution
• My Brother’s Husband, Volume 1
• Bad Doctor by Ian Williams
• Out of Nothing by Dan Locke
• Blankets by Craig Thompson
• The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir
• Monstress

The reading group takes place on the second Monday evening of every month. There may be a pub quiz afterwards if you want to join in!

See you there! Bring snacks.

David Bushell
Library Customer Services Officer

Brompton Graphic Novel Reading Group- Monster by Naoki Urasawa

The brompton Graphic novel reading group will be meeting on Monday 10 December, 6:30pm.

Where they will be discussing volume 1 of the psychological Manga thriller: MONSTER by Naoki Urasawa:

Everyone faces uncertainty at some point in their lives. Even a brilliant surgeon like Kenzo Tenma is no exception. But there’s no way he could have known that his decision to stop chasing professional success and instead concentrate on his oath to save peoples’ lives would result in the birth of an abomination. The questions of good and evil now take on a terrifyingly real dimension. Years later, in Germany during the tumultuous post-reunification period, middle-aged childless couples are being killed one after another. The serial killer’s identity is known. The reasons why he kills are not. Dr. Tenma sets out on a journey to find the killer’s twin sister, who may hold some clues to solving the enigma of the “Monster.

 

“I loved Monster, and I cannot believe it took me this long to read. I’ll be back for more, very soon” – thebooksmugglers.com

“Monster appears primed to take the Western world by storm the same way it did Japan” – IGN

 

If you have any other suggestions for the reading list, then please let me know and we’ll try our best to accommodate.

 

So far we have the following for consideration:

• Sleepwalk
• Casandra Drake
• Cry Havoc
• Full Metal Alchemist
• Sleepwalk
• Barakamon
• Hellblaizer
• V for Vendetta
• Jaco the Galactic Patrolman
• The Legend of Wonder Woman
• The Flintstones Vol. 2: Bedrock Bedlam
• Uncanny X-Force Vol. 1: Apocalypse Solution
• My Brother’s Husband, Volume 1
• Bad Doctor by Ian Williams
• Out of Nothing by Dan Locke
• Blankets by Craig Thompson
• The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir
• Monstress

The reading group takes place on the second Monday evening of every month. There will be a pub quiz afterwards if you want to join in!

See you there, bring snacks!

by

David Bushell, Library Customer Services Officer

 

Reality more astonishing than fiction

This is an epilogue to the Chelsea reading event – Reality more astonishing than fiction, where attendees asked me to recommend the WWI books about women that I used for my research.

We read extracts from letters and diaries – which were sad, feisty and funny.

Elsie Bowerman captured everybody’s imagination.  In the style of Indiana Jones, Miss Brown and Miss Bowerman clambered onto a moving train and saved the Scottish Women’s Hospital’s equipment.

Mabel Dearmer, author and illustrator, kept a diary and sent letters home from Kragujevac (Serbia) in spring 1915. She joined the Mabel Stobart’s Hospital unit. Her husband, Percy Dearmer served as a chaplain with the unit. Several women – nurses, doctors, orderlies – from various British medical missions died in Serbia during the typhus epidemic in 1915. Mabel Dearmer was one of them. See the extract from her letter from 6th June 1915.

Finally, if you would like to hear more about Scottish Women’s Hospitals and Dr Elsie Inglis, come to my talk at Women’s Library, LSE, on 9th November, 1-2pm.

Our next Reading event is on Tuesday, 11th December at Chelsea Library, (contact the library for more details), where we will visit Mr Scrooge. Come and join us reading extracts from “A Christmas Carol”.

by
Zvezdana Popovic

 

 My recommended  book list: Women and WWI / Suffragists and Suffragettes

• Kate Adie, Fighting on the home front. The legacy of women in World War One.
• Lucinda Hawksley: March women march
• Simon Webb, The Suffragette Bombers. Britain’s Forgotten Terrorists.
• Elisabeth Shipton, Female Tommies: The Frontline Women of the First World War

About Flora Sandes:

• Louise Miller, A Fine brother. The life of Captain Flora Sendes, Alma Books, 2012.
• (Book translated by LAGUNA “Naš brat”)

About Dr Elsie Inglis and Scottish Women’s Hospitals:

• Leah Leneman: In the Service of Life. The story of Elsie Inglis and the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. Edinburgh: The Mercat Press, 1994.
• Leah Leneman, Elsie Inglis. Founder of battlefront hospitals run entirely by women, NMSE, 1998
• Eileen Crofton : Angels of Mercy: A Women’s Hospital on the Western Front 1914 1918, Birlinn Ltd, 2013.
• Mikic, translated by Dr. Muriel Heppell: The Life and Work of Dr. Katherine S. MacPhail
• Eva Shaw McLaren: Elsie Inglis. The woman with the torch.
• Monica Krippner, The Quality of Mercy. Women at War. Serbia 1915-18.
• Isabel Emslie Hutton: With a Woman’s Unit in Serbia, Salonika and Sebastopol.
• Mabel Stobart, The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere

Most of these books can be borrowed in local libraries and some of old ones can be read online, on the Project Gutenberg Free Books website.

Websites and documentary films

• Scottish Women’s Hospitals
• Scarlet Finders – British Military Nurses.
•  Novica Babovic – (YouTube, 11 minutes)
• The women who went to war – Alan Cumming
• Scottish Women’s Hospitals – A.Cumming (YouTube, 41 minutes).
• The Story of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals by Scottish Parliament – (YouTube, 5 minutes).

 

Books to films: Lady Macbeth

Shakespeare’s plays aren’t just read and studied at school, college or university. Reading groups, extension courses, lifelong learning, theatre workshops, before going to see a play at the theatre – and more.

Shakespeare has inspired the work of so many creative people: from Mendelsohn, Britten, Shostakovich to Lou Reed, Dire Straits and Arctic Monkeys. From Herman Melville, John Keats, Charles Dickens to Aldous Huxley, Iris Murdoch and Ian McEwan. From Kurosawa to Polanski. From the Pre-Raphaelites to Gillian Wearing. Every age, indeed every generation seek to make Shakespeare their own.

Walk into any library and if you are prepared to explore, you can find his influence everywhere. This can be seen in the countless films based on his work.

Lady Macbeth 2017 

This is a film based on Nikolai Leskov’s 1865 novel, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District , itself inspired by Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth. The film is set in the north of England during the nineteenth century, whereby the Lady Macbeth character is brought centre-stage in this alternative narrative to the Shakespearean text. Gone is the witchcraft from Shakespeare’s Macbeth – the only ‘spirits that tend on mortal thoughts’ – here in William Oldroyd’s film, arise from the emptiness of a bourgeois life, in which Lady Macbeth finds herself trapped and powerless in a male dominated environment. There are also parallels here to Flaubert’s, Madame Bovary.

As the subject of an arranged marriage deal, acquired by the father for his son, along with a small piece of land, that he describes as ‘not fit for a cow to graze upon’, Lady Macbeth is installed into a stifling and austere household, where she is abandoned for long periods of time by a callous husband. She is left to maintain the house and servants following the demands of the father, who expects a submissive and obedient daughter in-law. There are no books to be seen and many of the early film shots see her peering out of the window onto a barren landscape, or asleep for long periods on the sofa. She appears completely isolated in this new situation.

Within this repressive and patriarchal environment, we are left to speculate as to the kind of character she is and how she will respond. Her responses at first are reluctant obedience and boredom, but the performance of Florence Pugh as Lady Macbeth is captivating in that as time goes on, we witness signs of insolence: mocking facial expressions and a contemptuous intonation in her voice, when addressing her husband and father in-law. The husband then departs for an extended period, in order to sort out problems at the family colliery and Lady Macbeth is left alone with the servants. At this point, her authority is challenged by an incident among the servants, and then we see her take control.

She begins a passionate love affair with the groomsman. As time goes on, like Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, her ‘vaulting ambition’ leads to a murder – in this case, the husband. Again, there is excitement in Pugh’s performance, never being quite sure if she is a victim of circumstance, responding perhaps naively as the repressed bourgeois housewife to events spiralling out of control, or whether there is a more psychopathic vein running through her actions. This loss of control is something we witness in Shakespeare’s Macbeth – was he (Macbeth) ever really, ‘full of the milk of human kindness’? or have circumstances conspired around him to bring about a tragedy? – a key concern in Shakespeare’s play. Here too, innocence and guilt seem to play out, side by side. Casting a black maid who, rarely speaks and a mixed-race actor as the groomsman, adds a racial tension to the power dynamics of repression and rebellion that are described by the shifting loyalties among the principal characters of the film.

The visual look of the film focuses on textures: the tactile feel of starched fabrics on soft skin, rain on slate and stone and naked wooden floorboards sounding to the pressure of impatient male footsteps. There is also a clearly defined soundscape to the film, that captures the rustle of fabrics, the chink of chinaware and the howling winds on the heath outside the house – all these effects build a formal language that serves to emphasize common themes of vulnerability and violence, power and submission.

In addition to this film, you can find other adaptations on Shakespeare’s work in our libraries and of course most of his plays and poetry including some of the literary criticism that goes with them – Shakespeare is, of course, a huge industry. The children’s library also has some of his plays translated into short stories, Manga comics etc.

Richard, Brompton Library