Showing results by author "Ruth Padel" in All Categories

World War I saw an unprecedented loss of life in Western Europe, and destruction on a scale no one alive had ever seen. All those who experienced it were irrevocably changed, including many writers and artists upon whose oeuvre it left an indelible mark. This captivating series examines the impact of the war on artists and thinkers through the prism of their great works. In each episode, a leading figure from the worlds of science, culture and the arts reflects on a single iconic piece, and discusses how the events of 1914-18 shaped its creation.

Why is Rosamund so paralyzed by Tyler and his secrets?The whole world was once in love with her. Now, married to the dangerously charismatic Tyler, estranged from her conservationist father, despairing of her teenage son's silences, she feels completely alone. Revisiting the almost forgotten world of her Indian childhood may help, but can her family survive the changes she must make to save herself? Ruth Padel, acclaimed for her brilliant nature writing, has set her captivating debut novel in London, Devon and the jungles of India. But at its heart is a family in crisis.

Home is where you start from, but where is a swallow's real home? And what does native mean if the English oak is an immigrant from Spain? In a selection of richly varied poems and illuminating prose interludes from her collection The Mara Crossing, Ruth Padel weaves science, myth, wild nature, and human history to conjure a world created and sustained by migration. 'We're all from somewhere else,' she begins, tracing the millennia-old journeys of cells, trees, birds, and beasts.

Home is where you start from, but where is a swallow's real home? And what does native mean if the English oak is an immigrant from Spain? In 90 richly varied poems and illuminating prose interludes, Ruth Padel's original new book weaves science, myth, wild nature, and human history to conjure a world created and sustained by migration.

'We're all from somewhere else,' she begins, tracing the millennia-old journeys of cells, trees, birds and beasts.

Ruth Padel's new sequence of poems, in four movements, is a personal voyage through the life and legend of one of the world's greatest composers. She uncovers the man behind the music, charting his private thoughts and feelings through letters, diaries, sketchbooks, and the conversation books he used as his hearing declined. She gives us Beethoven as a battered four-year-old, weeping at the clavier; the young virtuoso pianist agonized by his encroaching deafness; the passionate, heartbroken lover. Padel's quest takes her into the heart of Europe and back to her own musical childhood.