YouCaxton are publishers of quality books. We also provide a full range of services to authors wishing to self-publish including, editorial, design, marketing and distribution. We work closely with authors to achieve critical and literary success focusing on good writing and careful research.
We are planning to hold a self-publishing workshop in Liverpool later this year (cost £25). Please contact us for further details.
Sport and Literature
The fifth YouCaxton Self-Publishing Literary Lecture ‘Writing the Game: Sport in Fiction’ will take place in the YouCaxton shop on 26 February at 6.30 pm. Jeff Hill, Emeritus Professor of History at De Montfort University, takes a particular interest in 19th and 20th century history with an emphasis on social/cultural developments in leisure. (He is currently working on a book on British popular politics and popular culture c.1880-1930s.) His chief interest in fictional literature is in its value as a source to the historian and his approach is that of an historian rather a literary critic.
We are used, nowadays, to sport on television, Jeff Hill asks if it can inspire decent literature – or should it be booted into touch because it’s too frivolous and superficial? And why has sport figured more in American creative writing than in British? Jeff Hill raises these and similar questions with reference to the work of Philip Roth, John Updike, Bernard Malamud, David Storey, Joseph O’Neill and other contemporary novelists – seeing their work as both literature and as historical source material.
Professor J
YouCaxton are publishers of quality books. We also provide a full range of services to authors wishing to self-publish including, editorial, design, marketing and distribution. We work closely with authors to achieve critical and literary success focusing on good writing and careful research.
We are planning to hold a self-publishing workshop in Manchester later this year (cost £25). Please contact us for further details.
Can Christianity survive Darwin?
The fourth YouCaxton lecture is scheduled for Tuesday 8th January, 6.30 pm, at the YouCaxton Shop in Bishop’s Castle. The Reverend Adrian Bailey, a vicar and chaplain of Gobowen Orthopaedic Hospital, will be discussing the impact of Darwin’s thought on modern Christian belief.
Adrian Bailey will be considering how Darwin’s publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 challenged traditional belief in a perfect Earth created by God a few thousand years ago with Adam and Eve as its flawed human beneficiaries. If Christians accepted Darwin’s theories they were obliged to accept that God’s way of creating life and humanity was the harshest and most painful imaginable. This conflicted with their belief in a good and loving God.
Adrian Bailey will be examining Christian responses to this dilemma including how some Christians have been driven to prefer alternative ‘scientific’ explanations which question current theories in biology, cosmology and geology and attempt to put Adam and Eve back in the frame. He tackles these issues head on. Can Christianity survive Darwin? Yes, he says, but only if you radically re-think it …
Sir Michael Leighton’s On the Marches
Sir Michael Leighton’s latest book of poems, On the Marches, produced by YouCaxton and edited by Mike Willmott of Shrewsbury Words (descendent of the great John Wilmot Earl of Rochester and a poet himself ) was launched recently at Loton Park, the family home near the Breidden Hills in West Shropshire. The poems are in the form of a collection of responses to the Shropshire countryside which Sir Michael loves. The launch was fascinating and YouCaxton were there in full tog, chatting up the handmaids – or possibly the footmen.
Erotic Communities
Antony Lampert’s talk on Tuesday 20th November was fascinating. He talked in detail about the very real threats to life and harm to vulnerable individuals, particularly children, which result when religious prejudice takes precedence over medical duty, spelling out how frequently this prejudice is to do with sex or the control of it. There was less about historic witches than we advertised but, hopefully, we were forgiven because he described more than enough of modern witchcraft and superstition to fill the gap. He ended on a humorous note by producing his ‘Award’ from the ‘Erotic Community’, shown here to replace the poor witch shown previously. Many thanks to Antony.
What is Lost
The third YouCaxton lecture is scheduled for 7.00 pm Tuesday 20th November at the YouCaxton Shop in Bishop’s Castle. Dr. Anthony Lempert, Chair of the U.K. Secular Medical Forum, will be discussing what is lost to medical practice through the influence of religion and he will consider how religious belief distorts current accepted attitudes to medical care. His talk draws on some of the many narratives of secular thought and opinion – the stories of blasphemers, witches, heretics, infidels and apostates – which have been lost or minimised in popular discourse, and relates this back to our own time and to the influence of religion in society.
Tracey Emin and her bed
Philip Woolley’s talk on Tuesday 2nd October on Tracey Emin and her bed and on conceptual art in general set off more hares than there were greyhounds to catch them: the spitting bile of traditional craft artists versus the slippery guile of the conceptualists with Philip’s informed voice to referee the discussion once the talk was over. He looked at the phenomenon of museum art and at the rise of the Young Brits, young no longer, pulling in ideas of gender and romanticism along the way. He was a cat among pigeons with silvery beards (mainly). A thoroughly enjoyable evening.
The next talk, ‘What is Lost’, broadly about the influence of religion on medical practice and how Dr Lempert arrived at his opinions through the experience of his family during the Holocaust and through other influences, will be by Dr. Anthony Lempert, chair of the Secular Medical Forum. It should be equally challenging and interesting. Literature and debate as sublimated cage boxing – discuss. More to follow.