Photographer Tom Hunter's best shot

a letter addressed to "persons unknown". The council wanted to knock down the street and build warehouses. The Tories had brought in the Criminal Justice Act, which was designed to stop parties. Every time you saw a picture of a squatter or a traveller, it was to go with a story about how antisocial they were. I just wanted to take a picture showing the dignity of squatter life – a piece of propaganda to save my neighbourhood. I took this in 1997, for my master's degree show at the Royal College of Art. The 17th-century golden age of Dutch painting had had a massive impact on me: the way they dealt with ordinary people, not kings, queens and generals. I thought if I could borrow their style for squatters and travellers, it would elevate their status. In this shot, inspired by Vermeer's Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, my next-door neighbour is reading the possession order. Filipa had just had her first baby. We spent the whole day trying things out: we had a bowl of fruit, then we tried some curtains, then incorporated the baby. The light was perfect, a late winter sun coming through the window, really low, like the northern European light. I used a large-format camera, which really captures that light. And I used the Supachrome process to print it – old-fashioned even then. The exposure was about a second, so it was like sitting for a painting: she had to stand still. I was waiting for the light to pour into the lens, rather than snapping at something. I phoned her up last week and she's still happy with the picture. It's a record of her, her child and her home at the time. The great thing is, the picture got a dialogue going with the council – and we managed to save the houses. CV Born: Dorset, 1965. Studied: Royal College of Art, London. Influences: "Painters inspire me most – Caravaggio, Vermeer – but I also like Dorothea Lange and Sally Mann." High point: "Graduating from the RCA. I never thought I'd have an A-level, let alone an MA." Top tip: "Find something that drives you on. Being threatened with eviction was a real spur for me." Photography Andrew Pulver guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

'It's inspired by Vermeer's Girl Reading a Letter – except she's a squatter reading a possession order' I was living in Hackney in London, in a whole street of squats, having spent two years travelling around Europe in a doubledecker bus. Everyone got...

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04.11.2009. 23:30h

Kebab alert: The Beirut-based Kababji Grill is poised to open its first U.S. restaurant in the the District later this month. In a phone conversation this morning -- Starbucks my time, lunchtime there -- founder Toufic Khoueiri, who owns "around 30" similar...

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04.11.2009. 20:46h

Francisco Ayala obituary

With dozens of books to his name, he was more acclaimed for novels and short stories than for his stylish textbooks on social sciences, although he saw his academic and creative works as an organic whole. Ayala lived through the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, defended the Spanish republic that was declared in 1931 and spent decades in exile as a result of the fascist regime that followed. He once declared: "I bear no ill-will against anyone over my exile. What I do resent is the human condition, sometimes seen at its very worst – but that, you can find anywhere." This outlook pervaded his writings. He portrayed an essential goodness in humanity that was easily dislodged in times of crisis, when people will readily exploit and oppress others. His collection Los Usurpadores (The Usurpers, 1949) reflects his view of the exercise of power as trespass against one's fellow humans. Ayala was born in Granada to a petit-bourgeois, liberal family. His mother was a talented artist, his father a cultured but unsuccessful businessman. As a child, he read everything within reach, from comics to Don Quixote. He was 16 when his family moved to Madrid, where he later studied law. His literary debut, Tragicomedia de un Hombre Sin Espíritu (Tragicomedy of a Man Without Spirit, 1925) was followed by Historia de un Amanecer (A Dawn Story, 1926). They were minor novels in a dated style, but he was soon caught up in the set of avant-garde writers known as the Generation of 1927. By his graduation in 1929, he was in the circle around José Ortega y Gasset's cultural publication Revista de Occidente. El Boxeador y un Ángel (The Boxer and the Angel, 1929) and Cazador en el Alba (The Huntsman at Daybreak, 1930) showed his vanguard credentials while Indagación del Cinema (Explorations in Cinema, 1929) pioneered film criticism. A postgraduate grant took Ayala to Berlin to study philosophy and sociology. There, he met the Chilean Etelvina Silva Vargas, whom he married in 1931. After collecting his doctorate in Madrid, he became a parliamentary clerk and a lecturer on civil rights and social legislation. In 1936, he was lecturing in South America when Franco rebelled, and hastened home to serve the republic in a variety of offices, including a diplomatic mission to Prague. His younger brother Rafael was shot for desertion, his father jailed and summarily executed. The writer later admitted that he would have been prepared to shoot his wife, daughter and himself rather than be captured. As Franco's troops closed on Barcelona, Ayala escaped to Latin America. In Argentina he returned to fiction, addressing moral and political themes. In El Hechizado (The Bewitched, 1944), Los Usurpadores and La Cabeza del Cordero (The Lamb's Head, 1949), Ayala established his mature voice. The latter stories, dealing with war as experienced intimately, achieved a more humane and universal reading of the Spanish conflict than other writers (André Malraux, George Orwell) who dwelt on its political and military dimensions. He taught sociology, engaged in journalism and translation (including Rilke and Thomas Mann) and, in Buenos Aires, produced his Tratado de Sociología (A Treatise on Sociology, 1947). In 1950, Ayala travelled to Puerto Rico to found a magazine and publish further in social and cultural studies. In 1956 he moved to the US, where he taught Hispanic literature and finished his best-known novels, Muertes de Perro (Death As a Way of Life, 1958) and El Fondo del Vaso (The Bottom of the Glass, 1962). Like Historias de Macacos (Monkey Stories, 1955), these dark tales savagely satirised tyranny. When Ayala first returned to Spain, in 1960, he described it as "a kind of pilgrimage" to an unknown homeland. Some outstanding intellectuals of the era, including the future Nobel laureates Vicente Aleixandre and Camilo José Cela, later published a welcome-home message. Ayala was grateful; little of his work had surfaced under Francoist censorship. Like other literary exiles of 1939, his name was on university curricula across the Atlantic long before it won fame in Spain. In New York, the widowed Ayala met Carolyn Richmond, an expert on the Spanish novelist Leopoldo Alas, and then on Ayala himself, many of whose works she edited or translated. She became his second wife in 1999. His definitive homecoming awaited Franco's demise. Meanwhile, alongside his own works of fiction, he published extensively on classical and contemporary literature. By 1972, his genius was acknowledged in Spain, when he won the Critics' Prize for the trilogy El Jardín de las Delicias (The Garden of Delights, 1971). The post-Franco transition to a vibrant, democratic culture came from "exhaustion from the effort of having done without for so long", he said. Having retired in 1977 from his university career, Ayala settled in Madrid in 1980. Three years later, he won the National Prize for Narrative with his two-volume memoir Recuerdos y Olvidos (Memories and Things Forgotten, 1982-83) and was elected to the governing authority of the Spanish language, the Real Academia Espa?ola (RAE), devoting his inaugural lecture to the rhetoric of journalism. Well into his 90s, he turned up for weekly meetings of the RAE. Ayala won Spanish literature's highest honour, the Miguel de Cervantes prize, in 1991, years ahead of the already Nobel-garlanded Cela, and was himself a perennial candidate for the Nobel from 1996. He was awarded the National Prize in Spanish Letters in 1988 and the Prince of Asturias literary prize in 1998, but professed a disdain for honours. However, the Cervantes prize had a special meaning for him. The spirit of Cervantes, he said, had been present in everything he wrote since struggling through Don Quixote at the age of eight. To mark the fourth centenary of Cervantes's masterpiece, Ayala published in 2005 La Invención del Quijote (The Invention of Don Quixote), representing 65 years of his writings on Cervantes. The RAE's anniversary edition of Don Quixote, running to 1m copies, features Ayala's preface. Granada's Ayala Foundation, created by Andalusian universities and local authorities, hosted a symposium in 2004, exploring Ayala's relationship with the Americas, and sponsored the filming of some of his stories. In 2005, he travelled with Crown Prince Felipe to open the Ayala library in the Instituto Cervantes, Stockholm. Ayala launched his own website on his 95th birthday, claiming to be so familiar with computers that he had forgotten how to write by hand. Accepting the invitation to his centenary conference, he said: "They seem determined that I should keep on having birthdays ... I wouldn't want to spoil the show." He is survived by Carolyn and his daughter, the art historian Nina Ayala Mallory, from his first marriage. • Francisco de Paula Ayala García-Duarte, writer, born 16 March 1906; died 3 November 2009 Spain Sociology guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

One of the greats of Spanish literature, he spent decades in exile in the Franco era The Spanish literary lion Francisco Ayala, who has died aged 103, enjoyed a remarkable privilege: attending a major international conference to mark his own centenary....

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04.11.2009. 20:24h

Julian Hope obituary

He had an encyclopedic memory for detail. As his friend the conductor Jane Glover put it, "there was no 'delete' in that brain". The hesitant, quietly-spoken authority which gave him an air of maturity as a young man never lost its underlying youthful enthusiasm in later life. Julian was born in London but his family moved to Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, where he grew up with his mother, Liza Maugham, only child of the novelist and granddaughter of the philanthropist Dr Barnardo. Julian's father was the Tory politician Lt Col Lord John Hope MP, later the 1st Baron Glendevon, and Julian inherited the title in 1996, but rarely used it. His parents' relationship with his famous grandfather was complex and the subject of bitter disputes, but Julian recalled visiting Cap Ferrat in the south of France as a child, on one occasion performing a creditable version of Knick-Knack Paddy-Wack for the ageing novelist. At Eton college, Berkshire, in the 1960s he developed his artistic enthusiasms as lead guitarist and vocalist of the Hellfire Club and running the film study group, introducing the Antonin Artaud-scripted La Coquille et le Clergyman, a graphic account of clerical lust, and Luis Bu?uel's Un Chien Andalou to his contemporaries. He also appeared in several stage productions, including Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, which visited Berlin, causing his father to exclaim: "You're at Eton, not Rada." We met at Oxford in 1969 – he was at Christ Church – on the first day of term at the first audition it was possible to attend, and we were both cast (as first and third soldier respectively) in a play about the Norfolk rebellion, The Blood on the Marsh. However, it was success as a director rather than actor which propelled him towards his future career. His college entry won a drama competition and this led to an invitation by the university opera club to direct Stravinsky's Mavra. Among the cast were Glover and the young composer Stephen Oliver. The three became close friends and went on to work together on highly acclaimed student productions including a dazzling Figaro at the Oxford Playhouse and Oliver's brilliant first opera, The Duchess of Malfi, which Julian directed and Glover conducted. After university, Julian went to Glyndebourne, where he assisted John Cox on his Hockney-designed Rake's Progress (1975), and Jean-Pierre Ponelle on his brilliantly understated production of Falstaff (1976). He went on to the Welsh National Opera, where he was a staff producer and directed Verdi's Il Trovatore and Puccini's Manon Lescaut. Over the next decade his work as an opera director was seen in productions across Europe and the US. In 1980 Julian was invited by the impresario Michael White to stage a revival of The Rocky Horror Show, which later toured the US. He also directed several semi-staged productions at the Barbican in London, including Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Moli?re's Le Bourgeois Gentil-homme, Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale, with Gary Oldman, and a triumphal version of Rimsky-Korsakov's Milada. His interest in film and his family history came together in his campaign to bring the wartime autobiographical Ashenden novels of his grandfather to the screen: the two-year quest resulted in a well-received BBC series in 1991. This success encouraged Julian to take a greater interest in his grandfather's literary estate, and he compiled lists of short stories and novels with synopses to take to producers and directors. As a result, several of Maugham's stories reached a new generation in films such as Up at the Villa (2000), Being Julia (2004) and The Painted Veil (2006). He also acted as musical adviser on Michael Austin's comic satire Princess Caraboo (1994) and Martha Fiennes's elegant Onegin (1999). His final production was Jessica Douglas Home's Violet, a depiction in words and music of the pioneering harpsichordist Violet Gordon Woodhouse and her "scandalous" liaisons, which, suitably for a Rocky Horror director, was last seen in June at the Sibiu festival in Transylvania. Julian is survived by his brother Jonathan, the art historian, who now succeeds as the 3rd Baron Glendevon. • Julian John Somerset Hope, 2nd Baron Glendevon, opera director, born 16 March 1950; died 29 September 2009 Opera guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Mark's output was not prolific, several of her recordings were immensely popular with local audiences seeking an alternative to the predominant political protest form of Jamaican roots reggae. Her early triumphs paved the way for the success of like-minded peers such as Carroll Thompson, Janet Kay and Deborahe Glasgow. Her hit singles of the 1970s and 80s are rightly regarded as classics of the genre and have never gone out of fashion, being aired continually on community radio stations and at nightclubs decades after their original release. Mark was the second daughter of Grenadian immigrant parents who had settled in Ladbroke Grove, west London. Her father worked as a builder while her mother undertook factory work before becoming a care assistant to elderly people. While attending Hammersmith county secondary school, Louisa received her introduction to the music scene. In 1973, she was a guest vocalist on Dennis Bovell's Sufferer sound system, then resident at the Metro club in Westbourne Park. For one so short and so young, she possessed a surprisingly strong and readily identifiable voice, which helped Bovell retain an edge over competing sets. In 1974, the rival sound system owner Lloydie Coxsone invited Mark to enter Star Search, a weekly talent contest held at the Four Aces nightclub in Dalston, east London, where she won first prize 10 weeks in a row. That November, Coxsone brought her into Gooseberry studios with Bovell's band, Matumbi, to record a reggae rendition of Caught You in a Lie, an old R&B hit. Mark's quavering soprano, placed to dramatic effect over Bovell's exceptional arrangement, brought instant favour, with the single reportedly selling 10,000 copies in a fortnight. An adaptation of the Beatles' All My Loving followed swiftly, but after a bitter dispute with Coxsone, she retreated from singing for a year and half, during which time she completed secondary school. In 1977 she joined the revamped Trojan label, working closely with the producer Clem Bushay and the songwriter and arranger Joseph "Tunga" Charles of the band Zabandis, this collaboration yielding Keep It Like It Is. Mark later left the company to work for the newly formed Bushay label, issuing a version of Michael Jackson's Even Though You're Gone and another broken-hearted Charles original, Six Sixth Street, which topped the reggae charts, helping her to win Artist of the Year at the 1978 reggae awards. After the release of People in Love the next year, Mark retreated from the music scene for another extended period. She collaborated with Bushay and Charles again in the early 1980s, but was disappointed by the shape of her debut album, Breakout, which she felt was released before it had been properly completed. She recorded only sporadically from the mid-1980s, as she was wary of the music industry and because her legendary temper made producers reluctant to work with her. About six years ago, she settled in the Gambia, where she became involved in charity work. A postmortem will be held into the cause of her death, and her body is expected to be flown back to the UK. She is survived by her mother, her sister, a daughter and a son. • Louisa Lynthia Mark, singer, born 11 January 1960; died 17 October 2009 Pop and rock Grenada Gambia guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Early star vocalist of the lovers' rock genre Louisa Mark, who has died suddenly aged 49, was one of the most important vocalists of lovers' rock, a uniquely black British style of romantic reggae that she helped to pioneer during the mid-1970s. Although...

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04.11.2009. 19:40h

X-ray machine voted top modern discovery in poll

The x-ray has been voted the most important modern discovery by participants in a poll to mark the Science Museum's centenary year. Members of the public were asked to vote on 10 of the greatest achievements in science, engineering and technology selected...

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04.11.2009. 19:33h

Gordon Ramsay interview

some of the most essential dub reggae, no wave, new wave, punk and industrial sounds was on cassette. These underground missives were dispersed worldwide from a tiny New York indie label, Reach Out International Records, better known as ROIR (say "roar"). After decades of working with jazz artists such as Charles Mingus, label founder Neil Cooper decided to become an art dealer – then punk happened. By 1979, Cooper – the oldest hipster on the scene at nearly 50 – was booking the NYC underground's finest at The 80s Club on Manhattan's upper east side. He was desperate to bottle the spirit, in much the same way that Alan Lomax captured his field recordings of American folk music in the 1950s. On mobile tape-machines, Cooper recorded sets by James Chance and the Contortions, Lydia Lunch, the Bush Tetras, the Dictators and Suicide when they played his club. In 1981, he began releasing these cassettes through transatlantic indie distributors. By hustling for live recordings and demos not considered worthy of a vinyl release, Cooper made cassette-only deals that didn't impinge on bands' record contracts. ROIR's tapes came in bright colours and Lenny Kaye, Mick Farren, Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Lester Bangs were among the cream of the underground who penned the sleeve notes. His appetite whetted with NME and Rough Trade releases, Cooper soon ventured beyond the New York underground to the UK, eastern Europe and Jamaica. He told Billboard in 1999: "I had an A&R roster that was unbelievable – everyone but Ramones and the Dead Boys, essentially. Anyone who was written about in NME, I signed." Although acts as diverse as New York Dolls, Television, Lee "Scratch" Perry, the Buzzcocks, Beastie Boys, Chocolate Watchband, the Durutti Column, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Laibach and Welsh-language band Llwybr Llaethog featured in ROIR's 106 cassette releases, the label owes its success to Bad Brains. The harcore punk band's 1982 eponymous debut was its all-time bestseller – 150,000 copies in 10 years. Featuring on its cover an image of the Capitol dome being struck by a red, gold and green lightning bolt, the tape became synonymous with ROIR. The Rastafarian punks signed a contract with Cooper on the condition that he give them medallions minted for Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie. It was the fractious band's only ROIR release but Bad Brains have never quite left the stable. ROIR sells their merchandise, looks after their tours and is about to release bassist Darryl Jenifer's solo debut. Cooper died in 2001. His sons Nicholas and Lucas took over ROIR, which switched to releasing CDs in the mid 90s. "My dad wasn't interested in the CD," says Lucas. "Digitising cassettes and putting them on to a new format wasn't his idea, but it was about survival. Increasingly we've been putting out vinyl as well." "While we can't help looking back a little," says Lucas, "We're really about moving forward." This includes releasing a new generation of acts, many who work with punk-dub elements and twist them into new shapes, such as the Legendary Pink Dots and the metallic Dub Trio; others, such as Dufus – who Lucas describes as "a cross between Queen and Jesus Christ Superstar – you either love it or hate it" – and his latest signing, Univox from Philadelphia, continue ROIR's penchant for misfit pop. "We're not trying to replicate what was going on in the early 80s, but there's the same independent spirit," he says. "We're not playing the game of the majors, even if we have had to move to a major distributor to survive. No one is funding us. The days of walking into stores and dropping things off have gone, but we haven't changed the way we work or think." And ROIR hasn't completely rejected the idea of returning to its ferric-analogue roots. "We ran a stall at a recent Bad Brains show, and the cassettes sold better than the CDs and records," says Lucas. "I'm always asking record stores if there's any more call for tapes. Not yet, but you never know …" ROIRing lions: Bad Brains – Bad Brains (1982) Recorded during the course of three sessions in a New York apartment, the Washington DC exiles never equalled this for sheer raw power. The only cassette still available from ROIR, it's also now on vinyl and CD ... and flip-flops too. Various – New York Thrash (1982) One of the most vital early-80s compilations documenting the emerging hardcore scene, this gave Beastie Boys their first outing, with the 30-second snotty punk thrash of Riot Fight. It began decisively with the Mad's I Hate Music ("we love noise"). Ideally heard through a lo-fi tape deck, you can also get it on CD. Raz Mesinai's Badawi – Unit of Resistance (2009) Proof that ROIR still captures the zeitgeist. The result of two years of sonic alchemy that began as an incensed reaction to the Republican national convention – deconstructed and given dubstep and avant-dub treatments by the likes of DJ Spooky, Kode 9, Kreng and DJ Rupture. Pop and rock Electronic music Owen Adams guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Founded in 1979, the same year as the Walkman, this NYC underground label put out cassette-only releases that helped shape hardcore punk in the US Tapes have always been the lo-fi ruffians of the stereo age. But in the 1980s, the only way you could hear...

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04.11.2009. 17:49h

commemorate 30 years of life on earth, she travelled to the distant island of Heimaey off the southern coast of Iceland, to commune with Eldfell, a vast cone of ash left behind by an eruption in 1973. It was a poetic act – one that not only encapsulated the beauty of existence, but also celebrated the strands of coincidence that transform the everyday into something miraculous. There was an added coda to this event, centring on the land artist Robert Smithson, who also had a fascination with Eldfell; he had travelled to the site the same year it exploded and died a few months later. These are the basic facts of Halperin's practice, which combines personal experience with scientific theories to create conceptual art that embraces elements of the Romantic sublime. Her art often takes the form of landscape photography, recording the places she has visited in a quest to understand geological phenomena. Some of these pictures feature her performing scientific experiments, such as the photograph Boiling Milk Solfataras (1999), in which Halperin heated up a tiny saucepan of milk in a 100C sulphur spring. She also exhibits drawings and odd little anecdotes, stories and facts she picks up on her travels. In a performance lecture called Integrating Catastrophe in 2003, she talked about thousands of snakes in Guadaloupe who, sensing that an eruption was imminent, had thrown themselves into the sea and drowned; she linked the phenomenon with tourists in a Turkish coastal resort who had jumped from their hotel windows during a series of aftershocks. Her pilgrimage to Heimaey in 2003 initiated the ongoing project Ruins in Reverse (Nomadic Landmass), in which Halperin set out on a journey of discovery. Through discussions with eminent geologists and volcanologists, and field trips to some of the most remote regions of the world, including the Karst mountains in Guanxi, China, she has compiled a body of work in photographs, drawings and notes that has all the sublime suspense of a 19th-century gothic novel – crowned only by the fact that an Arctic explorer she interviewed later disappeared en route to the North Pole. Why we like her: For Towards Heilprin Land (2006), a series of paintings, drawings, photographs and notes made during a voyage to the north-east coast of Greenland by ship. The artist was inspired to go there by boat after flying over the country several times on her travels between Glasgow and New York. Chip off the old block: Halperin was originally a stone carver, which explains her lifelong fascination for geology. Her early introduction to natural science was through playing games with her sister in the Hall of the Great Whale at New York's Museum of Natural History. Where can I see her? Ilana Halperin is exhibiting in Darwin's Edinburgh and An Entangled Bank, two linked exhibitions at Edinburgh's Talbot Rice Gallery, until 12 December 2009. Art Exhibitions Jessica Lack guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Geological phenomena fascinate this globe-trotting artist, whose drawings and photographs document the beauty – and terror – of the natural world Who'd choose to share their birthday with a volcanic landmass? Artist Ilana Halperin, for one. In 2003, to...

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04.11.2009. 17:04h

Carrey brings Christmas to London early

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04.11.2009. 16:57h

Steve Martin is the Oscars host with the most | Xan Brooks

"It's something I only get to do when Billy Crystal's out of town." I'm guessing Crystal will be out of town come 7 March. Likewise Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr, both of whom were reportedly offered the job. Ditto Hugh Jackman, who allegedly decided against a repeat performance of last year's song-and-dance spectacular. And so once againthe gig goes to Martin, who will be chaperoned on his date by co-host Alec Baldwin. One has the sense that the producers can't quite trust their princess to Steve Martin's care. Why might this be so? Let us review the evidence of his two previous stabs at the role (in 2001 and 2003). Introducing one ceremony, Martin admitted that "just before I came out here tonight I licked all the Oscars". Introducing the other, he gushingly explained that "800m people around the world are watching us and they're all thinking the same thing: we're all gay". Every Oscar night features a maudlin obituary montage (aka Another Star in Heaven) in which the audience applauds slow-motion clips of the recently deceased. At the end of one of these, Martin turned to the crowd and promised: "Later on we are going to show you a montage of people you think are dead but aren't." So where's the problem here, exactly? Perhaps the organisers see Martin as too snarkily irreverent for comfort. Perhaps (more depressingly) they simply have him pegged as a decent fall-back; the good-enough Oscar host. Either way, they're wrong. Martin, for my money, has been the most reliably witty and sure-footed of all the recent presenters; the host that best navigates the perilous terrain of this most cramped and compromised of roles. His banter is drier, more tart than the showbiz razzle-dazzle provided by Crystal and Jackman. At the same time, however, he appears more at ease with the format than such nervous interlopers as Chris Rock or Jon Stewart. He is the insider's outsider; a pampered creature of the establishment who is still smart enough to treat the whole gaudy affair with an amused contempt. And so it's official: the 82nd Academy Awards will be hosted (or at least co-hosted) by Steve Martin. And while I still hold out hopes that the producers might one year take a punt on Jerry Seinfeld, I still think this qualifies as a welcome comeback. The organisers had presumably consigned Martin to history. They thought he was dead, but it transpires he's not. From my seat in Row Z, I'm applauding already. Oscars Steve Martin Hugh Jackman Xan Brooks guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

minister Kim Howells calling for British soldiers to be withdrawn. In this context, and in the week of Remembrance Sunday, it seems an interesting coincidence that Cambridge University is on the verge of acquiring the work of one of Britain's most celebrated war poets, Siegfried Sassoon. A Soldier's Declaration is Sassoon's fulmination on the futility of the war. The handwritten letter that Sassoon sent to his commanding officer was later published in newspapers and read out in the Commons. We thought it might be an appropriate time to reflect on its relevance to the stories unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan today. A Soldier's Declaration I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation. I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed. In behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realise. Siegfried Sassoon Siegfried Sassoon Afghanistan Iraq Foreign policy Middle East Defence policy Labour guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

As discussion rages on Afghanistan, it seems appropriate to reflect on Siegfried Sassoon's views on the futility of war As another five soldiers are killed in Afghanistan, Labour's support for the war there is fracturing further, with former foreign office...

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04.11.2009. 15:30h

Leonard Cohen to perform in Zagreb ’Arena’

recovering and returning. Are we running away from some loss above or retrieving something from below? Poets seem to find such echoes inescapably poignant. One public piece of poetry certainly showed Londoners share these powerful feelings. In early October 2009, Time Out suggested one of the unmissable features of London was the poetry installation in the Waterloo underpass where, en route to the Imax, you could walk past Sue Hubbard's poem "Eurydice". Taken from her collection Ghost Station, it is a poem painted on the tunnel walls which raids the tale of Orpheus and his wife, but puts Eurydice centre stage, and Hubbard's poem subverts the tale, where the female narrator actually seems to yearn for separation and takes pleasure in her underground journey and sojournment. The power of the piece doesn't lie in Orpheus's extraordinary rescue but in a kind of female withholding. Hubbard's Eurydice almost demands her descent and exults in it. I think she really loves the tunnel more than Orpheus; he's never named, he's purely a lover's memory. You can read the full text here. Painted in a font called Disturbance (surely a typographer's secret pleasure), this installation was a public art collaboration between Hubbard and the distinguished architect Bryan Avery. The poem was commissioned by the Arts Council and the BFI to make the experience of taking the tunnel from Waterloo to the Imax Cinema less dreary and more theatrical. The poem spanned the whole length of the tunnel and next year, 2010, would have been it's 10th anniversary. Time Out are latecomers to the celebrations though; the work has featured regularly as a London favourite for years, it's been on many lists. You can find comments on the web from citizens and visitors to our capital about how the poem has affected them, moved them. Hubbard herself has scores of emails and letters from fans of the piece. You can find glimpses on Flickr, the online photographic site. It's one of the Poetry Society's Poetry Landmarks. You can even see the poem used as the backdrop to a contemporary TV thriller, where Hubbard's words are appropriated for another more sinister narrative. This path unravels. Deep in hidden rooms filled with dust and sour night-breath the lost city is sleeping. The poem's melancholy closing stanzas begin: Above the hurt sky is weeping, soaked nightingales have ceased to sing. Dusk has come early. I am drowning in blue. Well, in a strange premonition, the poem has now physically been drowned in blue. A couple of weeks after Time Out drew renewed attention to this treasured piece of public poetry, the owners have painted out the entire installation, indeed the entire tunnel is now bathed in lavatorial blue. It's gone. I think London would like it back. If you share my view you can join the campaign on Facebook, or indeed on the Salt blog. Let's hope that we can recover this marvellous, singular, splendid place. Poetry Architecture Christopher Hamilton-Emery guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The Waterloo installation of Sue Hubbard's poem Eurydice was a very successful, and very popular, piece of public art. Why on earth has it been painted over? What is it with poetry and subterranean London? Poets always seem to be spiralling down, descending,...

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04.11.2009. 15:17h

Save a great London poetry landmark

recovering and returning. Are we running away from some loss above or retrieving something from below? Poets seem to find such echoes inescapably poignant. One public piece of poetry certainly showed Londoners share these powerful feelings. In early October 2009, Time Out suggested one of the unmissable features of London was the poetry installation in the Waterloo underpass where, en route to the Imax, you could walk past Sue Hubbard's poem "Eurydice". Taken from her collection Ghost Station, it is a poem painted on the tunnel walls which raids the tale of Orpheus and his wife, but puts Eurydice centre stage, and Hubbard's poem subverts the tale, where the female narrator actually seems to yearn for separation and takes pleasure in her underground journey and sojournment. The power of the piece doesn't lie in Orpheus's extraordinary rescue but in a kind of female withholding. Hubbard's Eurydice almost demands her descent and exults in it. I think she really loves the tunnel more than Orpheus; he's never named, he's purely a lover's memory. You can read the full text here. Painted in a font called Disturbance (surely a typographer's secret pleasure), this installation was a public art collaboration between Hubbard and the distinguished architect Bryan Avery. The poem was commissioned by the Arts Council and the BFI to make the experience of taking the tunnel from Waterloo to the Imax Cinema less dreary and more theatrical. The poem spanned the whole length of the tunnel and next year, 2010, would have been it's 10th anniversary. Time Out are latecomers to the celebrations though; the work has featured regularly as a London favourite for years, it's been on many lists. You can find comments on the web from citizens and visitors to our capital about how the poem has affected them, moved them. Hubbard herself has scores of emails and letters from fans of the piece. You can find glimpses on Flickr, the online photographic site. It's one of the Poetry Society's Poetry Landmarks. You can even see the poem used as the backdrop to a contemporary TV thriller, where Hubbard's words are appropriated for another more sinister narrative. This path unravels. Deep in hidden rooms filled with dust and sour night-breath the lost city is sleeping. The poem's melancholy closing stanzas begin: Above the hurt sky is weeping, soaked nightingales have ceased to sing. Dusk has come early. I am drowning in blue. Well, in a strange premonition, the poem has now physically been drowned in blue. A couple of weeks after Time Out drew renewed attention to this treasured piece of public poetry, the owners have painted out the entire installation, indeed the entire tunnel is now bathed in lavatorial blue. It's gone. I think London would like it back. If you share my view you can join the campaign on Facebook, or indeed on the Salt blog. Let's hope that we can recover this marvellous, singular, splendid place. Poetry Architecture Christopher Hamilton-Emery guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The Waterloo installation of Sue Hubbard's poem Eurydice was a very successful, and very popular, piece of public art. Why on earth has it been painted over? What is it with poetry and subterranean London? Poets always seem to be spiralling down, descending,...

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04.11.2009. 15:17h

Google Doodle draws inspiration from anniversary of cartoon duo Wallace and Gromit's first public appearance In pictures: 20 years of Wallace and Gromit Google, it seems, loves Wallace and Gromit as much as the rest of the world. Today marks the 20th...

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04.11.2009. 12:42h

Goats on film: a dying breed?

credulity too far to suggest that there are shockingly few. Spider-Man has an alter ego, a girlfriend and a nemesis, but does he have a pet goat? He does not. When Reese Witherspoon takes on the calcified chauvinist world of law which cute pet does she have in tow - a pygmy goat? It's a chihuahua. And as for the works of Michael Haneke, don't get us started (suffice to say, the entirety of Hidden isn't predicated on the maltreatment of a kid. Well, not that kind of kid). It was not always thus. In the early, pioneering days of cinema, you couldn't sit in front of a simplistic, oddly sped-up piece of cinema without a goat popping into view. In Charlie Chaplin's 1919 movie Sunnyside, the very drama turns on a scene in which two goats hide behind a piano and bleat every time Charlie hits a note. As to why the goats are lurking behind the piano in the first place, there is no explanation offered. That is because there is no need; they just are. Laurel and Hardy also have their goat movie, Angora Love being the tragic tale of two grown men trying to bathe a billy. Completing a trinity of early cinema icons is Buster Keaton who goes one further than his peers in naming an entire movie The Goat; the trade-off here is that the film itself contains no goats whatsoever. Watching these scenes back, it is clear that goats have a natural feel for acting. Unlike sheep, whose tendency to herd makes truly individual performances difficult, the goat is willing to go its own way. That it has such an expressively long face, and often comes with a stylish goatee, further explains their eminent suitability for cinema. Yet by the middle of the century things had begun to change. Cecil B DeMille's epic denunciation of Nero's Rome, The Sign of the Cross, features a much-lauded goat scene, in which the Empress Poppaea, played by Claudette Colbert, bathes in goats' milk, squeezed directly from teat to tub by gangs of beefy slaves. In terms of goats per square inch of celluloid, this was an unalloyed triumph. But a re-reading of the scene clearly shows that the focus has moved from the animal to its by-product. The milk had taken centre stage. Why such a change? I'm no anthropologist, but I do know that the course of the 20th century saw man change from being a primarily rural creature to an urban one for the first time in its history. Cinema reflected that change. Buck-toothed yokels were replaced by sharp-suited hustlers. Women were no longer tied to train tracks but dangled from skyscrapers. And in place of the reliable, rustic goat, there was the urban, urbane housecat. By the time we came out of the 60s, goats were there only to be exploited. The 1968 Hammer horror, The Devil Rides Out, starring Christopher Lee as the Duc de Richleau (call him Duc), features the Goat of Mendes, a horny, hairy version of the very devil himself. A crucial scene in Ken Russell's Altered States, about a man whose brain is warped by hallucinogens, features an opposing image to that of The Devil Rides Out but one that is equally disturbing: a seven-eyed Jesus goat nailed to a cross. Our saviour is a goat, but a jolly weird one! Delve deeper into the cinema of the time and the grindhouse school was never shy of shoving a satanic goat sex scene into the mix should things err on the dull side. Thanks to this generational change – inspired, as with so many, by self-indulgent baby boomers – by the time the 80s came around the goat had all but disappeared from mainstream Hollywood. When it did feature (as in crowd scenes from the Indiana Jones movies) it was there not to provide emotional or dramatic depth, as had been the case in Chaplin's day, but to look a bit scraggy; to signify a world where the food was all bony and a Big Mac was nowhere to be found. Nathan Anderson-Dixon, a handler for the Animal Company, one of the UK's leading animal hire firms, confirms there is little clamour for cabravision in modern Britain. "We've never had our goats on film or TV," he confesses. "We did get a call for the premiere of The Men Who Stare at Goats. Unfortunately the production team decided it was inappropriate on the red carpet, so they called it off." Anderson-Dixon's goats have been lucky, finding work on the stage (they recently starred in a production of Willy Russell's Our Day Out at the Royal Court Liverpool). But still Anderson-Dixon observes that while farmyard animals are among his company's most popular, being in demand on shows like Emmerdale, the goat occupies a dramatic hinterland and is required only in unusual circumstances. "People do keep pygmy goats as pets, they're small and friendly. But people don't often want to hire them. Instead the most popular are nubian goats. They're the ones with the goofy faces." So, the message to all goats appears to be simple: if you want to get ahead, you'd better get goofy. Yet all is not quite over for cabra cinema. While the goat has been cleansed from western screens, it still prospers in foreign fields. The Kazakh arthouse triumph Tulpan, winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes last year, tells the tale of a family of goat herders on the steppe. The love the family share with their goats is real, true and exemplified nowhere more clearly than a scene in which one goat kisses its master. Though there are no tongues, the emotional bond is clear and so is the symbolism; the loving goat is a bulwark against the disruptive forces of modernity. I haven't seen Goat Story, the Czech film industry's first venture into CGI animation, but I imagine its tale of a humble young goat trying to make its way in Prague, covers pretty much the same territory. So times may not be great for the cinematic goat. But while we in the west are increasingly reduced to turning to animated robots or aliens to tell us truths about ourselves, Goat Story, Tulpan and others show us that the emotive power of the goat is as strong as it ever was. That's one for the neigh-sayers to think on. Charlie Chaplin Christopher Lee Cannes film festival Michael Haneke Buster Keaton Paul MacInnes guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Yesterday, William Leith analysed the role of goats in literature for our Jon Ronson takeover. Today, cinema comes under the spotlight Think about the movies you watch in your local cinema: how many goats do they feature? I don't think it's stretching...

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04.11.2009. 12:40h

Britain's flagship contemporary dance company's latest performance is inspired by Charles Darwin.

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04.11.2009. 10:10h

A political public that cares | Bernard Keenan

– easy, there aren't any. In the bleak hour that followed, Chomsky listed example after example of the ways in which powerful states are currently ignoring, if not actively undermining, the values laid down in various international human rights treaties. The statistics are hard to deny. While trillions of dollars have gone to rescuing collapsed markets in order that the bankers can still pay themselves bonuses, Amnesty International has recently reported the financial crisis has led to catastrophic consequences for most of the world's people. In the US, meanwhile, the recent debate has been whether or not healthcare should be rationed by the state, or by individual wealth as is currently the case. While liberal commentators may have universally condemned the actions of the Bush administration following 11 September 2001, Chomsky barely raised an eyebrow, pointing out that the use of torture overseas by US agencies has a long history. Human rights seem like a forgotten dream in the face of such lesser reported facts. Like the American philosopher John Dewey, Chomsky's fundamental faith in democratic ideals leads him to believe that people would not tolerate such injustices, if only they were able to hear about them. It's one thing to list the violations of human rights around the world, but it's something else entirely to say why people would necessarily care about them, if only they knew. Here in the UK we know that at least some parts of the Conservative party are seriously thinking of repealing the Human Rights Act when in government, and that this may well be a popular move. Meanwhile a fringe party of the far right threatens to gain power and the left cannot decide if they should be exposed or censored (incidentally, Chomsky categorically states that they should not). So what arguments can be put forward against the erosion of rights? What basis do we have to assert that human beings have basic entitlements? These are serious political questions. If poverty is the biggest threat to global stability, then there is a particular challenge in explaining why so-called "rights" to economic and social entitlements should be considered "rights" at all. In an age when progressive politics is in disarray, split between either a stubborn attachment to authoritarian Marxist economics, capitulation to bankrupted neoliberalism, or slumped in a detached post-modern inertia; it is hard to find a simple answer to the question of why we should defend something as quaint as human rights. Chomsky's rhetorical approach is to refer to positive legal documents – such as the various UN human rights conventions that western states have signed up to, claimed to believe in, and then violated at every opportunity – as a means of highlighting the hypocrisy of western states' actions. But the value of this as a philosophical position is negligible – positive legal documents have no force beyond that with which they are enacted (or ignored, as the case may be). So where his talk in London last week was most instructive was while he was taking questions from the floor. As the director of the LSE looked on nervously, he described the radical changes he had witnessed during his 54 years of teaching at MIT. He pointed out that in his experience human rights and civil liberties have always been advanced by an aroused and organised public, refusing to remain subordinated to the interests of the powerful and taking direct actions to resist power. Even more fundamental to Chomsky's political philosophy is a belief in a shared moral understanding between human beings. The idea of a scientific, empirical basis for how humans make moral judgements flies in the face of contemporary philosophy and economics. Postmodernism, identity politics, deconstruction, the idea that everything in the world is different – all of this, Chomsky asserts, has got to go. It's impossible to argue against the weight of Chomsky's empirical examples of how bad the state of human rights is in the world today. But it's an entirely different thing to accept his argument that scientific certainties about universal rights, and wrongs, can be resurrected in the service of progressive politics – ultimately acting as an organising principle. But it's a question that this generation, sooner or later, will be unable to avoid. Human rights Philosophy Philosophy Civil liberties Torture Bernard Keenan guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Chomsky is right about the decline in human rights, but I doubt they can be resurrected in the service of progressive politics Invited to the LSE last week to address the question of human rights in the 21st century, Noam Chomsky began with a simple answer...

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04.11.2009. 09:30h

Jim Bayliss ponders why his seat in Cinderheath is under threat from the British National party in local elections in 2002. "How could there be a Labour Party when there was no labour left for it to represent?" he muses. "It had become something else. There were jobs now, of course. The big losses had come some 20-odd years ago, but it was hardly the same – jobs for cleaners and security men, shop work and mobile phone sales… Even the call-centre jobs were going to Bangalore. This was the town's position in the new world order." The town is Dudley, in the west Midlands. Cinderheath is a fictional ward, but Dudley is real enough. It even has its own castle. Cartwright and I can see it impressively cresting the horizon as we trudge the mile or so from Dudley Port station towards the town centre. Along with the adjoining zoo, the castle is what makes Dudley distinctive among the Black Country towns that were collectively known as the "workshop of the world" when Queen Victoria pulled down the blinds on one of the uglier parts of her empire as the royal train passed through. On a sunny, soot-free autumnal day in 2009, we can see the flag of St George fluttering from the castle ramparts. There were many more such flags around Dudley in the early summer of 2002 – partly because England were playing Argentina in a crucial qualifying group match at the World Cup finals in Japan, and partly for more sinister reasons. "I wanted to capture the fevered intensity of that time," Cartwright explains. "It was only a few months after 9/11. Three men from Tipton, just down the road, were being held in Guantanamo and someone from the media had come up with the not very helpful term 'the Tipton Taliban'. There was a feeling around of 'What's going to happen next?' Football seemed to work well as a way of exploring social issues. Supporting England can be massively positive. For people whose identity is predominantly parochial, it can give them something to cohere around. But it can also be exploited by those with another agenda." Much of the book switches between Cinderheath FC clubhouse – where players, friends and relatives are gathered to watch Beckham's boys beat the "Argies" – and a local match between an all-white Cinderheath side and an all-Muslim team, while BNP thugs prowl the touchline. Gaining ground Heartland was published by Tindal Street Press in Birmingham earlier this year, shortly before the London literati began debating why so few of the books shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize were grappling with contemporary issues. A few months on, Cartwright suddenly finds himself in demand to help explain why the political far right is gaining ground – perhaps because Radio 4 happened to make this, his second novel, its Book at Bedtime shortly after BNP leader Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time. "Fiction allows you to explore ideas and motivation in a bit more depth than a current affairs programme can hope to do," Cartwright suggests. And a novelist with his background is better placed than most to do that, because of where he comes from and where he went to. Born in Dudley 35 years ago, he graduated from the University of East Anglia and went on to teach in the East End of London after working in factories, pubs, a meat-packing plant, London Underground and Spitalfields market. "Even in London, there are hidden corners that have more in common with areas like this than a great cosmopolitan city," he says, gesturing around us at the soulless retail and business parks of post-industrial Dudley. "I taught at the Royal Docks Community School in Newham until 2004, and there were predominantly white estates full of people who felt left behind by the ongoing changes in Docklands." He now lives in Nottingham and teaches in Sutton in Ashfield, a former mining town where he encounters children from similarly disillusioned families. "Extremism flourishes," he maintains, "when people have a perception that they've been abandoned and bypassed by the pace of change. There's always a temptation to look around for simple answers to complex questions." Former dockers, miners and foundry workers have one thing in common: at different times in comparatively recent industrial history, they lost not only their incomes but also the self-respect, identity and camaraderie that went with the job. Our walk from the station to the centre of Dudley takes us along a clogged dual carriageway that could be anywhere in England. At one point, we come across the all-too-typical mixture of multiplex cinema, 24-hour supermarket, DIY superstore and fried-chicken chains. "That's built on what used to be the county ground, home of Dudley cricket club, where Worcestershire came to play once a season," Cartwright points out. "Twenty-five years ago, the groundsman took off the covers to find a dirty great hole caused by the limestone workings underneath. They promptly closed it down, along with Dudley Town FC's ground next door." At a stroke went two great sources of local pride and identity. This was the cricket pitch where Basil D'Oliveira hit a century for Worcestershire in the 1960s and Wally Hammond a double century for Gloucestershire in the 1930s. Either man could have glanced up at the castle and idly wondered whether they were on the picturesque Arundel cricket ground in West Sussex. A glance the other way, however, would have encompassed thriving foundries and factories. There had already been wholesale closures by the time of the cricket ground's all too symbolic collapse. "Even as a boy, I was aware of this landscape of decay as the physical fabric of the town was boarded up, and that fed into the psychology of the place," Cartwright recollects. "And at times of economic collapse, people always look around for someone to blame." In this case, people from the Indian subcontinent, who had come to keep the factories and foundries going in the boom times, says the author. "My inclination is to look a long way from here towards the Thatcher government when it comes to looking for culprits," he says. We walk into a central shopping area that has never recovered from the decision in the 1980s to allow developers to build the vast Merry Hill shopping centre a mile or two down the road. Like Meadowhall in Sheffield and the Metrocentre in Gateshead, it was symbolic of the switch from manufacturing to retail as a provider of (lower-paid) employment. Plans have just been announced to close Beattie's, the only department store in the centre of Dudley. We sit in the panoramic window of its cafe and look out across the dual carriageway that slices through the heart of the town, conveying shoppers towards Merry Hill. Domes and minarets Across the road, we can see the waste ground where the Dudley Muslim Association has outline planning permission to build what its many opponents are calling a "super-mosque". Some 55,000 signatures have been gathered against it on a petition started by Malcolm Davis, a councillor representing the UK Independence party. "It will destroy the ambience of a historic market town with a castle," he claims, "and make people feel intimidated." Beyond the cafe window are plenty of buildings out of keeping with a historic market town. But then, they don't have domes and minarets. The argument, involving the government inspectorate and appeals to the high court, has been going on so long that Cartwright felt able to include it in a book set in 2002. "Any discussion of the practicalities – such as the fact that the current central mosque is too small – is being drowned out by the noise against Islam," he says. "While I was writing the book, there was similarly orchestrated opposition to a mosque in West Ham [in east London]." Cartwright uses the literary device of having the Dudley mosque being planned for the site of an old steelworks. In reality, it was Merry Hill that was built partly on the site of the old Round Oak works, which closed in 1982. "They employed 5,000 people and fed the local economy like a generator, whereas Merry Hill has been a sponge, sucking the life out of Dudley," says Cartwright's father, Keith. A recently retired engineer, he has joined us for a lunchtime pint in a rare survivor in these parts – a traditional Black Country pub. By now, we're in neighbouring Netherton, close to the foundry that made the anchor chain for the Titanic. That's long closed too. Cartwright senior goes on: "This area has gone through massive socio-economic changes in the past 30 years and there's understandable discontent. That's what the far right pick up on." And that's why the fictional Jim Bayliss finished his political career a disillusioned man. As it says in Heartland: "Jim became a councillor in 1979, against the prevailing mood. He thought he was doing his bit for Cinderheath, Dudley, England, the Labour movement, the working class." But the ground was shifting under the working class and sinking, like an old cricket pitch falling into the limestone workings that once fed the iron and steel-making process in the workshop of the world. Heartland, published by Tindal Street Press (?9.99), is Radio 4's Book at Bedtime until Friday. To order a copy for ?9.99 with free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/ bookshop or call 0330 333 6846. Communities Poverty Chris Arnot guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Fact and fiction blur as Heartland novelist Anthony Cartwright take Chris Arnot on a tour through estates of despair There is a passage in Anthony Cartwright's novel, Heartland, currently being serialised on Radio 4, in which veteran Labour councillor...

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04.11.2009. 01:05h

Paralympian portrait wins photography prize

one the UK's leading portraiture prizes. Paul Floyd Blake's portrait of a 13-year-old swimmer who hopes to compete in the 2012 Paralympic games won the Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize at a ceremony held at London's National Portrait Gallery. The subject, Rosie Bancroft, had her foot removed when she was a baby. The portrait, part of the On Track for 2012 series, was taken in a swimming pool changing room in her home city of Oxford. Blake described her as a "fantastic subject, very natural and relaxed in front of the camera". "Rosie was competing throughout the day and there was only a short window when I could take the picture," he said. "She had just swum a personal best in her event and I think that's why she has such a confident, self-assured look in the portrait." Blake eschews digital technology: he uses a 5x4 Wista field camera, a modern version of the 19th-century plate cameras. "To get the same quality with a digital camera, you're looking at ?20,000," said Blake. "It's got bellows and lots of different movements which I tend not to muck around with. I'm not [German photographer] Andreas Gursky." An exhibition of the best entries goes on display at the National Portrait Gallery from Thursday until 14 February before the best 60 portraits – whittled down from 6,300 submissions – are shown at the Shipley art gallery, Gateshead, and then Walsall's New Art gallery. Blake is photographing 12 young athletes with the potential to compete in the Olympics. "The series is probably less about sport than it is about young people growing up and the transition from childhood into adulthood," he said. "These teenagers exist in this ultra-professional world that can often be very isolating. It is about them growing up and how the experiences they have now shape them for the future." West Yorkshire-based Blake, who wins ?12,000, did not begin his photographic career until seven years ago when he was 40, but his work has now been exhibited in six solo exhibitions. Sandy Nairne, the gallery's director, who chaired the judging panel, praised Blake's portrait as "a brilliant study of youthful determination". Photography National Portrait Gallery Awards and prizes Mark Brown guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Paul Floyd Blake's portrait of 13-year-old swimmer Rosie Bancroft wins Taylor Wessing prize at National Portrait Gallery An image of youthful confidence and determination that was taken using Victorian photographic technology has been named winner of...

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04.11.2009. 01:05h

The Halcyon Company, which owns the rights to the “Terminator” movies and related assets, plans to sell the franchise at an auction in January.

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