Elizabeth Hopkinson's Hidden Grove

  Back in February, I wrote a piece for LGBT+ History Month about the castrati singers of the 18th century , and my character Carlo in the forthcoming Cage of Nightingales. In that piece, I said, “It’s impossible for us now to know what the leading castrati really sounded like.” That may still be true. (The intense levels of training they went through from boyhood would probably be illegal now, never mind the actual castration). But just this week, I made a discovery I can’t believe I have not made before. There are real-life male sopranos. True sopranos, as opposed to counter-tenors, who sing in their falsetto range, thereby only using part of the vocal cord. (Imagine plucking a guitar string while holding the string a long way down the bridge, to make the note extra-high). True sopranos sing with all their vocal cord vibrating (unless they go into falsetto, which is extra-extra-high!) Which means you’re going to get a much more resonant sound. Entirely by accident, I saw a news repor

  This time last week, I was at the joy that is Bradford Literature Festival. My whole town taken over by all things book-related! I went to three completely different talks, two of which I had bought and read the books for in advance. (The other one I will probably buy when it comes out in paperback). They were: The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph Painted People: Humanity in 21 Tattoos by Matt Lodder Among the Eunuchs: A Muslim Transgender Journey by Leyla Jagiella Three completely different subjects. But what they had in common was that they were all about people on the fringes of society’s so-called norms: Black Britons in the Georgian era; people who have decorated their own skin; traditional third genders in India and Pakistan, along with transgender Muslims. I’m by nature a curious person, who is drawn to anything different to me. So I’m keen to learn about and include these histories. But it seems that society in general is much less interested, and

  The Hu onstage at Liverpool’s O2 Academy I’ll admit that things have not been easy for me since my last blog. There’s a lot of (understandable) hurt and anger out there when it comes to cultural issues. And I’m not emotionally robust enough to take it. Which is why it was so restorative this week to finally see one of my favourite bands - The Hu - live onstage in Liverpool. It was my first time at a “proper” rock concert, and my first time in Liverpool, so definitely one for the bucket list. Jaya and Gala fronting the band For those who don’t know them, The Hu are a Mongolian folk-rock band of eight musicians, who combine traditional Mongolian throat singing and instruments such as the Morin Khuur (pictured above, played by Gala) with metal beats and guitars. (It’s called Hunnu Rock). They sing entirely in Mongolian, and the lyrics are mainly about aspects of traditional Mongolian culture, respecting the ancestors and nature. They say their mission is to unite people through music, t

  In 2021, I wrote a blog post entitled Unconscious Bias: A Conscious Confession , in which I recognised my own tendency to make first-impression judgements based on names, accents, colour, appearance etc. Well, now I'm confessing to the presence of blind spots as regards my own White Privilege. Specifically relating to my favourite fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. A couple of weeks back, I made the hideous mistake of posting a plot analysis of Our Flag Means Death based on Beauty and and the Beast in a private fan group. My innocently-meant observations ended up seriously upsetting another fan by tapping into 600 years of colonial hurt. I apologised and took the post down. I don't intend to repeat what I posted there, as that would defeat the object of removing it. But I would like to talk about some of the issues involved and how I could have missed them. The Problem My fellow-fan alerted me to the dangers inherent in casting Stede and Ed as Beauty and the Beast, given that

  I’ve just come back from co-leading a Book Club holiday near Oxford with HF Holidays. It was hard work but rewarding. The book I chose - and about which I led discussions - was Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, which I wrote about in a previous blog. I chose it for its many references to Narnia and the ideas of  CS Lewis and Owen Barfield, two of Oxford’s famous Inklings.  But there were also some connections that were sheer serendipity. For one, the country house hotel we were using (Harrington House in Bourton-on-the-Water) had this statue of a faun in its garden. And even better, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford were holding a temporary exhibition on the subject of the Labyrinth. I found the exhibition fascinating and inspiring. I could have got tons more discussion points for Piranesi out of it, especially the similarities between Valentine Ketterley in the book and Sir Arthur Evans, who took over the dig on Crete in true colonial fashion and projected his own interpretations onto it

I’m in love!! ♥️ I’ve fallen deep in fandom with quirky pirate rom-com, Our Flag Means Death. It’s been so long since I’ve had this kind of a fangirl high that I was starting to worry I no longer had it in me. But fear not! I may have the body of a middle-aged woman, but I have the heart and stomach of an asexual, greygender teenager, with a thing for the Golden Age of Sail, impossible love, and black-clad men who are vulnerable little boys underneath. Comedy. Romance. Representation. What’s not to like?   Fan art by  Anna Hopkinson  I’m not going to give away any spoilers for those who have not yet had the pleasure. But let me just say that Blackbeard and Stede (in the picture above) totally give me Tammo-and-Carlo vibes. (That’s Tammo and Carlo from my forthcoming novel Cage of Nightingales.  I wrote a bit about it in my previous blog .)  Cage is not about pirates, although it is set in a similar period. It has more of a Venetian Carnevale/ Amadeus/Phantom of the Opera flavour. And t