More comfortable with the Public Sector providing the services. The challenge for local councils, even those who think this might be a reasonable idea, should labour be in government, is logistically, can they get together the expertise and they get together the expertise and the staff, to take on a service that they might not directly provide for a generation. Might not have directly provided for a generation. This is such a huge conundrum, academy schools, have control over their own budget, in the past those called had to buy services in from local education authorities, not like that these days. In the changes they have been to the Public Sector and how the Public Sector has been managed, over the last ten or 20 yea rs, managed, over the last ten or 20 years, there are significant structural changes, so how quickly cana structural changes, so how quickly can a government coming in with a very different idea about the role of the Public Sector change things and change things quickly . Not least because there is a parliamentary term of a maximum of five years and some of these contracts could eat into a significant amount or even all of that before they have expired. Thank you. Now its time for a look at the weather with sarah keith lucas. It has been a day of sunshine and showers, heavy showers that we saw recently across the east coast of scotland. This is the picture in bexhill on sea. Blue skies there, clear skies too much of tonight. Breeze picking up on the north west but lighter breeze elsewhere and it will be a mild and humid with temperatures hitting between ten to 14 degrees. Sunday morning starts off dry, long spells of sunshine the wind picks up ahead of some cloud and rain which pushes in across Northern Ireland through the latter pa rt Northern Ireland through the latter part of the morning, that will affect the open. Much of eastern scotland, england and wales, stay dry all day, with temperatures between 18 to 2a degrees on sunday. At those temperatures will be on the rise to the middle part of the week, showers and the north west but hides in london of possibly up to sa degrees. Goodbye for now. Highs in london. Hello, this is bbc news. The headlines dramatic footage of armed iranian troops boarding a british flagged oil tanker in the gulf. The foreign secretary expresses extreme disappointment to his iranian counterpart. This is totally and utterly acceptable. Unacceptable. It raises very serious questions about british shipping and International Shipping in the straits of hormuz. British airways has suspended all flight to cairo for seven days due to security concerns. Labour sets out plans to stop private Companies Providing Council Services in england. Englands hopes of reaching their first netball World Cup Final have been dashed after they were beaten by four time winners new zealand in liverpool. Its one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Its 50 years ago today that Neil Armstrong took the giant leap to become the first man to walk on the moon. Now on bbc news, author Jessie Burton and author and playwright alex wheatle join school of life bibliotherapist Ella Berthoud to discuss the role of reading and writing within Mental Health. Bpo therapy, the term may sound mckee but the concept is almost as old as literature itself. Bibliotherapist. Here is what lovers of literature already know. It can motivate, it can inspire, it sweeps us motivate, it can inspire, it sweeps us up and successfully out of ourselves and sometimes that is barmy enough for a troubled soul. Balm enough for a troubled soul. Welcome to bbc cultures textual healing from the hay festival. Im hephzibah anderson, bbc cultures literature writer. And im happy to be able to introduce our panel of guests. Ella berthoud is an author, artist, and literary agent, and shes also a practising bibliotherapist at the school of life, where shes been prescribing fiction to help ease lifes ups and downs since 2011. Novelist Jessie Burton debuted with the miniaturist, a prize winning historical tale steeped in mystery thats since been translated into 38 languages and sold over one million copies. Her third novel, the confession, will be published this september. And shes found time to write a feminist fairytale for children, the restless girls. Award winning author alex wheatles twitter handle is brixton bard, and anyones whos familiar with his backlist will know why. His first novel, brixton rock, told the story of a 16 year old boy coming of age in the run up to the brixton riots in 1981. And over the course of a 20 year career hes returned again and again to the the london borough where he grew up himself. Applause. To kick off, wed like to ask each of you to talk a bit about a book thats helped you through a difficult time. We go to you, alex. I guess my comfort book that i always return to is Huckleberry Finn. Because i discovered it when i was living in a Childrens Home and it was quite brutal where i was placed. So it was a place where i could escape my everyday turmoil, if you like. So at least come nine oclock, 9 30 i could go under the covers with my littler battery torch, with an eveready battery, and go through those pages and imagine that i was floating down the mississippi river, coming across steamboats and making my own decisions where im going to eat and rest and go on up towards the mississippi river. So its escapism. And i think Everyone Needs that. To escape the daily existence every now and then. You know, its notjust fantasy, but its an actual place where you needed to be to just escape the trauma, if you like. And, at the time, i was unaware i needed that, but obviously i needed that desperately. So my books became my refuge, if you like. Many people who i grew up with, they went on to alcohol, drugs, for their kind of form of escapism, but my escapism has always been books. So i was very fortunate to discover them. Yes. Applause. We think of escapism as being a sort of light hearted, frivolous, almost trivial thing, but its such deeper. Its a necessary thing. As human beings we love storytelling. Its in our dna to try to sort out things in our mind, try to make sense of things in our minds. And so fiction helps that process and it helped me no end. Ella, can i ask you . The book id like to tell you about is moominland midwinter, which is by tove jansson. And i love all of the moomin books. Theyve all helped me through difficult times in my life. I first discovered them as a child, when i was about eight, living in finland. And theres something about returning to the books of your childhood, which you might agree with, which is incredibly comforting and soothing. Its also the fact of the characters in the moomin books, which are amazing, beautiful, very inspiring, and very real. They all have issues, even though theyre little woodland creatures and theyre written for children, each of the Moomin Characters personifies something to do with an adult issue. So, for instance, the hemulen is a bit 0cd, the fillyjonk is very obsessed with cleaning, some of the characters are very lonely, theres the groke whos terrified, but because she is really lonely. So you can really relate to the Moomin Characters. And moominmamma is the matriarch who everyone loves and she always makes everything right in the end. Moominland midwinter, particularly, is a book all about being left behind in the winter when everyone else is asleep. And moomintroll wakes up all on his own with the winter landscape. So it is very much about loneliness but then its aboutjust discovering friends within the winter landscape. And these are books that i go back to all the time. And theyre my go to comfort read. Jessie, follow that. My books of choice when im feeling a bit low or depleted or sad are the Cj Sansom Shardlake books. There are several reasons. Firstly, ifind with historical fiction like that or historical thriller theyre so immersive, that its like pure escapism. The attention to detail, the separation from your normal life. Shardlake himself is a bit of a depressive but he is much loved and people are always looking out for him. And the fact that there are seven books means that you know even if hes in peril theres this kind of safety net, hes going to survive. So, yeah, those are the books that i have turned to. You know, one might argue theyre not the most literary writing inside them, but that doesnt matter because its about escape and immersion and, you know, getting yourself involved in a quite gnarly plot that you kind of try and solve alongside him. Its like a displacement activity from your own minds whirrings. One of the things we would like to try to do is work out, we are sort of preaching to the converted, i think we all know that fiction can help, really, in ways that other kinds of art forms and certainly other literature cant. But it would be great if we could figure out exactly why. And something that have already come up are narrative. And i wanted to ask how important narrative is, but also place and character and the stories that we ourselves bring to and overly the texts with. So youve each got really personal connections to your fiction and, ella, i know you said you go back to them again and again and again. Yes, well, i think there is that element of repetition, talking about that narrative of going back to something. Theres an aspect of time travel. So when you read a book that you read when you are eight, 15, 20, every time you go back and read it youre revisiting that self that you were when you were the younger age reading the book. So for me reading Something Like tess of the durbervilles, which i first read when i was 15, i really identified with tess the first time i read it. The second time i read it ten years later i found i was really stressed out with how passive she was and it drove me mad and then i read it again ten years later and i began to understand some of the decisions again. And theres something about going back every time to a book of your life which is incredibly rewarding, fascinating, and you get to know yourself better cause you visit the layers of yourself, like an onion, that youve had over the years reading that book. So im a great fan of rereading. Secret selves hidden away in the pages of the book. Alex, you mentioned you found your way to Huckleberry Finn while living in a Childrens Home. How did you get to that book in particular . Did somebody thrust it into your hands . I think it was lying around somewhere. There was a cupboard. I remember in my dormitory there was a cupboard and there were discarded football annuals. I dont know if anybody remembers, of my generation, of childs book and football annuals. There were christmas specials, beano, that kind of stuff. There were one or two discarded books. Some of the pages were missing, one of them was tom sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, in fact, i even asked for oliver twist but they would not give us that. Laughter. Seditious texts in my eight, nine year old self i was trying to find a narrative that i could relate to, where i could recognise the characters, where i could recognise my own personal struggle. That was what i was searching for. Just to give me comfort. Somebody out there in the world is experiencing what im experiencing. And that was so important to me to discover that. So i not alone, not totally alone. Its that thing about being seen or that feeling that, yeah, i am not alone. And you have that yes moment when youre reading a book that you think, oh yeah, i feel like that, and you have articulated it so beautifully. And you feel recognised. Absolutely. I know that you later spent some time in prison after the brixton riots. Yeah, thats right. Literature must have been really important inside, i would imagine. In fact it was a blessing. Because it got me back to reading. And my cellmate, he had copy of clr jamess the black jacobins. About this story of the slaves who basically liberated themselves in haiti 200 or so years ago. So that affirmed my belief in humanity, because, you know, at the point of my life, had no family to go, ifelt alone again. And so it wasnt fiction, but non fiction got me back to feeling like could play a part in this society. So the blackjacobins was a big moment for me to install belief in myself that, hey, my struggle is notjust on my own. There are other people out there who struggle just like i do and i can be part of this human world again. Because sometimes you feel disenfranchised from normal society if youve got such bitter memories, bitter experiences. So that enforced my belief in humanity again. Then i started to go back into fiction again, people like james baldwin, peoiple like richard wright, and poetry, that informed me greatly. And so when i left a came out a much more educated man that i was than when i was first sentenced. So it was a blessing. You know, sometimes you have to make a positive of a negative. Applause. Were discussing bibliothera py and the relationship between reading fiction and Mental Health. Jessie, i know you have written about how the stupendous success of your first novel actually triggered an episode of intense anxiety. Did you find yourself turning to fiction . Yeah, idid. I think that was the first i started reading cj sansom. That was it. Ijust member lying in bed and every day reading cj sansom. Thank you, cj um, yeah, yeah, i did. And i have always read. Whether im in a sort of anxious period or not. You know, its sort of an automatic response. But it does seem to be those books for me. I mean, when i first, you know, i can now retrospectively look at my, sort of, journey of Mental Health and i know now that i was a very anxious child, around eight, nine, ten, and i remember reading jane eyre for the first time, clinging to it through the night, a bit like you under the covers. Because here was this little girl, i didnt have the same situation, i wasnt in an orphanage, but this lost person. And i remember almost the actual physical act of reading and holding onto a book was better than doing nothing and then what youre doing is youre filling your anxious thoughts or youre replacing them with a narrative, is the flow, a strong structure, with a shape that you can feed yourself into and identify with. So there was that one and thats kind of my book that i always go back to and change as i grow older. Now i think mr rochester is awful. But, yeah, after the min came out, that. Yeah, i wasjust very, very, very tired and couldnt really do much and reading a book like the shardlake, like i said, where theres a recipe or a formula, almost, i dont mean that in a derogatory way, but its comforting and, yeah, i did read a lot. And poetry as well. Ella, can i ask you, as our resident expert, what you think it is about fiction in particular that enables it to reach places that others cant . With fiction, particularly longform fiction like novels, its the fact that you as a reader inhabit the characters of the book, you become them while you are reading. Particularly with Something Like shardlake which you completely disappear into, the cj sansom novels, any good book that is going to transport you, takes you to another place, and you are literally in that other place, you are living and breathing in another country, another time, you are in the skin of another person and it is that magical act of being transported, which is amazingly powerful, and you dont get that in other artforms such as films. With the films you can be transported, but it is only for two hours, its quite short. It is quite passive, isnt it . Yes, and you are given the visuals, whereas with a novel you are inventing them yourself. So it is much more of a powerful event, because you are involved, no one reader will read the same book in the same way. So its a magical thing, a powerful thing, and i really believe it is unlike any other form of art that we know. One of the reasons why i dont often describe my characters particularly physically is because i want the reader to finish that for herself or himself, so there is an opportunity to inhabit and to identify on your own terms. The creative mind take over. Absolutely, the reader finishes the circle. Alex and jessie, have you found that writing fiction can confer similarly therapeutic benefits to reading it . You go, alex. Yes, absolutely. For me, i tried to be a dj in my youth, 16, 17, 18, and i discovered that actually writing about my experiences in care, in brixton and so forth, that helped heal the trauma inside of me. So my initial works were poetry and song lyrics, you know, i wanted to be the next bob marley. There is still time. Audience laughs. Still time. Its fantastic for me, because i can talk about these experiences, because before as young man, where you are supposed to be strong, you are supposed to be this macho thing, thats a figment of the imagination sometimes we are vulnerable too, we are fragile too. I had to go through that process of emptying this trauma out onto the page, and that formed in poetry and song lyrics from 18 until 26, 27, until i was confident enough, and i did have to find that confidence, to actually try and start to write fiction, and i was finally published at 36. But that process of me emptying all that Emotional Trauma in me, that was self therapy. It still is. Im still working through issues, and sometimes people make the mistake, oh alex, hes quite successful, but sometimes i have moments in the dead of night when the past can intimidate me, torture me, and so that writing and reading is still an ongoing process. For me it is a double edged sword because it is absolutely a catharsis, a form, it is my fundamental form of self expression, writing, it always has been. When i have very difficult things happen to me it is always the pen that gets picked up and something comes out, and i do, certainly, and my second novel the muse, embedded in that are some synthesised reactions to what happened to me as a woman and as a person who makes art in a public eye, there are definitely me working out certain things through my characters. The flipside of that privilege of being able to write and express oneself and therapise oneself, is the actual act of writing is hugely isolating, and you are alone for weeks, months, years on end, going a bit loopy on your own, and my boyfriend will come home from work and i am just clinging to him to have a conversation. He doesnt necessarily want that, he has been talking to people all day. And that accumulates, i have that conversation with some of my writer friends how do we stop ourselves getting lonely . The paradox is as well, your book gets read by hundreds of thousands of people, but you are not there to witness it, you are not there in concert with them. What about feedback, do you have responses from readers . Yes, and it is always very humbling. Someone recently said that his mother had passed away, and the miniaturist for him will always hold a special place for him because it was the first book he could bring himself to read. I had another one whose father was in hospital and they were doing these long drives, who said my book brought them comfort as they sat by his bed, and another woman who had a baby and had had post natal depression and my book was the first book she had read, and yes, it seems to be that sort of gratitude that is expressed to me, that i almost feel like i dont really. I dont really deserve. It is. The gratitude to me but it is the book. Ella, we are hearing an increasing amount about the Mental Health challenges facing young people, and i know that both alex and jessie have written for young people, could you talk a little bit about the importance of bibliotherapy in regard to that demographic . Yes, it is increasingly hugely important, that children and young adults get to read books as much as possible, and perhaps have the opportunity to have bibliothera py, and there are so many brilliant young adult books now which tackle all kinds of issues from bullying to transgender issues, to social exclusion, drugs amazing authors out there, as you say, it is the issues within the books that they get to talk about which might be happening in their lives, but they have not quite realised, they havent been able to articulate it. And when they read it in a book they can begin to articulate it. Whether its to their friends parents, or social workers and so on, i really think that a book can be the axe that breaks the frozen seas within us, as kafka said. And that is as true of any age, i have seen kids having incredible revelations when they have read a novel, and suddenly had that moment of recognition, of their own situation in a book. And that is really moving and powerful. Another big genre out there at the moment is dystopian fiction, and jessie, when you mentioned the importance of catharsis, i wanted to ask all three of you what you think the value of books that might seem superficially gloomy are. I think it is important that you do sit with the gloom, and you do sit with discomfort and you do sit with sorrow and you do sit with grief and you do sit with pain because it is not going to go anywhere if you ignore it. If you are sort of reading through something that, you know, is a difficult book, an upsetting scene or an unhappy setting or. Its two things, its like reassuring to know you are not alone. It could be worse. Maybe someones got it worse than you, right . But also, again, there is not nothing that cant be solved, but there is not anything that cannot be described or. Represented to you. Again, it is a question about being alone. If i am in a distressed place i dont tend to like watching movies or tv where there is violence or unhappiness, but i will still read a book. I dont know why. But yeah, i think there is no. When we have been talking about reading books to alleviate bad Mental Health, i have never actually meant, you know, unremittingly positive stuff, i mean stuff that gets into the nitty gritty and deconstructs how you might be feeling. And deals with it, and addresses those issues. For me dystopian fiction has always been there, it hasjust been rebranded in a way. Because i remember. I remember my father, when i was reunited with him, he would tell me about his childhood, and he would describe how storytelling injamaica would go from village to village, especially at harvest time, i think this was the time of my grandfather, and they would interpret stories of slavery and so on, and all of this stuff is very gloomy, but also, it affirms the history, it affirms the struggle that people have been through and so forth. I see dystopian novels in the same kind of way. People processing how difficult it may be, and we can overcome, because i think it was the greeks who mentioned that there is only seven types of story, so i see the dystopian novel as the monster story, the big thing that you have to overcome. I think we can learn from that struggle, why not, we have to address those issues, cant just shy away from them, we have to face them head on and learn to live among it and deal with it. I think that is the end unfortunately for this session, so one more thank you to ella, tojessie, to alex, and to you all. Applause. For more stories about textural healing, arts and culture, go to bbc. Com culture. Good evening, it has been a day of sunshine and showers. Heavy showers that we saw recently across the east coast of england and scotland are easing the way, this was the picture earlier on in bexhill on sea in east sussex, blue skies there, clear skies across much of the country tonight. We have a breeze picking up across the north west but lighter winds elsewhere and it will feel mild and humid with temperatures between ten to 1a degrees. Sunday morning starts off in a drying out, long spells of sunshine around, the wind picks up towards the north west ahead of some cloud and rain which pushes in across Northern Ireland through the latter part of the morning, that will affect the open, thenit morning, that will affect the open, then it will push towards the west of scotla nd then it will push towards the west of scotland by lunchtime, slowly pushing eastward through the day. Much of eastern scotland, england and wales day trial day with temperatures between 18 to 2a degrees on sunday. Those temperatures will be on the rise with a of the week, showers in the north west but hides in london up to possibly 3a degrees. Bye for now. Highs in london. This is bbc world news today. Im samantha simmonds. Our top stories iran releases footage of the moment its troops seized a british flagged oil tanker in the gulf. London says its working to defuse the crisis. British airways says it is suspending all flights to cairo for seven days for security reasons. The vatican opens two burial chambers in the search for a teenage girl who went missing 36 years ago. The eagle had landed. Roger. Countdown to the exact moment, 50 years ago, when the eagle module touched down on the surface of the moon
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.