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| Belle de Jour blogger unmasks herself as 'big mouth ex-boyfriend' looms Research scientist Dr Brooke Magnanti announces she is author of mysterious call girl blog and says she has no regrets about working as prostituteOne of the best kept literary secrets of the decade was revealed last night when a 34-year-old research scientist, Dr Brooke Magnanti, announced she was the writer better known as call girl Belle de Jour.The author behind the blog turned bestselling series of books detailing her secret life as a prostitute decided to come out to one of her fiercest critics, the Sunday Times columnist India Knight, after claiming anonymity had become "no fun". "I couldn't even go to my own book launch party," she said.It does appear, however, that Magnanti's hand was forced after a former boyfriend appeared set to reveal her secret: Knight's interview with her today refers to "an ex-boyfriend with a big mouth lurking in the background".Until last week, even her agent was unaware of her name. But now Magnanti, a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology in a hospital research group in Bristol, has spoken of the time six years ago she worked as a £300-an-hour prostitute working through a London escort agency.Magnanti turned to the agency in the final stages of her PhD thesis when she ran out of money. She was already an experienced science blogger and began writing about her experiences in a web diary later adapted into books and a television drama starring Billie Piper.Magnanti says she has no regrets about the 14 months she spent as a prostitute. "I've felt worse about my writing than I ever have about sex for money," she said.A month ago she revealed her secret to her colleagues at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health, who were "amazingly kind and supportive". She was preparing to tell her parents this weekend.Unlike some bloggers who achieve notoriety, Magnanti managed to protect her identity so completely that a series of professional writers were linked with the character, among them Rowan Pelling, former editor of the Erotic Review and – perhaps less plausibly – the journalist Toby Young.Magnanti today defended herself against the notion that she risked glamorising prostitution, a charge levelled by John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, last month.Magnanti told Knight she was "entitled to speak about it, or write about it, as I lived it". She continued: "Some sex workers have terrible experiences. I didn't. I was unbelievably fortunate in every respect. The people at the agency looked after us appropriately and instructed us appropriately and weren't going to put us in harm's way if they could possibly avoid it."Magnanti said she was working on a doctoral study for the department of forensic pathology of Sheffield University in 2003 when she began her secret life. "I was getting ready to submit my thesis. I saved up a bit of money. I thought, I'll just move to London, because that's where the jobs are, and I'll see what happens."I couldn't find a professional job in my chosen field because I didn't have my PhD yet. I didn't have a lot of spare time on my hands because I was still making corrections and preparing for the viva and I got through my savings a lot faster than I thought I would."Unable to pay her rent, Magnanti's mind turned to other things. She told the Sunday Times she wanted to start doing something straight away, "that doesn't require a great deal of training or investment to get started, that's cash in hand and that leaves me spare time to do my work in". Her solution was prostitution."I did have another job at one point, as a computer programmer, but I kept up with my other work because it was so much more enjoyable."The Belle de Jour blog remains current, despite Magnanti's long absence from prostitution. In a post dated today, she wrote that "a perfect storm of feelings and circumstances" had drawn her out of anonymity, adding: "And do you know what? It feels so much better on this side. Not to have to tell lies, hide things from the people I care about. To be able to defend what my experience of sex work is like to all the sceptics and doubters."While the revelation was unexpected, at least one Sunday Times reader claimed, in a comment on the newspaper's website, that it made perfect sense: "Given the state of funding in biomedical research, the low pay and poor career prospects in the UK and Europe, it's hardly surprising and she's probably not the only one."BloggingInternetPaul GallagherPeter Walkerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Why shouldn't libraries sell books, asks minister Margaret Hodge raises prospect of libraries expanding role beyond lending books in major reconsideration of policyLibraries risk sleepwalking through the century unless radical ideas are implemented, the arts minister Margaret Hodge claimed today, at the launch of a long-delayed, much-anticipated consultation document on the future of libraries in the UK.Hodge chose an impressively refurbished library in Southwark, London, to launch the document, which advocates reforms to the library service up to and including everything from Lovefilm-style delivery, national online borrowing and the ability to return a book wherever you are. The document could be translated into firm policy, she said, by early spring.The document, called Empower, Inform, Enrich, contains 30 short essays designed to stimulate debate, from contributors including author Tracy Chevalier, Richard Charkin, executive director of Bloomsbury, and even the managing director of Starbucks UK, Darcy Willson-Rymer.The need for a national policy on libraries comes against a patchy backdrop – good in some areas, terrible in others – and the fear that councils are inclined to cut library spending first when budgets are strained. Nationally, the number of people using libraries has fallen eyery year since 2005, and book borrowing has dropped by 41% over 10 years, most dramatically (and worryingly) among the 16-24 age group.In the document, Hodge raises the prospect of libraries being allowed to sell books as well as lend them. She asks how online borrowing can be simplified, and how "a universal home delivery service" could be made available. Her presentation also indicated strongly that she was in favour of a more national library service; one in which you can "borrow a book in Bromley and return it in Birmingham" – and one in which libraries keep pace with technology. "Sleepwalking into the era of the iPhone, the eBook and the Xbox without a strategy," she suggested, "runs the risk of turning the library service into a curiosity of history such as telex machines ortypewriters."Not all was doom and gloom: there are, Hodge said, many terrific examples of good, dynamic libraries, "but for my money, they are too few and far between." This was due in part, she suggested, to a reluctance to modernise: "There is a trend among some librarians that we have to value the traditional library and they are resistant to change. Others, however, are really pushing the boundaries and that's where we need to learn.When you're facing big challenges you've got to think oustide the box and ideas that seem fanciful today may be commonplace in a decade," she said.Despite its ambition, the document was condemned by the shadow arts minister Ed Vaizey as "a complete waste of time." "It's not even a consultation," he said. "It is a series of essays including an advert from Starbucks. It has been cobbled together. There is no leadership and no indication at all of the government's thinking or direction of travel."Vaizey claimed that if the Tories got in at the next election, they would set up a libraries development agency to disseminate best practice, cut the number of library authorities and "get down and dirty in terms of skills" to make sure librarians were equipped for the 21st century. "The fundamental point is, it is not difficult," he said. "It just needs concentration and hard work rather than a lot of faffing around."Some of the suggestions were ridiculous, he continued. "It is barking mad for Margaret Hodge to shoot from the hip and say libraries should start to sell books without any thought at all to where libraries sit in the publishing ecology."Certainly some of the suggestions included in the document were radical. Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, proposed issuing a universal library card alongside birth certificates. But Richard Charkin's suggestion was far less radical. "Too much time has been spent thinking about 'libraries of the future'," he claimed. "If one minister would say: 'libraries are about making available what authors (of all kinds) have written both recently and in the past', then that one simple thing would reset the direction of the library service."LibrariesMark Brownguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Poster poems: Christmas The festive season has produced a great deal of mushy doggerel, but plenty of beautiful poetry, too. Please write some more of the latterWell, it's that time of year again. Last year I dodged the Christmas bullet somewhat by calling for your poems on the subject of food, but this time around I've decided to embrace the season wholeheartedly. Yes, I'm after your Yuletide verses.There are, of course, lots of Christmas poems; having conducted a rigorous poll of one person, I've found that the most famous of them all is Twas the Night before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore. The little fat man with the white beard; the reindeer; the sleigh full of toys; the snow: this poem contains all the elements of what we have come to think of as the traditional Christmas scene, even though we actually know that this version of the festival is a Victorian invention.However, the feast of Christmas is far older than Prince Albert, a fact that we are reminded of most forcibly by two rather wonderful 17th-century poems, Robert Herrick's Ceremonies for Christmas, with its images of food, drink and the Yule fire, and A Christmas Carol by George Wither, which adds the age-old tradition of bringing winter greenery indoors for the mid-winter festival. The vision of Christmas that is represented in these poems was remarkably resilient and enduring; there is a strong thread that links them to Wordsworth's Minstrels, a poem that dates from the very cusp of the Victorian era.These three poems also serve to remind us that Christmastide has long been associated with music and song, and most of us will have a much-loved carol or two we like to sing along with. My own favourite is The Holly and the Ivy, with its echoes of older, pre-Christian December celebrations. The 19th century also appears to have been the time when Christmas became associated with hearth, home and the family, as so many things did under Victoria, and this resulted in a good deal of very sentimental versification. Robert Louis Stevenson's Christmas at Sea is as maudlin as you could ask for, but, as you might expect from Stevenson, it's rather better written than most poems of its ilk. It would be all too easy to mock this slushy view of the festive season, but before you give in to cynicism, I feel I should remind you of the fate of the hero of Ogden Nash's The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus.Many 20th century poets, including some of those who are considered difficult or elitist, wrote excellent Christmas poems. TS Eliot's Journey of the Magi is extremely well-known; perhaps less popular, but no less enjoyable, is EE Cummings's little tree, a poem that seems, to me at least, to combine Victorian sentiment with rousing singability.Of course, the songwriters of the last century also found inspiration, and a decent source of income, in marking Christmas. Many of their songs are emblematic of the modern Yuletide, some are unbearably mawkish, others are just unbearable. But there are gems amongst them, and my personal favourite is the little-played River by Joni Mitchell.And so I invite your seasonal poems. You may be cynical, wide-eyed, sentimental, disgusted by the rampant commercialism you see all around you, or simply exhausted from shopping. One way or another, I hope you'll feel inspired. And so it just remains for me to say, in the words of the poet, "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"PoetryBilly Millsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Reel review | The Road: 'A hard, harsh journey, but an engrossing one too' John Hillcoat's film of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic father-son love story is bleak but powerful, says Xan Brooks, with brilliant performances from Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPheeXan BrooksHenry Barnes feeds.guardian.co.uk |
from Sleep and Poetry by John KeatsO for ten years, that I may overwhelmMyself in poesy! so I may do the deedThat my own soul has to itself decreed.Then I will pass the countries that I seeIn long perspective, and continuallyTaste their pure fountains. First the realm I'll passOf Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass,Feed upon apples red, and strawberries,And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees;Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places,To woo sweet kisses from averted faces –Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders whiteInto a pretty shrinking with a biteAs hard as lips can make it: till, agreed,A lovely tale of human life we'll read.And one will teach a tame dove how it bestMay fan the cool air gently o'er my rest;Another, bending o'er her nimble tread,Will set a green robe floating round her head,And still will dance with ever varied ease,Smiling upon the flowers and the trees:Another will entice me on, and onThrough almond blossoms and rich cinnamon;Till in the bosom of a leafy worldWe rest in silence, like two gems upcurl'dIn the recesses of a pearly shell.And can I ever bid these joys farewell?Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life,Where I may find the agonies, the strifeOf human hearts: for lo! I see afar,O'er sailing the blue cragginess, a carAnd steeds with streamy manes – the charioteerLooks out upon the winds with glorious fear:And now the numerous tramplings quiver lightlyAlong a huge cloud's ridge; and now with sprightlyWheel downward come they into fresher skies,Tipt round with silver from the sun's bright eyes.Still downward with capacious whirl they glide;And now I see them on a green-hill's sideIn breezy rest among the nodding stalks.The charioteer with wonderous gesture talksTo the trees and mountains; and there soon appearShapes of delight, of mystery, and fear,Passing along before a dusky spaceMade by some mighty oaks: as they would chaseSome ever-fleeting music, on they sweep.Lo! how they murmur, laugh, and smile, and weep:Some with upholden hand and mouth severe;Some with their faces muffled to the earBetween their arms; some, clear in youthful bloom,Go glad and smilingly athwart the gloom;Some looking back, and some with upward gaze;Yes, thousands in a thousand different waysFlit onward — now a lovely wreath of girlsDancing their sleek hair into tangled curls;And now broad wings. Most awfully intentThe driver of those steeds is forward bent,And seems to listen: O that I might knowAll that he writes with such a hurrying glow.John KeatsPoetryguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |