{"product_id":"david-bowie-enid-blyton-and-the-sun-machine-9781526173652","title":"David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the Sun Machine","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this one-of-a-kind book, novelist and academic Nicholas Royle brings together two remarkably different creative figures: Enid Blyton and David Bowie. His exploration of their lives and work delves deeply into questions about the value of art, music and literature, as well as the role of universities in society.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBlending elements of memoir and cultural commentary, Royle creates a tender and often hilarious portrait of family life during the pandemic, weaving it together with musings on dreams, second-hand bookshops and unpublished photos of Bowie taken by Stephen Finer. He also shares previously unrecorded details about Blyton’s personal life, notably her love affair with Royle’s grandmother.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eDavid Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine \u003c\/i\u003eoffers a singular perspective on the cultural significance of two iconic figures. In doing so, it makes a compelling case for the power of storytelling and music to shape our lives.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e'The novelist and critic Nicholas Royle has a new book out, which is as good and as strange as its title suggests, \u003ci\u003eDavid Bowie, Enid Blyton and the Sun Machine\u003c\/i\u003e, in which he describes some of the ways literature functions as a delivery system for startling encounters – for the purposes of the meeting of other minds, and of being gathered into a common social life à la Bowie in his early song ‘Memory of a Free Festival.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eIan Sansom, TLS\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'one-of-a-kind fantasia.'  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e  Alexander Larman, The Spectator\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'...like a grand summing-up of a lifetime’s reading and thinking, which in Royle’s case is certainly a lot, clearly hard-won, hard to describe – and illuminating.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eIan Sansom, The Telegraph\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘A dazzling act of literary-critical rebellion, a portrait of pandemic family life and an intimate exploration of personal history. This book illuminates the recent cultural past, casting new light on the lives of David Bowie and Enid Blyton, and infuses the future with the brightness of its invention and wit.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNaomi Booth, author of \u003ci\u003eExit Management\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'This is IT: the book you couldn’t possibly have been waiting for. Enid Blyton and a telepathic dog called Timmy take a bow for Bowie, who nods at COVID in a disturbing Toyland called Earth. A magical series of ghostly lectures from beyond the graves of academe, all served with lashings of lingering veer. Once again, Royle has rung my bell.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTimothy Morton, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Stuff of Life\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'A fascinating mix of the autobiographical and the scholarly, woven deftly around two of the major cultural figures of recent times: Enid Blyton and David Bowie. Nicholas Royle mixes family and cultural histories in typically insightful and learned fashion.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAndrew Maunder, author of \u003ci\u003eEnid Blyton: A Literary Life\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘\u003ci\u003eDavid Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine\u003c\/i\u003e is about how literature and music burrows tunnels through our lives, connecting worlds of imagination and memory, connecting us to each other, creating new spaces for light to enter. Royle’s heartfelt and mischievous text assembles narratives, images, sounds, lyrics, children’s books and real and imagined memories into a luminous construction. Fragile and abundant, indulgent and generous, it is about how the “peculiar goings-on” in a \u003ci\u003eFamous Five\u003c\/i\u003e book or a stray line from a David Bowie song can change the way you see the world.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLeah Kardos, author of \u003ci\u003eBlackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘This is a fascinating book. Harassed academics will immediately relate to it, and so will all Enid Blyton and David Bowie fans, but it is much more than a book about any of those topics. It is an evocation of a time and a place, South London in the mid-twentieth century, the world that produced two such disparate figures as Blyton and Bowie, but also the author himself. I read it with great pleasure and interest.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eGabriel Josipovici, author of \u003ci\u003eForgetting\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Hugely pleasurable. An adventure in life-writing and a highly original celebration of the life-forces of art and song.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAlison Light, author of \u003ci\u003eA Radical Romance\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘The book’s appeal and strength is the very unusual melding of Royle’s own story, Enid Blyton, Beckenham, David Bowie (including \"Memory of a Free Festival\"), which all coalesce by pivoting time and geography.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eStephen Finer, painter\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘\u003ci\u003eDavid Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine\u003c\/i\u003e is written with a poet's playful ear and a sometimes fierce polemical rage. Nicholas Royle's book has moments that will make you gasp with wonder. Turns of thought, passion and story feel as if they come from a master film director or a virtuoso storyteller. Linking Blyton with Bowie in ways we never dreamt imaginable, Royle illumines the solar wonder of both figures – and reminds us of the glories that both inhabit and surround us all.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDenis Flannery, editor of \u003ci\u003eThe Cambridge Companion to David Bowie\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Words, sounds and silences are explored closely as Nicholas Royle explains the intertextuality between two writers we had never thought were linked so intimately.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNick Smart, editor of \u003ci\u003eDavid Bowie: Glamour \u003c\/i\u003emagazine\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e'Extraordinary. It’s brilliant. I finished it late last night. I couldn’t, as they say, put it down.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNicholas Royle, author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eLondon Gothic\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e’one of the best and most original books I’ve ever.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe International Times     \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e -- .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart I: Living in the M times\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart II: A sense of the ending\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMemory of a free festival (first lecture)\u003cbr\u003eThe undermind (second lecture)\u003cbr\u003eTelepathy (third lecture)\u003cbr\u003eThe time machine (fourth lecture)\u003cbr\u003eThe Croydon Bookshop (fifth lecture)\u003cbr\u003ePicture break\u003cbr\u003eWhat a big memory you have, Grandmother! (sixth lecture)\u003cbr\u003eBut the clouds (seventh lecture)\u003cbr\u003eFairy (eighth lecture)\u003cbr\u003eCoda \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart III: Typewriter\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart IV: Strangers meet we when\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘What is a sun machine?’ Afterword by Peter Boxall\u003cbr\u003eIndex\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Manchester University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51041041940823,"sku":"9781526173652","price":72.25,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781526173652.jpg?v=1750948712","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/david-bowie-enid-blyton-and-the-sun-machine-9781526173652","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}