goodfellowsmansfield.com

Monday, June 17, 2013

The Duke of Edinburgh, the husband of the current British monarch, today departed from the London Clinic, located in the centre of the British capital, after eleven days. Prince Philip, who is aged 92, was hospitalised on June 6 to be given exploratory surgery on his abdomen.

According to the BBC, it was thought the Prince would remain in hospital for two weeks. The abdominal surgery was pre-planned, Buckingham Palace previously reported, although the reasons why this surgery was arranged have not been publicised.

The Duke of Edinburgh missed numerous royal occasions while he was in the private building, including the Trooping the Colour on June 15 to celebrate the Queen’s Official Birthday. As he was staying in the Clinic, over a thousand cards were sent to the Duke. Also, members of the British Royal Family, including Charles, Prince of Wales; Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex; Prince William, Duke of Cambridge; Prince Harry of Wales; and his wife, Elizabeth II, visited him.

A Buckingham Palace statement said the Duke was in “good condition and good spirits”, adding that he would take a two month time period to recover. “The Duke has expressed his thanks and appreciation to medical staff at the London Clinic and the many members of the public who have sent good wishes”, the statement added. ITV News Royal Correspondent Tim Ewart commented, “for a man of 92, who spent 11 nights in hospital, the Duke looked extraordinarily fit.”

Thursday, October 18, 2007

It can be difficult to be John Reed.

Christopher Hitchens called him a “Bin Ladenist” and Cathy Young editorialized in The Boston Globe that he “blames the victims of terrorism” when he puts out a novel like Snowball’s Chance, a biting send-up of George Orwell‘s Animal Farm which he was inspired to write after the terrorist attacks on September 11. “The clear references to 9/11 in the apocalyptic ending can only bring Orwell’s name into disrepute in the U.S.,” wrote William Hamilton, the British literary executor of the Orwell estate. That process had already begun: it was revealed Orwell gave the British Foreign Office a list of people he suspected of being “crypto-Communists and fellow travelers,” labeling some of them as Jews and homosexuals. “I really wanted to explode that book,” Reed told The New York Times. “I wanted to completely undermine it.”

Is this man who wants to blow up the classic literary canon taught to children in schools a menace, or a messiah? David Shankbone went to interview him for Wikinews and found that, as often is the case, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Reed is electrified by the changes that surround him that channel through a lens of inspiration wrought by his children. “The kids have made me a better writer,” Reed said. In his new untitled work, which he calls a “new play by William Shakespeare,” he takes lines from The Bard‘s classics to form an original tragedy. He began it in 2003, but only with the birth of his children could he finish it. “I didn’t understand the characters who had children. I didn’t really understand them. And once I had had kids, I could approach them differently.”

Taking the old to make it new is a theme in his work and in his world view. Reed foresees new narrative forms being born, Biblical epics that will be played out across print and electronic mediums. He is pulled forward by revolutions of the past, a search for a spiritual sensibility, and a desire to locate himself in the process.

Below is David Shankbone’s conversation with novelist John Reed.