hans christian anderson

The Fir Tree - as read by David Tennant


In a forest, a small fir tree is not happy being pretty – it wants to be taller, tall enough that hares are not able to jump over it. It feels no pleasure in sunshine and birdsong, only yearning to be taller.
When woodcutters cut down the taller trees, the fir tree wonders where the trunks are going.

A stork tells him are to be made into masts onto boats and sail over the sea. The fir tree now yearns for that. The sun and wind encourage the tree to be happy with life as it is but it takes no notice.
When Christmas comes, smaller trees are taken away by woodcutters. Sparrows tell the fir that they are decorated and placed in houses. The fir now yearns for this to happen to him – even more than he wants to cross the sea as part of a boat.
The following Christmas, the tree is cut down. It feels sad to be leaving the forest, but thinks a better life is waiting. The tree is placed in the centre of a nicely furnished room, is decorated by children and topped with a star. Candles are lit, carols are sung and the tree is very happy; but this does not last.
It is soon stripped, taken down and placed in an attic. It feels sad and alone for a while, but makes friends with mice and rats, who ask about life in the forest. This makes the tree realise how it had actually been happy there.
After a while, the tree is hauled outside. It is happy to see the sun and thinks it is to be replanted, but soon realises it is withered and old. It is thrown in a far corner of the garden, where one of the children removes the Christmas star which had been left on it. Soon it is chopped up and burned.

BBC - School Radio - Tales of Hans Christian Andersen - 8: The Fir Tree
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Gods and Monsters

Virginia Woolf said that Homer's epic poem the Odyssey was 'alive to every tremor and gleam of existence'. Following the magical and strange adventures of warrior king Odysseus, inventor of the idea of the Trojan horse, the poem can claim to be the greatest story ever told. Now British poet Simon Armitage goes on his own Greek adventure, following in the footsteps of one of his own personal heroes. Yet Simon ponders the question of whether he even likes the guy.


Plus a couple of clips from the BBC documentary


http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vtwnz

Simon Armitage does it again

Simon Armitage, "Homer's Odyssey"

… Simon Armitage recasts the Odyssey as a radio play and hence entirely in dialogue. Even though the book was a BBC commission, it is vivid and riveting from start to finish. Odysseus's telling of his story to the Phaeacians is handled beautifully, with the dialogues switching back and forth between those in the stories Odysseus tells and those between Odysseus and his listeners. But the book's best sections are the dialogues between Athena and an entirely memorable Zeus: the king of the gods comes across as a wonderful ironist:

When we send eagles

to signal our thoughts in the sky,

what do they do -- stand and point and stare,

like ... birdwatchers!

Or:

At least they don't live forever, like us. My memory --

it's like a museum. Infinite rooms, covered in dust.

Or:

I find it doesn't do to look down too much like that.

Gives one a bad neck.

As I looked back through the book to find some good passages to cite, I discovered that after about halfway through the book, I stopped underlining things. That could be a bad sign (fewer quotable passages later in the book?), but it usually means that I got so caught up in the story and its telling that I stopped thinking about finding quotable quotes! And this is, of course, a fabulous story, which Armitage tells in a fresh and exciting way.

http://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2006/08/simon-armitage-homers-odyssey.html

The Ring

This is how it all started:
http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/broadcast/ring-videos.aspx
http://metoperafamily.org/metopera/broadcast/hd_events_template.aspx?id=12572

LotR

Can you summarise this in just one paragraph?!
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_rings