I can’t say what this diagram is for or what it represents without spoilers, of course. But it has taken five days of hard graft, pages of ‘notes to self’, and several such diagrams to make it work (the thing that this represents).
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Reblogging this post from October 2014 for your enjoyment, with a couple of updates: a) the MixCloud link now repaired to archive audio of ‘Stormbringer’ performed live at Roshven, Scotland with musical accompaniment from Peter Lanceley, and b) to include a link to a subsequent republication of ‘Stormbringer’, in Jean-Marc Lofficier’s 2017 anthology Michael Moorcock’s Legends of the Multiverse (Black Coat Press).
Image © 2014, Jo Joelson, London Fieldworks
My short story ‘Stormbringer’ will be broadcast on Resonance 104.4fm at 4pm today, 28 October 2014. Here’s what it says in the Resonance 104.4fm schedule:
By way of tribute to the late Jack Bruce, a special broadcast of Tony White’s short story first broadcast as part of Remote Performances in August 2014. ‘Stormbringer’ was inspired by talk of a period in Jack Bruce’s life when it seems he was entitled to be formally addressed as The Much Honoured Laird of Sanda. Voice: Tony White. Guitar: Peter Lanceley.
Tony White, explains:
© Anthony Oliver, 1999
In 1999 I had been invited to be part of an art project that was to take place on the remote Scottish island of Sanda, off the southern tip of the Mull of Kintyre. Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson of London Fieldworks had invited a group of artists…
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My new short story inspired by the life and work of the aeronautical engineer Sophie Robinson, specially commissioned for episode 3 of the groundbreaking new Inventive Podcast series, mixing engineering fact and fiction. Listen now at www.inventivepodcast.com
Episode 3 of the groundbreaking Inventive Podcast airs today, featuring Professor Trevor Cox’s in-depth interview with the brilliant aeronautical engineer Sophie Robinson, and my new short story inspired by Sophie’s life and work, ‘The Hotwells Cold Water Swimming Club’.
The Inventive Podcast series mixes engineering fact and fiction, and in my story I wanted to explore further some of the ethical dimensions of Sophie’s work – plus ideas around class and access to education – via the medium of wild swimming.
At one point I began thinking of the story as a kind of ‘prose portrait’, and I tried to use Sophie’s voice wherever I could, finding that incidental comments from the interview recordings and my notes – e.g. ‘Go on, ask me that question again.’ – might provide me with the actual narrative building blocks of my story. But I was also mindful that a story always needs to assert its own logic, and I remembered what the poet Louis Aragon says in the preface to Vol. 1 of his great Henri Mattisse: a Novel about the moment when a written portrait begins to diverge into fiction:
to justify the liberty taken with my subject, my own variations, the sort of detachment I aimed at . . . Just as a painter, having started a portrait, finds his hand running away with him and . . . eventually changes from a photographer into a novelist.
Aragon, Henri Matisse: a novel, Volume I, p.16
You will notice that the fictional engineer in my story is called Fiona/Fi rather than Sophie/Soph, but I hope I have done the real Sophie proud nonetheless!
It was a great privilege to talk to Sophie and to write a piece of fiction inspired by Trevor’s interview and our subsequent conversations, so I really hope you enjoy the episode.
Here’s the blurb:
In the third episode of Inventive Podcast, Trevor meets aerospace engineer Sophie Robinson. Sophie works on groundbreaking eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) aircraft that will change the way we travel in the future. Writer Tony White’s inspirational story ‘The Hotwells Cold Water Swimming Club’ captures perfectly what Sophie gets up to in her spare time – she’s a self-confessed mermaid! – and the ethical dilemmas she has faced at work.
We’d love to hear what you think 
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A beautifully performed extract from my specially commissioned new short story ‘The Hotwells Cold Water Swimming Club’, inspired by the life and work of aeronautical engineer Sophie Robinson, formed part of a great Edinburgh Science Festival event for the Inventive Podcast series yesterday. The online event is now up on YouTube and on the Festival site.
I was really hoping for a strong northern female voice to read the story, so I’m super pleased with the casting by Inventive’s production company Overtone! See what you think (the extract starts around 13:42, but the whole event is really worth a watch).
My story premieres in full next week as part of Sophie Robinson’s and my episode which airs on 7 July.
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For more information about Inventive Podcast, go to www.inventivepodcast.com
Buy The Fountain in the Forest via publisher Faber and Faber
They are all of them themselves and they repeat it and I hear it, a marathon reading of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans instigated and organised by Anna Barham and Irene Revell, and which I participated in over the past year or so, will be broadcast in its entirety for 52 hours starting Friday 25 June at 6pm, as part of Town Hall Meeting of the Air, an exhibition and public programme conceived by Kate Liston & Tess Denman-Cleaver that thinks about the poetics of civic gathering. Town Hall Meeting of the Air is at Baltic39, Newcastle upon Tyne until 2 August 2021.
Here’s more info from Anna Barham on Instagram:
In January 2020 @i_a_revell and I organised a year long collective reading of #TheMakingofAmericans We met in person for the first 3 sessions and then hosted 20 more online. Listen to all the sessions stitched together in a marathon broadcast from 6pm Friday @townhallmeetingoftheair an exhibition and radio station conceived by @listonkate and @tessd_c (who’re both among the readers) throughout the weekend on townhallonair.com
@banana_harm on Instagram
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Listen at http://www.townhallonair.com/ from 6pm Friday 25 June 2021
Buy The Fountain in the Forest via publisher Faber and Faber
I’m really excited to be part of the Inventive project. Each writer was introduced to an engineer, with a brief to write a piece of fiction inspired by any aspect of their life and work. Starting 23 June, each story will be broadcast alongside an interview with the engineer. And there will be events, including at Edinburgh Science Festival.
I don’t know the full line-up yet, but I do know that some great writers are involved, including Nina Allan and Tania Hershman.
My episode – with the brilliant aeronautical engineer Sophie Robinson – will be broadcast on 7 July. I can’t wait to share it with you.
“Engineering is so central to our lives, and yet as a subject it’s strangely hidden in plain sight. I came up with idea of Inventive to explore new ways of telling the story of engineering by mixing fact and fiction,” commented Professor Trevor Cox, Inventive Host and an Acoustical Engineer from the University of Salford.
The series will debut on Wednesday 23 June with 6 new episodes dropping across the summer. We’ll have a break and be back with the final five episodes in October.
For more information about Inventive Podcast, go to www.inventivepodcast.com
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Find out more about booking Tony White for events, readings and talks
Buy The Fountain in the Forest via publisher Faber and Faber
This weekend I was privileged to have been invited to talk about Piece of Paper Press – the artists’ book project I founded in 1994 – for Carthorse Orchestra, David Collard’s online literary gathering. Here are a couple of slides showing the titles published to date. The book in Chris Saunders photo is an untrimmed cover registration test of Joanna Walsh’s Shklovsky’s Zoo, from 2014.
Here’s the blurb for the Carthorse Orchestra event – many thanks to David, and all:
This week we mark the publication of three outstanding works of fiction: Rónán Hession will be reading from his second novel Panenka, Joanna Walsh will discuss Seed with Tim Etchells, and Lynn Buckle will share her new novel What Willow Says. We’ll have close-up magic from Oli Catford, Tony White will talk us through his unique imprint Piece of Paper Press. and theatre maker Laura Hopkins will tell us more about a theatrical work-in-progress ‘Brutal Arithmetic’.
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Find out more about booking Tony White for events, readings and talks
Buy The Fountain in the Forest via publisher Faber and Faber
Having been writing around/about the spring of 1985 (and all points in between then and now) for a while, first with my novel The Fountain in the Forest, and latterly with Volumes two (completed) and three (in progress), I found this photogaph of me right then, aged nearly 21, on the edge of the moors outside Otley, West Yorkshire.
Spring in Yorkshire: warm enough for a picnic, cold enough for a donkey jacket!
I lived in Leeds at the time. The photo is by my good friend and housemate Debbie, who had darkroom access via her Fine Art course at what was then Leeds Poly.
In that spring of 1985 – having already done a Foundation Course at the former West Surrey College of Art and Design (now the University for the Creative Arts) in my hometown of Farnham – I was working my way towards going back to study Fine Art myself, although that wasn’t as straightforward as it might have been. Which is partly why I was living in Leeds.
Access to education, especially higher education, is an issue that is really important to me. And it’s a theme I’ve found myself returning to in my fiction, so more on that later maybe – but it will need a longer piece than I can write now, today. In the meantime, thanks to Debbie for taking such a good photo – I’m lucky to have it!
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Buy The Fountain in the Forest via publisher Faber and Faber
Piece of Paper Press & tonywhite.london 
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