Poet Laureate(1999 -09) Sir Andrew Motion, will be at The Dora Stoutzker Hall, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, on Tuesday 10th April ‘12 at 7.00pm to talk about his new books, Silver - Return to Treasure Island.
Silver - features a cast of noble seamen, murderous pirates and tales of love, valour & terrible cruelty.
‘Treasure Island is a book I have loved since childhood," said Andrew Motion. "It is a cornerstone of my reading, and of my imagination. Excitement, mystery, intrigue, suspense, pathos and human sympathy.Stevenson combines all these things. I have tried to do the same - in a story which honours his original genius, but at the same time sails its own course."
Silver - Return to Treasure Island begins in July, 1802. In the marshy eastern reaches of the Thames lies The Hispaniola, an inn kept by Jim Hawkins and his son. Young Jim spends his days roaming the mist-shrouded estuaries, running errands for his father and listening to stories in the taproom; tales of adventures on the high seas, of curses, murder and revenge, black spots and buried treasure - and of a man with a wooden leg.
Late one night, a mysterious girl named Natty arrives on the river with a request for Jim from her father - Long John Silver. Aged and weak, but still possessing a strange power, the pirate proposes that Jim and Natty sail to Treasure Island in search of Captain Flint's hidden bounty, the 'beautiful bar silver' left behind many years before. Silver has chartered a ship and a hardy crew for this purpose, whose captain is waiting only for the map, now locked away at The Hispaniola.
Making haste from London, Jim and Natty set off in the footsteps of their fathers, their tentative friendship growing stronger day by day. But the thrill of the ocean odyssey gives way to terror as The Nightingale reaches its destination, for it seems that Treasure Island is no longer uninhabited...
Sir Andrew will read from his latest book of poems, The Cinder Path (Faber) shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, Laurels and Donkeys on conflicts from 1914 to the war in Afghanistan, his acclaimed autobiography In The Blood - A Memoir of My Childhood, and will answer questions about his writing and the role of Poet Laureate. Followed by book signing. For adults and 15+
Andrew Motion’s poetry has received the Arvon/Observer Prize, the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway and recently co-founded The Poetry Archive. Andrew Motion was knighted for his services to literature in 2009.