You can access it here. 

Useful Links

• AA316 The nineteenth century novel 

Roddy has now been writing for a quarter of a century but getting his first book published was no easy task. After unsuccessful attempts Roddy financed The Commitments himself. He says “I had no family. I lived in a bedsit so I didn’t need to save, not a bother in the world. I went into the bank and I did a bit of homework with my agent. We figured out the printing wasn’t all that expensive, same as buying a second hand car. I lived by the train station so I didn’t need a car so did this instead. It was a great adventure”. The Commitments went on to become a hugely successful book and film and the first book in The Barry Town trilogy. The trilogy included The Snapper and The Van.

A career in writing adult and children’s books ensued as well as short stories and theatre as a script writer. The Commitments and other films are still shown on TV today. When he looks back at those who didn’t believe in his writing, Roddy doesn’t gloat but admits it does now amuse him sometimes when he thinks of those publishers who rejected his first book.

Roddy has recently indulged in his love of literature by setting up a creative writing centre in Dublin called Fighting words with his friend Sean Love, Executive Director of Amnesty Ireland. Roddy’s aim for the centre is to help students of all ages to develop their writing skills and to explore their love of writing.

The centre is based on a similar concept Roddy came across in America founded by writer Dave Aggers. Roddy describes it as “just a big room entirely devoted to writing, writing a story together”. To date the centre has welcomed six and a half thousand primary school children through its doors, three thousand secondary school children, as well as a variety of adult groups including groups with learning difficulties.

Following the centre’s opening in 2009 despite the early success, Roddy says “the big challenge now is trying to guarantee the long term future, to address the funding”. The centre is currently run by Roddy, Sean and some very keen volunteers.

The centre holds various writing groups. Roddy tells us, “We have a four part session which is finishing tonight on writing a mini-series for television. We have a teenage writer club”. In addition fellow writers such as Kevin Barry (who wrote The Boy in Striped Pyjamas) have come into classes to offer advice to the children as they write.

For those who are thinking about taking the OU course in Creative Writing, Roddy offers students the following tips for success:

1. Start writing as quickly as possible. Don’t think about it just start writing. Worry about the quality sometime later.
2. Don’t be too fussy at first. Write maybe twelve sentences knowing that only two of them are any good.
3. Just fool yourself, double spacing. Leave blank space so you can go back and rewrite. It’s not finished till it’s finished.
4. Make it a discipline if you can rather than wait for an ideal opportunity.
5. If you are thinking of dealing with publishers get a thick skin and if you are lucky enough to get a publisher cling to them!

Though Roddy has been continuously writing books, short stories or articles over the years, the centre had been a welcome distraction and different focus for Roddy. He has recently however just embarked on his first publicity book tour in about 6 years to promote The Dead Republic. He says “Six years ago I said I was never going to do it again. I was absolutely sick of hearing myself talk”. The benefits are clear though as Roddy found an appearance on a radio show in America increased his book sales. “Radio is brilliant, it’s very effective. Immediately afterwards the publishers looked at the Amazon chart, it went from something like sixteen hundred to two hundred and ninety because of one interview”. So perhaps his final lesson is, once you’ve got the right book, and the right publisher, the work doesn’t stop there!

Find out more:

• A215 Creative writing module
• Fighting words: the write to right
• OpenLearn: Literature and Creative writing

The reversal of the traditional telling of the British presence in South Asia is being presented by Beyond the Frame: India in Britain, 1858-1950.

The joint project with the British Library and funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council celebrates the often overlooked story of the Indian presence in Britain.

It was launched in December at the offices of the British Council and the National Archives of India in Delhi (pictured above). 

Dr Florian Stadtler, OU Research Associate accompanying the tour with OU Professor Susheila Nasta and Penny Brook of the British Library said: “At the launch and during the school workshops it was clear the exhibition presented a little-known aspect of the history of the relationship between Britain and India.”
  
Some schoolchildren who visited said they had never been told in detail about Indians in Britain.

“It has always been about the British in India,” said one.

At a panel discussion in Kolkata British Deputy High Commissioner Sanjay Wadvani said the exhibition’s accompanying Asians in Britain website and database should be ‘required reading’ for anyone joining the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s South Asia team.

Beyond the Frame, which features extensive material on the part Indians played in trade, the military, politics and culture in Britain has now been seen in several cities across India and will continue to tour into February.

Reaction from the Indian press has been positive with coverage in many leading newspapers, magazines and websites.

 At the National Archive of India the exhibition panels with content from the former India Office Library were joined by the NAI’s own material – thought to be the first time the two have been displayed side by side. 

The OU-BL team were given a VIP welcome and the NAI entrance was garlanded with flowers in their honour.

Thought-provoking, enlightening and fun were just some of the words students used.

One said they had learned a lot of things they never came across in text books.
 
Another said: “I wasn’t interested in history before, but I am now.”

The combined version of 60-Second Adventures in Thought, a quirky look at philosophy narrated by comedian David Mitchell has had half a million views since it was posted in November.

The animation explains how, theoretically, Greek hero Achilles should never be able to beat a tortoise in a race and a cat cannot be both alive and dead – unlike atomic particles.

Also examined is the Grandfather Paradox – can a time traveller shoot his own grandfather to alter history, or confirm it?

David Mitchell tells us the Grandfather Paradox is: "a mainstay of physics, philosophy and the Back to the Future trilogy!”

Up to mid-December there had been 8.1 million views of the OU YouTube channel and it keeps growing.

The success of 60-Second Adventures in Thought follows the also very popular animated History of English in 60 Seconds series narrated by Clive Anderson posted in the summer which has also become a combined version..

Adventures in Thought and History of English as well as other great videos are also downloadable on iTunes U.

• View 60-Second Adventures in Thought
• View History of English combined version
• Link to iTunes U

As the American forces out of Iraq, Dick Skellington reflects on what has been lost of the cultural heritage of Babylon, and how a remarkable new virtual museum civilisation opens a window on a civilisation dating back to the 6th millennium BC. 

In any war there are other casualties, apart from flesh and blood. Truth of course is an everyday victim, but often what is also lost is something immeasurably valuable, a country's cultural heritage. So it was with Iraq, in 2003, when American neglect allowed looters to rampage and rape the treasures of its National Museum. 

Now a remarkable website invites you and me, any one with online access, to tour the wonders of the ancient Mesopotamian empire. 

The Virtual Museum of Iraq is a true internet masterpiece, a site of immense value which attempts to reconstruct those lost relics and treasures, and allows the visitor to access the rich artefacts and beautiful art of antiquity.  The history of Iraq is also part of our history. Gazing at this site one realises one's place in humanity.

The National Museum of Iraq was founded by the British Arabist and traveller Gertude Bell in 1926 and was home to one of the world’s finest archaeological collections. During Saddam's reign, the Museum was funded to connect the Baathist leader with Iraq’s earlier days of glory. 

'a site of huge educational importance and potential. I can not recommend it highly enough'

It was closed in 1991 because of the Gulf War and was not reopened until calmer times in 2000, but the American invasion changed all that. There were no 'weapons of mass destruction' in Iraq, that we now know, though many said as much at the time of the invasion. But the war destroyed a significant part of Iraq's cultural heritage. Currently only a third of the halls of the original National Museum still stand.

On February 23, 2009, at the behest of Iraqi prime minister Maliki, to demonstrate that things were returning to normal, the National Museum reopened. In a ceremony to mark the occasion Iraq's tourism and antiquities minister said that only 6,000 of the 15,000 items looted in 2003 had been returned. 

In a book published in 2009, it was estimated that 600,000 archaeological pieces were looted by Kurdish and Shia militias allied with the United States since 2003. Many of these treasures are still lost, some are over 10,000 years old, but at least the Virtual Museum allows us to see some of them once more, and provides us with access to some of the remaining treasures of the National Museum, and some of those returned items. 

Experts believe many items have been smuggled out of the country and are in the possession of private collectors. According to the United Nations cultural body, UNESCO, about 40 to 50 of the lost items are considered to be of great historical importance.

The Virtual Museum is a virtuoso tour de force. It is available in English, Arabic and Italian and is the result of a cultural collaboration with Italy.  At a cost of over one million euros. this magnificent website brings to life the treasures of antiquity. Italy helped repair and recover many stolen artefacts after the bricks-and-mortar museum was ransacked. The Virtual Museum reflects the priceless cultural of from Mesopotamia from prehistoric times to the late Islamic.

After a flash video introduction, the site delivers the user to the "Museum" itself, a Main Entrance with eight different doors leading to various "halls:" Prehistoric, Sumerian, Akkadian and Neo-Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Achaemenid and Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian, and Islamic. Each hall looks like a museum space, with about eight objects in a room and a map on a wall (or in one case, a ceiling). Clicking on any linked item will zoom the viewer closer to the object and offer some options for further examination. 

The virtual exhibit does not seek to reproduce the Baghdad museum but rather give a broad look at the art and history of a land that hosted some of mankind's earliest civilizations and later became the scientific and literary hub of the Medieval Arab world. It is a site of huge educational importance and potential. I can not recommend it highly enough.
Dick Skellington 9 December 2011

More information

The Virtual Musuem of Iraq 

Photo: The National Museum of Iraq

For those who submitted a question there was also a chance to win a signed copy of The Impossible Dead. Thank you to everyone who posted a question,. The winner is: David McIlveen

Here are Ian's responses to your questions:

The local colour of the various locations in Scotland shine through in your books and make it all so real, living in Aberdeen I have often walked near places you've written about and half expected to see your characters pass me in the street. Where do you start if you're needing that sort of local flavour in a location that is new to you? Beth Scott
Well, it certainly helps to spend time in a place if you intend writing about it. Even a day spent tramping the streets will give you a sense of the place. For the Aberdeen scenes in 'Black and Blue' I checked into a hotel just of Union Street for three or four days. I did a lot of walking, and asked a lot of questions.

I have just come back from a weekend break in Edinburgh and loved it! Which other major city would you set your books in and why? Maz Loton
I'm not sure which other city I would set my books in. I like Vancouver and Ottawa and Halifax (in Canada), and see some similarities between them and Edinburgh. Writing about them would be a good excuse to go stay there for a while....

Do you envisage more Malcolm Fox adventures coming along, or is he just making "guest appearance books" with his team from time to time? Debbie Pitt
I don't really know. When I begin planning a new book, I get the theme and story first, then decide which main characters would help me explore both. In real life, cops only join internal affairs for a short time (between 2 and 5 years), so Malcolm will eventually go back to 'normal duties'.

How do you find your continual inspiration and do you write in a good old fashioned book for ideas and research or do you write direct onto a word processor? Ray Packham
Inspiration comes from anywhere. Maybe a news story that makes me think 'what if...?' Or someone might tell me an anecdote. Or an idea might just pop into my head fully-formed. I then do some thinking/mulling, and scribble down ideas and such like. Then I type these up. When I start the actual book, I type all of it on my coal-fired laptop.

How much of yourself went into Rebus? Were you a dark and moody heavy drinker? Ian Simmins Was I dark and moody? I suppose I was. I spent a lot of time on my own and was never terribly gregarious. I had no direction in my life. I lost my mother when I was nineteen and I was maybe listening to too much 'dark' music (Joy Division, Throbbing Gristle, The Cure). But that's not to say Rebus is 'me'. It's just that he is imbued with some of that darkness from the man in his early twenties who invented him.

I have read nearly all the Rebus books, and some short stories too. I wonder where he is now? He had no life outside the job. Has he really retired? Is he sitting in the corner of the Oxford all day, doing the crossword and downing pints? Does Siobhan drop in now and again? Has he been beaten up by some lowlife as he staggered home, now he hasn't a badge? I can't believe I care so much, but I do! David McIlveen
As was hinted at in the 'final' Rebus book, Rebus himself is almost certainly working for the Cold Case unit of the Edinburgh police. They have also changed the retirement age, so it is possible he has asked to re-enlist. He certainly has not gone 'gentle into that good night'. And he still sees Siobhan.

Will you bring back Rebus? Anthony Blacker
I think so, yes. We have some unfinished business, Rebus and I....

How would you get away with murder? Phillip Tennant
I've been told by fire officers that one good way to get away with murder is to get someone blind drunk, then simply turn the heat up under a chip-pan and leave them in the kitchen. Another tip is to murder someone who won't be missed - a vagrant or similar. You're welcome...

Which was your favourite OU course and why? Christine Carrot
'Listening to Music' was interesting. I discovered that for over 40 years I had been hearing music passively rather than actively listening to it. The elder of my two sons also did the arts foundation year and I enjoyed sneaking a read of some of his course materials, and my wife has been an OU student for about ten years.

Are there OU courses currently, or possible ones in the future, that Rebus could deliver & Fox could take? (Not sure how you'd get Rebus into the teaching role but it would be fascinating to see the results) THEN you could work in the import of libraries & librarians LOL Lana Kamennof-Sine
I dread to think what OU courses Rebus could teach! I don't think I would trust him to impart the correct twenty-first century views to the students. He's too much of a throwback. But I can envisage Malcolm Fox doing all sorts of courses and modules. He is not set in his ways and is willing to learn - unlike Rebus!

Find out more

• The Impossible Dead
• Study literature and creative writing

Henry Stead, Research Student (Classical Studies) has won third prize in the prestigious The Times Stephen Spender Prize 2011, awarded for an original translation of poetry into English. His winning entry is a translation from Latin of an extract of Seneca's powerful tragedy, ‘Medea’.

The prize set up by the The Times and Stephen Spender Trust, hopes to encourage and stimulate a new generation of literary translators. Stephen Spender was himself a fine translator of poetry.

Email to request a free booklet containing the winning translations and commentaries.

One of the judges, Prof Edith Hall, comments: "As a theatre enthusiast, I was delighted with the taut speakability of Henry Stead’s excerpt from his version of the grim Senecan Medea. I hope that it will encourage others to submit translations from verse drama, a category of translation in which poets such as Ted Hughes and Tony Harrison have recently shown English can be most effective."

Find out more:

• Henry's winning poem
• Classical studies at the OU
• The Times Stephen Spender Prize for poetry translation 2011