First Story Festival, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford

Malorie Blackman: children's laureate

Yesterday was the First Story Festival at Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford. I walked up to Norham Gardens in the early morning mist from the station, meeting memories at every turn, and ready for a day of workshops and talks. There was an inspiring address by the young poet Caroline Bird, who talked about writing as being a gift to somebody - all writing, she said, may help someone understand something about themselves in a way that they hadn't before. Which is a very nice way of putting it. Some First Story alumni spoke about their experiences, and the work that First Story does (including one of my own, from St Augustine's, which made me proud), which was very moving.

William Fiennes interviewed the children's laureate, Malorie Blackman (or Marjorie, as Kate Fox later accidentally called her): she spoke warmly and enthusiastically about her love of reading, and what led to her becoming a writer. She received over eighty rejections, but kept going - a fine message of resilience. It was very revealing to hear her talk about her career: when she was at school, she wanted to be an English teacher; she wanted to do English and Drama at Goldsmith's, but was told that "black girls" don't read English, they become secretaries. I found that immensely shocking - it was perhaps only twenty or thirty years ago, and it made me wonder how much of that sort of thing still goes on. In any case, it gave her the will to wish to succeed; after going into Computer Sciences, she began to write, and has now produced over sixty novels - including the best-selling Noughts and Crosses series. I think she'll make a fine laureate.

I did two workshops, with a boys' school from Bradford, and my own school, St Augustine's in Kilburn: both produced some fine and interesting work.

In the afternoon, the magnificent Kate Fox (poet and comedian: see her website here) whipped up the crowd of 600 students into a roar of appreciation ("imagine One Direction in your bathroom giving you a private concert", which caused equal and opposite reactions). There were readings from students, and a final exhortation from Malorie Blackman to read, and write.

Many writers took part in the workshops, including Charles Cumming, Frances Wilson, Raffaella Barker, Mark Haddon, Betsy Tobin and others; the train home to London was particularly merry.

It's an exciting start to another year of First Story fun and wonder. Well done to all who took part.

What to wear for your Oxbridge interview

Nice bag. (Photo from Telegraph piece.)

What ho, I've written a blog for The Telegraph about what to wear for your Oxford interviews. Try a morph suit. Or maybe not.

The Asocial Network

In an anti-social Saturday night mood (I have a lot of work on this week) I decided to watch The Social Network. As I consumed it on my laptop, I couldn't keep my Facebook page open (as many people increasingly seem to do). This was probably a good thing.

Zuckerberg, Prince of Geeks

According to the film, Facebook started out of a miasma of greed, spite, boorishness and awkwardness. Mark Zuckerberg, reeling from being dumped by a girl, sets up a site called Facemash which compares girls at Harvard in terms of hotness. It gets him into (ahem) hot water; it also receives thousands of hits in the first day it was set up. Zuckerberg was portrayed by geek idol Jesse Eisenberg as a sort of mechanical, sleep-walking droid who dreams of algorithms and of being socially accepted into one of Harvard's clubs (which seem, as far as I can see, to be far more exclusive than anything Oxford has to offer). His friend, Savarin (played with emotional heft by future Spiderman Andrew Garfield), is on his way to becoming part of those clubs, which sows the seeds for future revenge.

The Olympian Winkelvoss twins, who embody the patriarchal, moneyed system that Zuckerberg wants in on (I think I met one of the Winkelvoi [as Zuckerberg calls them], at Oxford: which one I can't remember, but it was definitely something to do with rowing and I seem to remember a vast expanse of lycra), note Zuckerberg's success with Facemash and tell him about a network that they want to set up between Harvard students. Zuckerberg plays them off, telling them he can't do it, whilst at the same time setting up exactly the same sort of thing - which will eventually become Facebook. The film is slick, dark, with a sinuous soundtrack (by Trent Reznor and Atticus Rose which loops and grinds and whirls in deep ambient beats), as gripping as a hawk's talons on a mouse.


Something that is meant to encourage us to become freer, to share, was born from the most negative human emotions: lying, cheating, oneupmanship. Zuckerberg's treatment of his friend Savarin is particularly poignant, diddling him out of his share of the business with the help of Sean Parker (a dotcom brat played as an empty, vain cokehead by Justin Timbersnake). The Facebook office moves, at Parker's advice, to California, where Zuckerberg and his pals lark around like stupid fratboys toking on bongs, diving into pools and getting 'wired in' to computers. It's not a pleasant sight, and it slightly worried me that that sort of empty hedonism might be anybody's idea of a good time.

A friend of mine with Asperger's syndrome told me once that, at his fortnightly meetings with the Asperger's group, they had decided that Facebook had been set up by someone with a similar syndrome. Watching this film has confirmed that point for me. Social interaction on Facebook is much, much easier for people who are unable to speak to each other face to face, who find the multitude of signals and ironies that people use in speech too confusing. It is not designed to be 'creative'. Zuckerberg seems to think that it is creative. In fact it is almost the opposite of 'creative', as it forces thoughts and feelings into trammelled paths. On a day that three or four friends announced their engagements, as a joke I put my status up as 'engaged'; within ten minutes I'd received congratulatory messages from people who surely must have known that I wasn't in the slightest about to get hitched. There is not much room for jokes or irony on Facebook.

A truly creative site would allow you as the user to make it what you wanted it to be. People talk a lot about Facebook's role in revolutions: I've also seen its role as a mobiliser of hate - there was a truly vile page about the woman who put a cat in a bin, for example. For every page promoting peace and love there's another promoting destruction.

I am uneasy about Facebook, I will admit. It sucks up my time. I like to pretend that it is a passing fad, that within ten years we'll all have moved on to something else. But it's been part of my life for six years now; many teenagers have grown up with it as a viable and normal form of communication. There is an image at the end of the film where Zuckerberg befriends his ex-girlfriend on the site; we see him pressing refresh, every few seconds, to see whether she has accepted him. Zuckerberg has succeeded, is my feeling, not in becoming part of those exclusive clubs; but in making the world his club, and turning us all into versions of himself.

And now I shall upload a link to this piece onto Facebook, and press refresh until somebody 'likes' it... The Social Network is a superlative piece of filmmaking - of last year's Oscar contenders, I think the best. And it is also the most worrying.

Talk: Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford

Walking through the streets of Oxford on a grey day is rather melancholy; I revisited a couple of old haunts (including the marvellous Georgina's café, which I am pleased to see hasn't changed a bit). As I was walking down Cornmarket, I was stopped by an undergraduate who wanted to sign me up a to a jobs website. He was very convincing. 'Do you have a job?' he asked. I stuttered an answer. Queuing in Lloyds Bank as I took my pen out of my pocket the lid snapped: an ill omen, I thought.

So all in all I was mightily pleased by the warm welcome I received at Christ Church Cathedral School, where I gave a short talk and a reading of The Liberators. Their questions were rather good; they also asked if The Liberators is ever made into a film (are you listening Spielberg / the makers of Harry Potter? If you are, have a look at Keren David's post too...) that I should ensure none of the details are lost. And they asked the most important question of all: do I surf or skateboard? To which the answer, unfortunately, is no; but there's still time... Thank you very much indeed to all who were involved, it was a pleasure.

The picture, by the way, is of the house Dorothy Sayers was born in - just round the corner from the school. No wonder she wrote such brilliantly murky books...

Gaudeamus Igitur: Oriel Gaudy

Having attended Oriel College, Oxford, between the years of 2000 and 2003, I was asked back to a Gaudy dinner a couple of weekends ago. The College asked me to write a short piece about it: click HERE to read it.

The Lessons by Naomi Alderman - review

Writing about the university of Oxford is very hard indeed. You are always going to be in the shadow of Evelyn Waugh. The narrative arc of Oxford novels is almost always the same: outsider falls in with glamorous group of rich people and is in some way damaged. This applies to American novels about Ivy League universities, too. And hardly anyone gets it right. I don't think Naomi Alderman, in her new book, The Lessons, has got it right at all. Her novel follows the classic arc (also seen in Donna Tartt's The Secret History, Richard Mason's The Drowning People, etc.)

Many things about it, I had no space for in my review. The novel is very entertaining, but it struck me as false. There is a moment where the students get their results - one of the boys gets a two one, as does one of the girls. Alderman suggests that girls are marked down. But Oxford exams are anonymous! And in any case, the other female members of the group get firsts, whilst the other two boys get a two two and a third. She also has her group moving out of college in their first year - I'm not sure the university authorities would be too happy about that.

Still, here is my review, for the Financial Times: Click HERE