The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts

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She is one of the most talented, not just SpAds, but just all-round public affairs, policy-type people that I’ve come across,” one gushing former adviser said. “She can do the wonkish policy side of things, she’s great at comms, and then she’s just a great strategist as well.” A former lobby journalist at titles including the Yorkshire Post, the Sunday Times and the Mail on Sunday, McGee eventually went native in Whitehall, cutting his political teeth as a civil service spinner for various Tory Cabinet ministers before winding up working for Boris Johnson at the Foreign Office.

Playful and deft, Palmer’s debut novel spans the brownstones of Brooklyn to the shores of Jamaica and Trinidad, and Tobago. This is a tale that honors the complicated love between immigrant families, the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood, and, above all, the infinite power of storytelling: to haunt, heal, and conjure entire universes into existence." —Daphne Palasi Andreades, author of Brown Girls With a delightful talent for storytelling, the narrator turns what in other books would be rather mundane scene-setting into fairytale-like vignettes with references to nature and symbolism, drawn from folklore traditions in Trinidad and Jamaica. As such, characters like Anansi, Rolling calf, Mama Dglo, and other animals make appearances.

The long and winding name of this assertive debut matches the magnitude of the stories within, which draw on folklore to capture the dynamic between two sisters, Zora and Sasha Porter. Their mother’s illness and their father’s violence has fractured their relationship, but their bond is reforged as an old family secret—and a surrounding cache of remarkable tales—roars to the surface." — Elle, A Most Anticipated Title of the Year SP: When I first started writing in Sasha’s voice, it was sort of inspired by this time me and my friend went to this drag show. We also came in drag, and we went out after. And I feel like I was able to play so effectively, it seemed, that I was just being treated like a different person. I was very interested in that. I notice it in other ways too. Like if I wear a wig, I’m also treated very differently by men about what kind of person I might be versus if I’m wearing my fro. It felt most pronounced in the ways that it seemed like I was supposed to be more confident and more assertive, but I was still the same person. The first chapter I wrote was when Sasha is in the bar, and the date doesn’t know how to read Sasha. I think from there I kind of just got lost in her voice, and it obviously diverged from my experiences into something else. But that’s where it started.

Taylor, et al., (2009) The Artist and Her World. Considers Potter's career and life in chapters arranged thematically; The Pitkin Guide to Beatrix Potter.

Beatrix Potter’s childhood

Prismatic and dazzling, Palmer's debut entrances with its stories-within-stories structure and loving portrayal of two sisters coming into their own power while grappling with family secrets and tales untold. Anansi and other folkloric figures and deities of their Jamaican Trinidadian heritage weave throughout the novel, transforming from teller to teller, from one generation to the next—at times haunting or healing, seductive or terrifying. Palmer's ever-rippling prose also shifts deftly—from magical to macabre, playful to tender, always with compassion for all." —Angela Mi Young Hur, author of Folklorn Beatrix Potter married William Heelis, a solicitor in Hawkshead, in 1913. Then started the next stage in her life, being a Lakeland farmer, which lasted for 30 years. The office of William Heelis is now the National Trust’s ‘ Beatrix Potter Gallery‘.

Debruge, Peter (18 February 2018). "Film Review: 'Peter Rabbit' ". Variety. Archived from the original on 8 March 2019 . Retrieved 8 March 2019.In 1903 Beatrix Potter bought a field in Near Sawrey, near where they had holidayed that year. She now had an income from her books, Peter Rabbit having now sold some 50000 copies. In 1905 she bought Hill Top, a little farm in Sawrey, and for the next eight years she busied herself writing more books, and visiting her farm. Playful and deft, Palmer’s debut novel spans the brownstones of Brooklyn to the shores of Jamaica and Trinidad, and Tobago. This is a tale that honors the complicated love between immigrant families, the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood, and, above all, the infinite power of storytelling: to haunt, heal, and conjure entire universes into existence.”—Daphne Palasi Andreades, author of Brown Girls Hope is one of a faction of Truss SpAds from the Department for International Trade and the FCDO who will join Truss in key roles in No. 10. Still in his 20s, Hope cut his teeth in the Conservative Research Department, but as a relative newcomer is little-known in wider Westminster circles.