CULTURE CLUB
READMY LIPS Check out the various events held around the city, including at the glorious University Arms and historic FitzwilliamMuseum
details for two of the embalmers present at the disaster and interviewed them. One had been 18 – just back from his honeymoon – when he was enlisted. “It made me wonder, what if somebody went to help, carrying their own sense of loss? How that would impact them?” Choral music is a recurring motif throughout her debut, A Terrible Kindness , jumping between Cambridge and the Welsh valleys. “The men of Aberfan responded by forming a male voice choir, which has gone on to sing all over Europe,” says Jo. She decided her central character, William, would be both a Cambridge chorister and an embalmer, closely basing the novel on accounts she was given by former choirboys in the 50s and 60s. “The bit I put off, which I knew I had to do, was to watch an embalming,” Jo says. “But, it meant I got to know a current embalmer, who taught me very
YOU GET A BUZZ AND FEEL LIKE PART OF THE COMMUNITY
Observer ’s top 10 debut novels of 2022 and already translated into multiple languages – done and dusted, a full draft of her next novel is at the ready. She is a stickler for routine; two hours are spent writing every day for six days a week, submerged in the imagined worlds of her books. Immersed in the writing scene at Cambridge, she runs workshops for students of any discipline at Lucy Cavendish College, a residential course with fellow writer Miranda Doyle, and teaches at Hills Road College and the Institute of Continuing Education. “I’ve met so many wonderful writers and you get fed by that. You get a buzz and feel like part of the community.” SOIL AND STRIFE Joe Swift is likely to be a familiar face. With 24 years of presenting Gardener’s World , nine books and a bespoke design company called Modular under his belt, this year sees five comprehensive guides published by the gardening great. As lockdown crept in, the importance of gardening for physical and mental health – and the benefits for wildlife – hit home for Joe.
openly about the price people like him pay daily, facing the very thing the rest of us spend time avoiding. That opened up the sense of humanity behind people who do jobs like that.” Growing up in a crematorium – where Jo and her family would watch funerals proceed past the kitchen window every 20 minutes – was another influence, albeit a subconscious one. She credits the experience with allowing her to speak to embalmers with ease, and imbuing William’s day job with familiarity. “What growing up in the crematorium taught me was the inevitability of
death – that it happens all the time. It doesn’t prepare you for the shock of losing someone yourself, but it makes me able to talk about things and be aware of the physical elements – what’s involved when someone dies and what has to happen.” Far from morbid, however, Jo’s novel is steeped in love, gentleness and hope. With A Terrible Kindness – one of The
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