Jacqueline Yallop – författare

Twenty years ago, Jacqueline Yallop was leading guided walks at Nenthead, one of a network of ‘model’ villages which sprang up across Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A life-long fascination was born.From Scotland’s New Lanark Mills to the Arts and Crafts cottages of Port Sunlight, Yallop visits these utopian experiments to explore their rich histories. Looking at everything from sewage systems to sculpture, chocolate to coal, and free trade to electoral emancipation, this book is a personal exploration of why and how these village utopias came about, what they tell us about the past, and how they still resonate with us today.

'A love story, a meditation on meat eating, on farming animals, on the relations between man and beast. Yallop writes with great tenderness' Daily TelegraphOn her fortieth birthday Jacqueline Yallop built a pig sty in rural south-west France. She and her husband Ed had decided to turn their Aveyron cottage and garden into a small holding. They bought two pigs - Big and Little - to rear and slaughter. The locals were full of advice, and with just a small amount of plastic poles and metallic string and some new Wellington boots, they were off.They will cultivate the land. They will raise, then kill and eat their pigs. Or so they keep telling themselves. Because the reality is so very different from the romantic dreams of two stubborn English writers . . .

Sister Bernard has lived in a grey-stone convent in rural France for more than seventy years. In that time, a once youthful and lively cloister has gradually emptied, until only Bernard and two other nuns remain, a knot of survivors facing the creeping challenges of old age - ailing bodies and worn-thin friendships, slips of mind and, in their most secret moments, slips of faith. Now, the halls will fall silent as the three women pack away their few possessions into wooden boxes, preparing to leave the building that has been their home for decades. For the nuns, the closing of the convent means more than losing a home: the crumbling walls have shielded them from a changing modern world; for Sister Bernard, the quiet monotony of the religious life has protected her from memories of the past - the disgrace of when, as a young woman in wartime France, she became the unwitting prize of a cruel wager; when her devotion to God faded in the face of her need for a young Nazi soldier; and when she experienced the full horror and violence of war.Rich and complex, Obedience is a story of betrayal and divided loyalties; a powerful portrait of conflicted love, which goes beyond the veil to reveal a woman who feels adoration and fear, guilt and pride, and all too rarely, peace. Sister Bernard is a remarkable creation: a woman torn between her irreconcilable private passions - her love for Christ and her blistered memories of physical desire.

Through a series of discussions with practitioners in fields beyond the Humanities, this book explores how key creative writing techniques inspire and inform other disciplines. In turn, this new multidisciplinary view of the mechanics of storytelling sparks new ways of approaching the writing, reading and teaching of fiction in and beyond the writing workshop.A personal voyage of discovery, the book revolves around conversationswith specialists in archaeology, genetics, architecture, medicine, law and botanical science to consider how specific techniques – narrative time, characterisation, fictionalstructures, plotting, point of view and place – inform their work. Through a series of reflections, short fictions, practical exercises and prompts, these case studies then suggest new insights and methods for investigating key writing techniques, which in turn advocate for closer interactions between STEM, the humanities and arts practice.With creative arts subjects increasingly under pressure to justify their significance in contemporary work and life, Jacqueline Yallop makes a case for the re-evaluation of the importance of narrative writing craft in the world beyond personal practiceand student assignment.

Through a series of discussions with practitioners in fields beyond the Humanities, this book explores how key creative writing techniques inspire and inform other disciplines. In turn, this new multidisciplinary view of the mechanics of storytelling sparks new ways of approaching the writing, reading and teaching of fiction in and beyond the writing workshop.A personal voyage of discovery, the book revolves around conversationswith specialists in archaeology, genetics, architecture, medicine, law and botanical science to consider how specific techniques – narrative time, characterisation, fictionalstructures, plotting, point of view and place – inform their work. Through a series of reflections, short fictions, practical exercises and prompts, these case studies then suggest new insights and methods for investigating key writing techniques, which in turn advocate for closer interactions between STEM, the humanities and arts practice.With creative arts subjects increasingly under pressure to justify their significance in contemporary work and life, Jacqueline Yallop makes a case for the re-evaluation of the importance of narrative writing craft in the world beyond personal practiceand student assignment.

'Often poetic ... highly-researched and thought-provoking' New Scientist'Gently and thoughtfully enquiring' The Spectator'A beautifully written, deep and moving exploration of darkness' Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness WideCan you remember the first time you encountered true darkness? The kind that remains as black and inky whether your eyes are open or closed? Where you can't see your hand in front of your face?Jacqueline Yallop can. It was in an unfamiliar bedroom while holidaying in Yorkshire as a child, and ever since then she has been fascinated by the dark, by our efforts to capture or avoid it, by the meanings we give to it and the way our brains process it. Taking a journey into the dark secrets of place, body and mind, she documents a series of night-time walks, exploring both the physical realities of darkness and the psychological dark that helps shape our sense of self. Exploring our enduring love-hate relationship with states of darkness, she considers how we attempt to understand and contain the dark, and, as she comes to terms with her father's deteriorating Alzheimer's, she reflects on how our relationship with the dark can change with time and circumstance.Darkness captivates, baffles and appals us. It's a shifty thing of many textures and many moods. It can be an absence and a presence, a solace and a threat, a beginning and an end. Into the Dark is the story of the many darks that fascinate and assail us. It faces the darkness in all its guises and mysteries, celebrating it as a thing of beauty while peering into the void.

'Often poetic ... highly-researched and thought-provoking' New Scientist'Gently and thoughtfully enquiring' The SpectatorCan you remember the first time you encountered true darkness? The kind that remains as black and inky whether your eyes are open or closed? Where you can't see your hand in front of your face?Jacqueline Yallop can. It was in an unfamiliar bedroom while holidaying in Yorkshire as a child, and ever since then she has been fascinated by the dark, by our efforts to capture or avoid it, by the meanings we give to it and the way our brains process it.Taking a journey into the dark secrets of place, body and mind, she documents a series of night-time walks, exploring both the physical realities of darkness and the psychological dark that helps shape our sense of self. Exploring our enduring love-hate relationship with states of darkness, she considers how we attempt to understand and contain the dark, and, as she comes to terms with her father's deteriorating Alzheimer's, she reflects on how our relationship with the dark can change with time and circumstance.Darkness captivates, baffles and appals us. It's a shifty thing of many textures and many moods. It can be an absence and a presence, a solace and a threat, a beginning and an end. Into the Dark is the story of the many darks that fascinate and assail us. It faces the darkness in all its guises and mysteries, celebrating it as a thing of beauty while peering into the void.