On 22nd February we were delighted to launch Again Behold the Stars, the latest award-winning pamphlet from Alex Josephy.
Set in winter, 1553 in a small Italian hill town under siege, it’s a narrative of uncommon endurance and an intense immersion into a lockdown that challenges all the senses. It’s a lockdown that is utterly different from the modern experience during the Covid pandemic, yet also hauntingly resonant with it. Most vitally, the empathy evoked reaches us across almost five centuries, making us care in the present.
The launch took the form of a recorded dramatic reading with Alex supported by three superb readers: Patricia Driver worked for many years as a broadcast news journalist in Bahrain, then as a senior fundraiser at St John Ambulance and English Heritage. Since retirement, Pat has immersed herself in the Rye, East Sussex theatre scene as a director and actor. Janet Stott is involved in local theatre productions in Rye. She has loved reading aloud from an early age, and encouraged her children to do the same but with less success! Susannah Mayor is involved in theatrical productions in Rye and East Sussex, and works for the National Trust.
The launch also included questions from the appreciative audience, but sadly we had some Zoom issues so the recording is simply the reading — which is wonderful 🙂
You can find the pamphlet here
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