Portraits of Writers

 I went up to Hay Castle to see the first of their Art Exhibitions.

This one is in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, and was chosen by Dylan Jones.  The main exhibition is of seven women and seven men, with a bonus collection of portraits on an iPad - the pictures captioned in Welsh are first, followed by the same pictures captioned in English (or at least, that's the way I was able to make it work).  These portraits are from a book of 100 Writers for sale at Richard Booth's Bookshop, starting with Douglas Adams and Jane Austen, and including Keats, and Seamus Heaney, and JK Rowling.

I recognised the first picture in the exhibition, of Riz Ahmed, but not because he was a writer - he's also an actor, and he was in the Star Wars film Rogue One!

Most of the pictures were photographs (the one of Hilary Mantel was atmospherically blurry).

Edmund de Waal, who wrote The Hare with Amber Eyes, was sitting with some of his ceramics.

Tracey Emin (the artist who exhibited the infamous Bed) was dressed as the artist Frida Kahlo.

Owen Sheers was sitting out on Hampstead Heath.

The two biggest paintings in the exhibition are of Jan Morris the travel writer, and Salman Rushdie.

There were also pictures of Trevor Phillips, Jackie Kay the Scottish poet (I love her work), Sarah Waters who wrote Tipping the Velvet,  and Bernadine Evaristo (and three other people - next time I'll take a notebook and write down all the names!)

What I did notice was that most, if not all, of the writers are activists of some sort.  Trevor Phillips is perhaps the best known of these, for his work as the head of the Commission of Racial Equality. 

 Several of them are part of the LGBT+ spectrum - Jan Morris began life as James (and accompanied the 1953 Everest expedition - the mountain is in the background of her picture) and  Jackie Kay and Sarah Waters are gay.

There's also a strong Welsh connection.  Owen Sheers has written a lot about this area, for instance, and even Salman Rushdie was rumoured to be hiding out in a cottage in the Brecon Beacons when there was a fatwa out for his murder after he wrote The Satanic Verses.  Another part of the background of Jan Morris's portrait depicted Wales.

It was a fascinating exhibition, and well worth the £3 entrance fee.