Interview with Dr Leo Mellor

Dr Mellor is the Roma Gill fellow in English at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge; he specialises in modernism and Second World War literature. He teaches for several papers across the BA course and supervises dissertations on 19th- and 20th-century topics.

7am Wake up to the Today programme. Go to the gym, followed by breakfast with my girlfriend, a theatre director and translator.

8.45am Walk to college, which takes about 45 minutes.

10am Give a 50-minute lecture. I do about two a week, at the moment it’s literature and the Second World War.

11am Have an hour-long “supervision”, a one-to-one (or two) tutorial with students about their essays. I do about 12 a week.

1.15pm Eat with the 60 other fellows of the college at high table. It’s a really good way to bond as a unit.

2.30pm Give a weekly seminar, on modernism and the short story.

4pm More supervisions and endless emailing, mostly with the 30 English students I’m responsible for, but also arranging library visits, organising symposiums and contacting the editor of a book I am writing on London’s bomb sites and the literature of wartime London. I also set entrance exams and interview prospective students in December and January.

5pm Work on my book – it’s my first. I try to clear one full day a week, but the reality is that the three eight-week terms pass in an intense, exciting blur, and holidays are for research and writing, preparing reading lists, lectures and seminars.

7pm Sometimes I eat in college, work late in my office and then catch last orders in the pub and debate with friends. If not, I walk home listening to my Welsh-language podcasts practising my vocab. My mother is Welsh but I grew up in Brighton, so I only speak a little.

8pm Prepare for tomorrow’s supervisions, reading all the essays I will be discussing. Practise lectures on my cat Tolly.

8.30pm Cook dinner. I enjoy cooking as a way of relaxing.

9.30pm More preparation. Then I’ll read in bed until I fall asleep at about midnight. I have countless books on the go at once. I like to read articles and journals around my subject, but also completely off-topic as well. As a child, I just wanted to read books and I’ve fallen into a career where I get paid to do that. Some days, I can’t quite believe it. 

This piece first appeared in the Observer Review

Interview with Yeukai Taruvinga

Photo: Suki Dhanda

Yeukai Taruvinga, 26. Opposition campaigner who fled Zimbabwe fearing reprisals from Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party

‘I didn’t want to leave my country and my family, but I had to flee when I was physically abused by the militia of the ruling Zanu-PF government for supporting and campaigning for the opposition. Within hours of arriving in the UK I was told my claim for asylum had been refused. They wanted me to produce evidence, but how could I? I asked them: “What is more important, the evidence or my life?”

‘I was held for a week, then told to report once a month to an immigration centre while my case was reviewed. Four years later, I was told that my case had been refused and I was being sent back. All I had was my handbag. They wouldn’t allow me to get anything from my home, or to contact my solicitor. I was so scared that I would be deported to Zimbabwe, where I would be imprisoned and never see my family again. Seven years later I’m still waiting on the Home Office. They say my case will be decided by 2011, but until then I cannot work or study. I am in limbo. Most of my time is spent volunteering for Women Asylum Seekers Together, a group campaigning for and empowering women asylum seekers.

‘This idea that asylum seekers get free houses, cars and mobile phones is a lie. When I first claimed asylum I was given £30 a week and a shared room in a bedsit. Now I am classified as a ‘failed’ asylum seeker, yet the government accept that it is not safe for me to return, so I am given accommodation and £35 a week in supermarket vouchers.

‘I want to pay tax, support myself and pay my way but I am not allowed. I want to work with young people and do something positive. I want young people to say: ‘”This is Yeukai. Be like her.”‘

This piece first appeared in The Observer Review.

Juneau Projects Interview

Interview with Matthew Bourne

Matthew Bourne, the most talented choreographer of his generation, famous for his all-male Swan Lake, talks about his new ballet, a contemporary retelling of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray – the hottest ticket at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Why did you choose Dorian Gray?

It’s been on the list of things I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but I’ve constantly been put off it because the characters are so nasty. Then I realised that we love a lot of stories where the heroes are villains; we still like them and want them to succeed.

Do you want us to dislike Dorian Gray or feel sorry for him?

If you met him, you would be charmed by him, even with the knowledge that he ends up killing people. That’s how he gets what he wants. He’s a bit like the characters in American Psycho or Dexter; they’re killers, but they are charming. They’re not monsters.

Why the modern setting?

The story seems very relevant to now; the obsession with youth and retaining youth, this facade of what’s in front of the camera, and what goes on behind; how it can ruin your life and turn you into a monster. The death of Heath Ledger made me think about that a lot. Also, I was at a party last year and Orlando Bloom was there. He was just so ordinary-looking, and yet to many people he’s the most beautiful man in the world. I want to try to show how you create this image.

How do you see the portrait?

I don’t like supernatural things, so rather than this gothic idea of a portrait in an attic getting steadily more grotesque, we’re using photography to show Dorian becoming an icon as a billboard model. You will see a disintegrated billboard later in the show, but the piece is more about how his soul is destroyed.

This piece first appeared in Observer Review

Lykke Li

Laura Marling

Holy Fuck

Morgan Spurlock – Osama Bin Laden

David Oyelowo

Matthew Slotover – Co-Director Frieze

(Pictured with Frieze Co-Director Amanda Sharp)