The power of Scheherazade’s storytelling saves her life. The characters, too, often gain redemption through telling their stories. Even Schahriar, the sultan who holds Scheherazade’s life in the balance each day, is freed from his self-defeating obsession against women
Powerful Women: From Fiction to Fact
The world is happy to celebrate powerful women – as long as they are fictional. From the Greeks’ mythical Amazons and the Valkyries of Icelandic sagas, to Wonder Woman striding heroically across our cinema screens, powerful women are the stuff
Folk Tales Survived for Millennia
Our folk tales have survived for millennia. ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ was told 5,000 years ago*, its moral wisdom more than ever relevant today. My last blog post revealed true facts from around the same period in an ancient Irish
Ancient Myth (Warning: may contain facts)
Archaeologists’ new findings confirm facts in an ancient Irish myth. In what some see as our post-truth world, the word ‘myth’ has become entangled with ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative fact’ as a term of disparagement. A dangerous misunderstanding of myth.
Story-power: Why We Need it to Survive
[This is the full text of my book-tour talk including the readings (in italics) from A Biography of Story, A Brief History of Humanity.] The title for this talk, ‘Story-power: Why We Need it to Survive’, was inspired by a