Magic and Mystery with Julian Sedgwick

The School’s Patron of reading, Julian Sedgwick, captivated students on Monday 16th September as he delved into the real stories behind his books and had the audience on the edge of their seats as he performed sword juggling as well as a provoking apple slicing trick.

After a warm introduction, Julian was given the difficult task of selecting winners from the shortlisted entries for Year 7’s summer challenge, ‘Design a Treehouse’ with a bookish twist. Reminiscing on an adventurous childhood with his brother, he said as a shy and timid boy at school, “reading, like climbing trees, was a form of escapism for me.” The author told the floor that each and every entry was outstanding, and speaking from his own experience, urged students to never be discouraged for not always claiming first prize.

Julian’s literature, largely influenced by his long-standing fondness for the arts and culture of China and Japan, is nonetheless a reflection of his own personal experiences. With parents who met on Quaker terms, the author spoke about his families own link to the faith and the impact it has had on his own life and writing.

Inspired by his father’s love of cinema and theatre, he addressed the personal material that spans ‘Mysterium’, including the loss of his father and his fascination with the magic of circus. In recent years he was overjoyed to be able to discover the secrets of his father’s marionette show as he chanced upon his old notebooks, which he described as “one of my most treasured possessions”.

From bookseller to film researcher and a number of occupations in between, Julian noted that despite his mother’s diary citing the first time he spoke of becoming an author to be aged 7, he did not publish his first book until 40 years later. This led the author to share the wholesome advice that failure should not be feared. He reinforced this valuable message without failing to entertain his audience, as he took to juggling swords – in which any mistakes made, would reveal themselves instantly.

After the talk and a reading from his book, students queued eagerly to have their copies of ‘Ghosts of Shanghai’, signed by the author. The first installment of a thrilling trilogy, the book explores mystery, loss of innocence and a yearning for something always beyond reach. Set in the frenzied and dangerous landscape of 1926 Shanghai, Julian claimed he wrote the book after learning that coffins buried in the weak ground of Shanghai would move beneath the city over time. He continued, “I find the status of the dead interesting… are they gone or are they still with us?”

In an afternoon workshop with Lower Sixth International Baccalaureate English students Julian likened the process of researching and writing a book to an iceberg where the majority of information collected is hidden below the surface of the completed text. He shared his bursting notebooks with students, revealing the range of books he’d read while preparing for writing ‘The Ghosts of Shanghai’, as well as the photos, films and maps he had looked at. He described how he felt like he was really walking the streets of old Shanghai when he read the huge maps of Shanghai held at Cambridge University library and shared stories of the intriguing individuals he has met along the way of his writing career, stating “I am passionate about discovering other places and other people”.

He shared the many different drafts of the book’s first chapter and invited the students to edit one of the early versions, before reading them the published chapter. It’s all to do with finding a hook to engage the reader, finding your authorial voice and taking time to get the writing right. He finished with a thought-provoking quote from Anne Lamott who in her book ‘Bird by Bird: Some Instructions of Writing and Life’, suggests that ‘the dream (story) must be vivid and continuous’.