Celebrating Edvard Munch's 150th: It's Going to be a Scream

History did not record how Edvard Munch felt about being remembered by most people for just a 'single' work.  It could be argued that he brought this on himself, having produced no less than four versions of his most famous painting, The Scream.  Yet, on the 150th anniversary of his birth, The Scream has a ubiquity only equalled by a handful of other works of art.  Munch’s birth country of Norway is currently awash with Munch mania with special retrospectives of his works, plans afoot to build a new museum in his memory and a multitude of flash mob style scream-ins. So what could you do to commemorate Edvard and his most famous creation on his 150th cake day?  Here are a few ideas.

Image Credit Flickr User sketchachick

It has to be said that you may have to be in possession of some artistic talent for your homage to be successful (or even recognizable).  The decoration of various foodstuffs seems to be popular when recreating The Scream.

Alan Turing - Celebrating the Centenary of a Genius

Today sees the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing – one of the most remarkable human beings of the twentieth century. A mathematical genius, hero of the World War II code breakers of Bletchley Park, and father of modern computing, Turing was a mathematician, cryptographer and pioneer of computer science who possessed one of the greatest brains of the 20th century. His life was one of secret accomplishments shadowed by public misfortune.

He was a bright child - condensing Einstein’s Theory of Relativity for his mum at the age of 15. He received a scholarship at King’s College, Cambridge and it is to that august university that we turn to learn more about Alan Turing’s life. In his twenties he turned his attention to one of the most important mathematical problems of the twentieth century – the Decision Problem. He conceived of a machine which would read symbols on a strip of tape – 0s and 1s and showed that dark areas in mathematics would always pose a barrier to the complete truth. This machine model became one of the cornerstones of computer science. He did this when he was only 22.

He then went on to his code breaking work, for which he is rightly famous. Here, Dr James Grime, Enigma Project Officer at Cambridge University's Millennium Mathematics Project explains the code and tells the life story of this remarkable man born 100 years ago today. It concludes with his death in 1954 – betrayed by the British Government and with only a single escape route – suicide – Turing bit from an apple he had previously laced with cyanide. This tragic end to a brilliant life was thirty years before most of his work would become public; the Official Secrets Act meant his true brilliance was not to be acknowledged until many years after his death.

Today, however, we can lift a glass to this most brilliant of men, celebrate his life and his achievements and perhaps speak softly an apology for the sins of our fathers.

Future Birthplace of James T Kirk

Image Credit Flickrf User _madolan_

Someone has a sense of humor in Riverside, Iowa.  The small city along the banks of the English River is, in Star Trek mythology, the birthplace of a certain Captain James T Kirk.  One resident decided that Kirk's birth to be had to be celebrated with a public monument - and so here you have it.  Is it OK to say only in America at this point?

Elizabeth Gaskell Bicentenary

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, was born two hundred years ago on 29 September.  To mark the bicenenary of her birth, we would like to offer up this small video in way of tribute to an author who has brought joy to millions but only now has joined the other poets, playrights and novelists in Westminster Abbey's famous poet's corner.

1810 was a strange year. Napoleon and Josephine had their marriage annulled, Beethoven composed Für Elise and the State of West Florida declared its independence from Spain. Plus a little girl was born in Chelsea, the last of eight children and one of only two of them to survive in to adulthood.  She was christened Elizabeth and sent away on the death of her mother three months later to live with her Aunt Hannah in a small Cheshire village called Knutsford.

Knutsford and her childhood theirein was to be the inspiration for her later Cranford novel.  The industrial landscape of the north of England informed many of her novels including the seminal North and South and Wives and Daughters but her reputation lay until fairly recently on her debut work Mary Barton.

The BBC, however, has changed all of that with successful adaptations of several of her novels, which have given her a new and modern audience.  The Cranford series in particular inspired many to take up her novels and read them.

Scenes from one of them, North and South form the basis for our video tribute above.  You're Still You by Josh Grogan is a fitting tribute to a lady who stuck by her unitarian beliefs throughout her life and gave the world some unforgettable fiction in her own indelible style.

It is long overdue that this national treasure be remembered with a place in Poet's Corner and yesterday it came to pass - finally.  Over two hundred people gathered in the Abbey, many of them members of the Gaskell Society who travelled from all over the world for the event, to attend the dedication of a stained glass window in her honor.  Her great great great grand-daiughter Sarah Prince laid a gorgeous wreath of lilies below the window.

Perhaps this marks the end of the almost two centuries of underestimation of one of our greatest novelists, the incomporable Mrs Gaskell.

Image Credit Wikimedia - Gaskell pictured at the age of twenty two by William John Thomson.