Ruth Padel Popular Books

Ruth Padel Biography & Facts

Ruth Sophia Padel FRSL FZS (born 8 May 1946) is a British poet, novelist and non-fiction author, known for her poetic explorations of migration, both animal and human, and her involvement with classical music, wildlife conservation and Greece, ancient and modern. She is Trustee for conservation charity New Networks for Nature, has served on the board of the Zoological Society of London and was Professor of Poetry at King's College London from 2013 to 2022. Biography Padel is daughter of psychoanalyst John Hunter Padel and Hilda Barlow, daughter of Sir Alan Barlow and Nora Barlow née Darwin, granddaughter of Charles Darwin, through whom Padel is Darwin's great-great-grandchild. Her brother is historian Oliver Padel; cousins include prison reformer Una Padel, sculptor Phyllida Barlow, mathematician Martin T. Barlow and biographer Randal Keynes; her uncle is Horace Barlow. Padel was born in Wimpole Street where her great-grandfather Sir Thomas Barlow practised medicine. She attended North London Collegiate School, studied Classics at Lady Margaret Hall Oxford where she sang in Schola Cantorum of Oxford, wrote a PhD on Greek poetry, and as the first Bowra Research Fellow at Wadham College Oxford, which altered its Statutes for her to accommodate female Fellows, was among the first women to become Fellows of formerly all-male Oxford colleges. She taught Greek at Oxford and Birkbeck, University of London, taught opera in the Modern Greek Department at Princeton University, has lived extensively in Greece, and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she sang in the Choir of Église Saint-Eustache, Paris. Her publishing career began in 1985, while she was teaching Greek at Birkbeck College, with a poetry pamphlet. She then left academe to support herself by reviewing and publish her first collection (1990). From 1984 to 2000 she was married to philosopher Myles Burnyeat. From 2014 to 2022 she was Professor of Poetry at King's College London. Books Fiction Where the Serpent Lives 2010 Daughters of the Labyrinth 2021 Poetry Alibi 1985 Summer Snow 1990 Angel 1993 Fusewire 1996 Rembrandt Would Have Loved You, Shortlisted for T S Eliot Prize, 1998 Voodoo Shop, Shortlisted for Whitbread Prize and T S Eliot Prize, 2002 The Soho Leopard, Shortlisted for T S Eliot Prize, 2004 Darwin – A Life in Poems, Shortlisted for Costa Prize, 2009 The Mara Crossing, Shortlisted for Ted Hughes Award, 2012 Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth, Shortlisted for T S Eliot Prize, 2014 Tidings – A Christmas Journey 2016 Emerald 2018 Beethoven Variations: Poems on a Life 2020 Non-Fiction In and Out of the Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self 1992 Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Greek and Tragic Madness 1995 I'm a Man: Sex, Gods and Rock 'n' Roll 2000 Tigers in Red Weather 2005 Criticism, editing 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem: How Reading Modern Poetry Can Change Your Life 2002 The Poem and the Journey 2006 Silent Letters of the Alphabet 2010 Walter Ralegh, Selected Poems 2010 Alfred Lord Tennyson (Folio Society, Introduction and Notes) 2007 Gerard Manley Hopkins (Folio Society, Introduction) 2011 Fiction Padel's first novel Where the Serpent Lives(2010) focussed on nature, and also wildlife crime, mainly in India but also in Britain. It was praised for its vivid nature writing, intensely observed portrait of Indian forests and wildlife under threat, her innovative use of science and animal's eye viewpoint. 'Only Emily Brontë has embraced Padel’s radical and sympathetic inclusiveness of creaturely life.' 'She brings a poet’s intensity to her prose: objects, plants, and the wildlife that stalk her pages are all fiercely observed. Elephants and tigers under threat from poachers, forests felled for financial gain, corruption and uncaring officialdom result in habitats lost and species disappearing.' In India and UK, reviewers commented on the imaginative connections between nature, poetry and science. "She has done for the forests of Karnataka and Bengal what Amitav Ghosh did for the Sundarbans in The Hungry Tide." Her second novel, Daughters of the Labyrinth, set in London and Crete 2019-20, looks back to the Second World War and the little-known Holocaust of the Jews of Crete - where Padel has lived on and off since 1970. It also tells the story of the last synagogue on Crete, Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania. 'It is rare to come across literary fiction as satisfying as this. I had no idea there was a Jewish community on Crete or what had happened to them. Padel skilfully shows the lives of Cretan Jews deeply embedded in the island’s life, and, tragically, how cut off they were from what was happening to Jews on the Greek mainland. The whiff of authenticity seeps from every page,'(Jewish Chronicle). ‘An immersive novel steeped in the history and folklore of Crete: transporting, historically informative story-telling’(Sunday Times).‘Evocative, entrancing, a wonderfully rich and absorbing novel, delightful in its evocation of Crete and its many-layered history.’ Poetry Padel has published twelve poetry collections, won the UK National Poetry Competition, and been shortlisted five times for the T S Eliot and other UK prizes. Her major themes are music, science, nature, painting, history, migration and wildlife conservation; and her work takes the idea of "the journey" as a "stepping stone to lyrical reflection on the human condition". She has been described as an exquisite image-maker of intense lyricism, delicate skill, rich imagery, deep resonance and a wild generous imagination. She was described as "the sexiest voice in British poetry" for her love poems in 1998; her elegiac poems explore loss and bereavement, Stylistic hallmarks are said to be juxtaposition of the modern world with the ancient, technical skill and musicality; wit, passion, lyrical intelligence, internal and half-rhyme, enjambement and unusual energy within and against the line, 'As if Wallace Stevens had hijacked Sylvia Plath with a dash of punk Sappho thrown in." Quoted influences include Gerard Manley Hopkins and Greek choral lyric. From 1998 to 2004, Padel's collections reflect themes of simultaneously written non-fiction: music (I’m a Man - Sex, Gods and Rock 'n' Roll); technical attention to the poetic line (52 Ways of Looking at a Poem, exemplified in poems such as 'Icicles Round a Tree in Dumfrieshire' her National Poetry Competition winner); and wildlife (Tigers in Red Weather). Three later collections, Darwin - A Life in Poems and The Mara Crossing (now updated to We Are All From Somewhere Else 2020), include prose; Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth(2014), with its resonant last line, 'Making is our defence against the dark,' has been called a meditation on conflict and history: especially of the Abrahamic religions. Tidings - A Christmas Journey addressed homelessness in her local London borough. Emerald (2018), a memoir and meditation on the poet's mother at her death, explored the alchemy of mourning and the renewing valu.... Discover the Ruth Padel popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ruth Padel books.