Recent Press for Dweller in Shadows: A Life of Ivor Gurney:
‘The Strange Case of Ivor Gurney’, Anthony Lane’s review in the New Yorker, 5 July 2021:
“Dweller in Shadows” has many virtues, the foremost being that of judiciousness. Kennedy is scrupulous in her approach to her subject’s mental travails, […] This biography is challenging and robust. […] The deepest impress of her book, however, is that it grows into the portrait of a hero. To be assailed as Gurney was, to realize that the barrages would persist in peacetime, and nonetheless to insist on making your report, in music or in verse, is proof not of surrender but of mastery and quiet magnificence.
Poet Andrew Motion, writing in The Spectator, ‘The short, unhappy life of Ivor Gurney'(3 July 2021):
‘Only now has Kate Kennedy, in her enthralling, meticulously researched and deeply sympathetic life, finally done justice to Gurney’s story. … Kennedy writes with an exceptional mixture of imaginative sympathy and intelligence.’
‘Silenced’ voice of Great War poet to be heard for first time | First world war | The Guardian
Dweller in Shadows: A Life of Ivor Gurney by Kate Kennedy – review by Simon Heffer in Literary Review, 3 June 2021:
‘This fine, well-researched and intelligent biography by Kate Kennedy will do much to promote the legend further. It has the advantage not just of being a chronicle of Gurney’s immensely sad life but also of containing thoughtful analyses of his poetry and music.’ ‘This painstaking biography will do much to enhance Gurney’s reputation’
Ivor Gurney, asylum modernist | Essay by Kate Kennedy, TLS (11 June 2021)
A Bengali Polymath and an ‘Accidental Modernist’ – The Podcast – TLS (the-tls.co.uk)
RADIO COVERAGE: Feature on Dweller in Shadows on the Today Programme, BBC Radio 4 16th June: BBC Radio 4 – Today – Available now
| BBC Radio 4 – Today – Available now 04/06/2021. www.bbc.co.uk |
Radio 3’s In Tune, 18 June: BBC Radio 3 – In Tune, Isata Kanneh-Mason, Kate Kennedy
| BBC Radio 3 – In Tune, Isata Kanneh-Mason, Kate Kennedy. Top-class live music from some of the world’s finest musicians.www.bbc.co.uk |
BBC Radio 3 Sunday Feature on Gurney’s asylum years – ‘Unmouthed’: 20th June, 6:45pm: BBC Radio 3 – Sunday Feature, Unmouthed
| BBC Radio 3 – Sunday Feature, Unmouthed. What happens to a creative mind when it has everything taken away? Dr Kate Kennedy traces composer and poet Ivor Gurney’s 15 years in an asylum, uncovering unseen poems and music.www.bbc.co.uk |
