Podcast Extra: Arts First – Sacred Virgin, Spurned Bride with Dolan Cummings

The ArtsFirst podcast is an offspring of the Academy of Ideas Arts&Society Forum. Dedicated to defending freedom of expression in the arts and celebrating art for art’s sake, it covers an eclectic range of arts-related topics.

In this special live edition, hosts Wendy Earle and Niall Crowley are joined by Dolan Cummings, author of The Sacred Virgin and the Spurned Bride, an historical novella with some deceptively contemporary themes. In it, two single mothers each seek a place in a world caught between the old ways and the new.

The novella is set in what we used to call Dark Age Britain. Historians now prefer ‘the early medieval insular region’. Historians don’t sound like much fun. For readers (and viewers), the earlier term surely evokes romance and excitement rather than mere benightedness. It is in this spirit that Cummings draws on myth and imaginative speculation as well as historical sources to conjure a world both like and unlike our own.

Consequently, a visit to 8th century northern Britain prompts the reader to consider the ever-changing role of religion, the meaning of national identity, and perhaps above all, the power of reading itself to reshape and transform our lives. Lovers of literature and those fascinated by the past are invited come and find out more – and to share their own views on history, historical fiction and the stories we tell about the past.