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Questions for Catherine Fox on the novel Angels and Men by Kiyoka Yamagami, Takahiro Kiya, Mai Enomoto, Tomoko Takeda, Yuko Kato, Shunsuke Hiratsuka, Tomoko Masuda, Kate Morris, Zoe Koh, Adriana Hristova, Erika Yamauchi, Jun Ohashi, and Wakana Arai. Part 2 Tokyo University, 25 June 2004 First of all, many thanks for your generous and detailed response to our previous interview. Your answers were very fluent and informative, though there seemed an (almost) general agreement that we'd like to know more about the relationship between feminism and your Christian faith, and how this plays out in the novel Angels and Men. Do you agree with the view 'equal but different' for male and female social roles? What is the difference between

Questions for Catherine Fox on the novel Angels and Men by Kiyoka Yamagami, Takahiro Kiya, Mai Enomoto, Tomoko Takeda, Yuko Kato, Shunsuke Hiratsuka, Tomoko Masuda, Kate Morris, Zoe Koh, Adriana Hristova, Erika Yamauchi Tokyo University, 3 June 2004 Was there someone or something in particular that motivated you to write Angels and Men? I have wanted to write novels for as long as I can remember. The first ideas for Angels and Men came to me in 1986 when I was reading 17th C Quaker tracts and investigating the phenomenon of religious fanaticism. The other motivation was my love affair with the city of Durham. It struck me that there was a gap in the market, and nobody had done

From Rugby World, April 2004 www.rugbyworld.com We have the 6 Nations. Guam has the True GRIT 10's.  Richard Beard brings back the good news 'If you build it,' (to paraphrase the disembodied voice in the Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams), 'they will come.' On the Pacific Island of Guam, 3,000 miles west of Hawaii, the Guam Rugby Club have built an impeccably grassed, automatically-irrigated, international-sized rugby field.  It has stands, scoreboards, lights - and a fringe of palm trees as a natural barrier against the jungle.  This is Wettengel Rugby Field: one of the most distinctive rugby venues on earth. And, fulfilling the second part of the equation, here come the players: the Budweiser true GRIT 10's has hosted

Experimental novelist kicks the regular rulebook into touch. From The Japan Times 11/04/2004 www.japantimes.co.jp By RICHARD FREEMAN Staff writer During a recent tour to Guam, members of the Tsunami Teetotallers (a Japan-based ad hoc rugby team) were left speechless when, during pre-match introductions, their scrum-half Richard Beard introduced himself as an English "experimental novelist." Born in 1967, Beard graduated from Cambridge University and worked as a teacher before enrolling in Malcolm Bradbury's Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia in 1994. His first novel in the experimental vein, titled "X20 (A Novel of Not Smoking)," was published in 1996, and was followed in 1998 by "Damascus" -- which will be published in Japanese by Shogen-Sha in November. Meanwhile,

From Scotland on Sunday, March 2004-What books are on your bedside table? Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness by Kenzaburu Oe, All Quiet on the Western Front, James Clavell's Shogun, and Katie Morag and the Tiresome Ted -Which books have you been unable to finish? Kenzaburu Oe has been on the bedside table for about as long as it takes for something to happen in a Japanese novel. A mysteriously long time. -What was your favourite childhood book? Willard Price's Adventure series, in which a boy's give-away weakness was always to have 'hands as soft as butter.' The two teenage heroes spent each book in a different exotic location (South Sea Adventure, Amazon Adventure) in search of, you guessed it,

Questions  for Andrew Cowan on the novel Crustaceans by Kouhei Furuya, Yuko Kato, Jun Ohashi, and Takuya Osada. Part 2 Tokyo University, 7 December 2003 First of all, many thanks for your generous response to our previous interview.  Your answers were very helpful and informative, we felt, though with one exception.  It was hard to understand your method of writing. As well as writing and revising each line, do you come back later and revise every line again?  Once you decide on the nature of Euan’s accident, for example, there is clear foreshadowing earlier on.  Why bother with so much earlier revision if you have to come back and revise again later? On the whole, I don’t come back and