Another year another journey

Hi Sarah – you may remember as the raving fan in Wellington. Just wanted to say how truly inspiring I found listening to you and experiencing your passion first hand. So much so that I wrote about the it in my blog. If you every come up for air in your busy travels you can read it here:

http://areyouhappyatwork.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/meeting-sarah-dunant-truly-inspiring/

Here’s a little bit of what I wrote: “I just met Sarah Dunant – one of my favourite authors – if not the favourite. I feel so inspired, and excited. My stomach is flipping and swirling, dipping – like it does when there is turbulence in an aircraft. It’s exciting. A feeling of real thrill – the kind you hope will never end. It makes me feel giddy, delirious. It fills me with a deep yearning, fills my eyes with tears. I cannot breath, cannot get the words down fast enough. I want to savour this moment – the moment I know with a passion what I felt called, compelled, excited to do – to write about ordinary women like me, living in historical times, a multi-sensory book filled with art, architecture, set in Italy, or France – beautiful and intoxicating. To write stories that make others feel as I do – hungry for more and so delighted to have met the author.“

Dear Madame,
just wanted to say how much I liked “Sacred Hearts”. I’m quite new to “blog-attending” and don’t know if I’m actually writing in the right section.
I’m sure this will reach you in any case.
I’ve finished reading it yesterday and it occurred me to think something that I would like to share with you: I was so much “into” the book that as I turned the last page and put it back on the shelf in my library, I felt like the book itself was a little box that even once closed keeps holding inside a whole world of nuns and novices still living and walking up and down the corridors of the convent.
I don’t know whether I succeeded in expressing this image in a language that is not my mothertongue. In any case I meant to congratulate and thank you for the wonderful books you give us. Can’t wait to read the next one!
Costanza Valentini, Trieste

Sarah, we knew each other in London in the 70s. I have a distinct memory of you with your Uher at the Notting Hill Carnival, when I lived just round the corner. And I worked for Meridian/Joy Boatman briefly in 1978, when they trained me as a freelance…

After living late 70s in Swaziland and then South Africa (acting in Soweto, Lenasia, Market Theatre, SABC) I came to Israel. Long, long story. No regrets on the personal side – as to the country, well, yes!! Quite.

Am currently working fulltime as a peace activist with ICAHD. Quite often in UK and elsewhere on speaking tours, etc. so I hope we can catch up one of these days… I usually stay with friends in EC1.

Trying to research my father’s family, and I came across a reference to a BBC Radio 4 programme you and others did: GOLDSTEIN in Interwar Spitalfields. My late father, Zalman H. Goldstein, was from Sidney Street, and his father Myer Goldstein had a grocers’ shop there, and also was secretary for some 10 synagogues in Whitechapel area. A great-grandfather on one side of the family (Abraham Goldstein) taught Hebrew in 1852 in London. On the other side, Soloman Rockman was also a Hebrew teacher listed in the 1901 census – both of them from Russia (probably Lithuania).

Do you have any insights for me as to who I should contact for more information? I’m curious to know, for example, whether related to Dr. Rebecca Goldstein, who had a practice in Sidney Square, E.1 during the time my father was a medical student at Barts. She wasn’t an aunt, but maybe a cousin…

Hope all is well with you. Congratulations on what has obviously been a hugely rich career. (By the way, one of my favourite writers, Penelope Fitzgerald, only started writing in her 60s, which I take as huge encouragement for we baby boomers…! I was a painter for 10 years or more, but not had time recently for it, so am hoping to get back to that…)

Take care. And all best wishes,
Angela

Grazie mille. La sua amica nel convento a Firenze sembra molto interesante. Sarah

Costanza, that is just a lovely image. E lei parla Inglese bravissimo. Molto piu megliore come io!

When my daughter was young, and just “getting” reading she once held up a book to me and said. “Mum! MUM! Do you know there is a whole world in here”. And she gave this big grin. So now my nuns are on your shelf. I am privileged to think they have a place there. Many thanks Sarah