Latest news with #ATrainingSchoolforElephants
Wall Street Journal
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
‘A Training School for Elephants' Review: Stomping Through Africa
In 1876 Leopold II of Belgium decided to reinvent his small country as an imperial power. The vehicle for Belgium's entry into the Scramble for Africa was the International African Association. The organization's name suggested a charitable purpose, but Leopold instead went on to establish the Congo Free State, a private empire of slavery and cruelty. Joseph Conrad called the depredation of the Congo 'the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.' In 1908, following British reports of atrocities, Leopold was forced to pass the Free State to Belgium's civil administration so that the looting of African ivory and rubber might continue on a more respectable footing. In 'A Training School for Elephants,' the British travel writer Sophy Roberts revisits a false start to Leopold's rampage. Apart from being ethically challenged, Leopold had a transport problem: There were no finished roads between the entrepôts of the East African coast and the raw materials of the interior. In 1879 Leopold sent the Welsh-born American journalist Henry Morton Stanley to the interior to strike deals with local chieftains and set up trading stations. The Belgian king hired the Scottish shipping magnate William Mackinnon, who began building a road inland from the coast in modern-day Tanzania. And he tapped an Irish adventurer named Frederick Carter to test-drive four Asian elephants west from the coast to Lake Tanganyika.
BBC News
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Sophy Roberts hosts talk at Sherborne Travel Writing Festival
For bestselling author Sophy Roberts, the Sherborne Travel Writing Festival will be a chance to connect. The first few lines of her latest book, A Training School for Elephants, describe the landscape of her Dorset as the travel writer admits, "for all its beauty and all the people I love that live here, I have a very restless spirit".This spirit has taken her across the globe, as a journalist and author, and she is now preparing to share it with readers. It's the third year Sherborne Travel Writing Festival has been held in the town, hosting award-winning writers in talks for more than 200 event means a lot for Sophy, who has decades of experience in the industry."Just because my work takes me far away doesn't mean I'm not without my anchors in community, that's why I like this festival," she explains."I find the audience is so engaged, passionate, curious. It makes you feel good about this shared curiosity for what lives beyond our very pretty Dorset."Sophy says it is also important to her as it is an opportunity for her loved ones to gain some insight into her life. She continued: "For them to be able to be in the room, in a talk that immerses them in the life I have been pursuing for five years, it means a lot to me." Authors speaking at this year's festival, which runs until Sunday, include Ann Morgan, Barnaby Rogerson, Kapka Kassabova, Xiaolu Guo, Jonathan Lorie, Alexander Christie-Miller, Mevan Babakar and Horatio year's event will also see the launch of a £10,000 travel writing prize for a published British or European author. Sophy, who will be talking at the festival at 19:00 BST, said the prize is "exciting recognition for the genre", acknowledging the cost of travel writing."[It] is really high, one way of doing it through a book advance but that money runs out really quickly." Despite the expenses sometimes associated with travel, Sophy feels it is an exciting and "challenging" time."It's really important to question a genre that's colonial in its bones. What's happening now is a very exciting recalibration of that privilege, with new and diverse voices."Understanding places we're not from, cultures we don't belong to, politics we don't understand - whatever it might be - this is a space where those connections occur through the written word." You can follow BBC Dorset on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
