News and Press

David Day is available to talk on J R R Tolkien

David Day's talks on J R R Tolkien and the quest of the ring is a revelation into the sources and inspirations of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

Day is a literary detective who demonstrates how The Lord of the Rings is the direct inheritor of an ancient story-telling tradition that dates back to the dawn of western culture.

Day reveals the extent to which Tolkien drew on these ancient traditions, and, in doing so how he created his own mythology for the 20th Century.
Tolkien’s Ring Quest will be beautifully illuminated throughout by the Oscar winning artist Alan Lee.

“… a scholarly analysis of the various cultural tributaries that fed into Tolkien’s saga.” - The Birmingham Post

“A remarkable achievement… A real beauty.”
- Los Angeles Times

“… a mighty achievement, effectively described and celebrated in this lavish, handsomely presented volume.”
- The Times Educational Supplement.

The Quest for King Arthur is the most enlightening single text on King Arthur to have been written since Malory first laid his hero to rest.” - Terry Jones

“CASTLES is an oddly powerful book. Alan Lee’s drawings of the Medieval world’s mythic and real castles have a magical touch. But the effect of the text, by David Day, is unusual. This compendium of the legends rooted in these castles is brilliantly lucid and lively --- a mass of swift, active scenarios, strongly told, compressing many unique and vivid worlds into a single richness.” - Ted Hughes

David Day is available to talk on Ecology

David Day’s talks on extinct and endangered species will be supplemented with illustrations from his many books of natural history. These include his landmark on animal extinction “The Doomsday Book of Animals”, “Noah’s Choice”, “Eco Wars”, The Encyclopaedia of Vanished Species”, and “The Whale War”. He will also show episodes from his acclaimed 100-part Knowledge Network television series, “Lost Animals” – which has been broadcast in over 30 countries and in twenty languages.

Day’s “Whale War” book was serialised in the “Daily Mail” and “Sunday Times” and was the basis of the British ITV film of the same title. His “Doomsday Book of Animals” was also the inspiration for the British Birmingham Royal Ballet’s production “Still Life at the Penguin Café”.

“David Day writes natural history of rare quality, and the paintings and drawings are supreme.” - New Scientist.

‘David Day provides an enthralling history of the whole anti-whaling campaign, its characters, its high points and its philosophies.’  – The Times Literary Supplement

‘David Day recounts these episodes with tremendous power and passion. No one reading THE WHALE WAR will forget it.’ - Jeremy Paxman, Sunday Telegraph.

‘The Eco Wars is a book to be read by those who think that the exploitation of the environment and wild life in far-flung places is no concern of theirs. David Day brings the cause and terrible effect to our very doorstep’ Ralph Steadman

‘An encyclopaedia of shame; a directory of hope’ David Bellamy

‘The Eco Wars’ is the best and most comprehensive book on ecology movement worldwide’ Allan Thornton, Founder of Greenpeace UK
 

David Day is available for poetry readings

"Gothic is an eerie record of some of sexual nightmare: sinister undertones, concealed horrors, solitary confinements, an atmosphere of muffled pain, drawn into very pure, precise, measured music" Ted Hughes

“I enjoyed Gothic immensely, and better still on a second read through. Being a sort of formalist at heart, I suppose I liked best the ones with the clinching endings: Illusions, The Adviser, The Companion – wonderful last line – and The Cell. But the level of the poetry is high all the way. David Day is a remarkable image-maker, and his vast dark landscape is one of ‘harsh beauty’ and ‘magical transformations’… Sure, it’s an excursion into the psychotic, but his ‘other voices’ are human enough, even familiar in the dying-end of the 20th century.”
-- Earle Birney

“David Day is satiric, sardonic and clever: also an iconoclast and a disturber of the peace. He is a fantastic poet, and this book is a treasure.” – Al Purdy

“After decades yoked to ‘poetry’, every writer’s Pegasus has a dream of flinging off the old harness and simply flying: the ‘rants, howls and moans’ of JUST SAY ‘NO’ TO FAMILY VALUES are David Day’s flight-monologues – whirling kaleidoscopic surges through the weathers and times of his life. This sort of thing takes nerve, but David Day shows how it can be brought off.” -- Ted Hughes

“Here is a man who can do without the factitious. He has had experience and knows experience because of poetry. David Day writes as validly as he has lived.” – Ralph Gustafson