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On Friday 22 March, hundreds of young people from schools across Haringey and north London filled the Palace’s Theatre for the finale of Biblio-Buzz 2024, the Alexandra Palace Children’s Book Award!

The Award challenges young people, aged 9-12, to read six selected texts, complete challenges, take part in workshops, then vote for their favourite book and meet the authors at the awards.

Young Biblio-Buzz participants this year voted Finn Jones Was Here by Simon James Green as their favourite text. The book is a funny, heart-breaking story about life and loss, and making every second count.

Biblio-Buzz – which is an annual event running from November to March – is part of the Palace’s Creative Learning programme and aims to use the power of literature to reach and inspire young creative minds, and raise their interest in books and libraries. It is a partnership project between the Palace, Haringey Library Service, librarians, schools, professional authors, publishers and local books shops.

Meanwhile, on Saturday 23 March, participants, authors and families gathered in Wood Green Library to see Nazneen Ahmed Pathak’s book City of Stolen Magic announced as the winner of the Biblio-Buzz Library Award. This award was voted for by those participating in Biblio-Buzz via their local library.

Both award ceremonies were compered by the inimitable Jack Meggitt-Phillips, who was the winning author of Biblio-Buzz 2022.

Check out photos and memories from the day:

This weekend the first ever North London Book Fest (21 – 24 March 2024) welcomed book lovers to the Palace for a diverse programme of events featuring headliners Natalie Haynes, Leo Vardiashvili, Peter Hain, Lemony Snicket, Michael Rosen and Stuart Turton.

Our new festival connected readers with revered authors and up-and-coming writers and featured a feast of readings, panel discussions, Q&As, workshops and book-signings for readers of all genres and ages.

Here’s a few photos and reflections from an amazing four days.

Stephen Middleton from the Friends of Alexandra Park introduces us to his selection for March ’s Tree of the Month…

This month we wander through a shimmering tunnel of white blossoms of our native Wild Cherry (Prunus avium). Also known as the Gean, our trees can be found near the reservoir just to north of the southernmost viewing platform here.

The flowers appear just before the first leaves. Bees appreciate the flowers as much as we do and are the main pollinators. Later on in the year the cherry fruits develop and are rapidly eaten by both birds and rodents before we get a chance. The birds are probably the major spreaders of the cherry.

Evidence has been found that cherries were eaten by humans as far back as the bronze age. Ordinary wild cherries are edible, but can often be quite bitter to the taste. Don’t be tempted to try the leaves as both leaves and pips contain poisons related to cyanide.

The first thing that you might notice about a wild cherry leaf is that it is serrated (jagged). Look closer and you will see two very small swellings on the stalk by the base of the leaf. These are extrafloral nectaries which are believed to provide a little nectar for ants to encourage them to protect the leaves from hungry caterpillars.

The gean is native over a large span of Eurasia from the western himalayas through to north Africa and the UK. Cherries can grow up to 20m high and will readily sucker from their roots even producing further full size trees.

Live fast, die young. Cherries grow quickly, but produce their best crop of fruit only after about 25 years and they will usually die before their 60th birthday.

Apart from its fruit, cherries are most commonly identified by their horizontally lined bark. The wild cherry often produces a protective resin-like gum on the trunk or on a branch at the site of a wound. This gum has in the past been chewed, used to treat coughs and mixed with wine to produce a drink that was believed to cure kidney stones and gout.

Cherry wood is of an excellent quality and is used for making furniture, musical instruments and pipes. Sherlock Holmes smoked a long cherry-wood pipe in “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”.

There are plenty of cultivated cherries around the park of different colours and forms with some of the best to be seen right now from the terrace of the Palace.

Our award-winning, 196-acre Park is a conservation area, a home to 694 different types of plants, animals and fungi, including 212 different types of insects and 38 species classed as rare or protected…plus 153 tonnes of rubbish.

That’s the amount of litter we pick up each year, the equivalent weight to 6,375,000 iPhones or 28 elephants.

Our Park team work every day to combat the problem, while our brilliant volunteers and the Friends of Alexandra Park also complete regular litter collections to help out.

You can help us too: please be mindful of the packaging and perishables that you bring with you to the Park and please take any litter home with you. Doing so will mean we can spend less of our charity’s resources on litter picking, and more on improving the Park and Palace for everyone.

If it’s any inspiration, and to mark Keep Britain Tidy’s annual Spring Clean (15 – 31 March), our Park team from John O’Conner Ground Maintenance have shared some of the more unusual items they have found in recent times:

1. Word War 1 style gas mask
2. A male mannequin
3. Bowling ball
4. Stuffed mounted stoat in glass cabinet
5. Wheelchair
6. One set of false teeth (nobody attached)
7. All the household goods: TVs, fridges, toasters, microwaves, settee, blenders, washing machine.
8. Bags of Royal Mail letters – all recovered by Royal Mail and finally delivered
9. Many buggies and prams
10. Set of skis and a snow board (we did have a dry ski slope in the Park, but that was in the 1980s!)

To find out more about how you help us in the Park contact us at visitor.services@alexandrapalace.com

This March, our Young Actors Company journeyed into the Palace’s basements for a promenade performances of the Shakespearean classic Macbeth.

The ensemble cast of 10 actors, aged 18 -24, took the public on an eerie performance tour of the basements lit by candles and torches, presenting an evocative, condensed and remastered reboot of ‘The Scottish Play’.

The Young Actors Company is part of the Alexandra Palace Creative Learning programme, which aims to engage, support and inspire people through culture and the arts.

Below we reflect on the performance and hear from the Director Jonny Siddall.

“Performing at Alexandra Palace was a fantastic opportunity for both me and the Young Actors Company. It was only the second time a performance had been held there, and we were all aware of its historical significance.”, says Jonny.

(Photo credit: Lloyd Winters)

“The basements were already atmospheric, and we added to this by simply lighting them with torches that aimed to reflect the same darkness that existed when the play was originally written. Back then, the only light was candlelight, so the space and lighting aimed to provide more understanding of why the witches were so feared.”

“The cast was fantastic as they adapted to edits and alterations throughout, and each member was so committed and creative that the play became truly a unique experience. The audience was taken on a journey through a part of Alexandra Palace that is never seen, and all the feedback we received praised the immersive promenade elements as well as the performances.”

Today, the Alexandra Park Wetland Creation project has been awarded £50,000 from the Mayor of London’s Rewild London Fund, in partnership with the London Wildlife Trust, to begin improvements to increase wildlife in the south-east corner of the Park.

The project covers the Conservation Area and wetlands adjacent to the Park’s border with the Hornsey reservoirs (Thames Water site). The funding will enable the first phase of work aiming to create a wetland reed bed and increase species diversity, with particular emphasis on birds, invertebrates and amphibians, with appropriate hydrology and vegetation to support these. It will also enable us to explore options to reduce flood risk and create a new outdoor educational offer. Further funding options are being explored to complete all elements of the project.

The Alexandra Park Wetland Creation project is a community-led initiative managed by The Alexandra Park and Palace Charitable Trust and includes the Friends of Alexandra Park, Hornsey Wetland Action Group (HWAG), Haringey Council, Thames Water and consultants AGA Group. There is the ambition to grow the community stewardship of the project.

The funding award follows feasibility studies that were carried out with support from the Rewild London Fund in 2022. These included studies to investigate current flows of surface water and baseline ecological surveys to inform design on appropriate vegetation works.

To find out more, or to support the project, contact us

The first ever North London Book Fest comes to the Palace from 21-24 March.

The literary festival will connect readers with established, up-and-coming and much-loved authors, creating a feast of readings, panel discussions, Q&As, workshops and book-signings for readers of all genres and ages.

Ahead of her appearance on Saturday 23 March, we spoke to author Huma Qureshi about all things books!

How does it feel to be one of the participating authors at the first ever North London Book Fest? As a writer who lives in North London, it was really so lovely to be asked to be a part of this festival. Being part of any event or festival is always an honour, but it rings differently when you are in your own neck of the woods!

Tell us a little bit about your event – what can the audience expect? I’m delighted to be in conversation with Sara Nisha Adams to discuss my latest book, Playing Games, and can think of no better host. Sara and I are writing friends, she’s a brilliant writer and we can chat for hours about writing – so our audience can definitely expect an honest, warm and intimate discussion about our books and writing process. I can’t wait to share Playing Games with our audience – it’s a novel about two sisters, Hana and Mira, who care about each other in begrudging but devoted ways. We’ll no doubt also very much talk about Sara’s books, The Reading List and The Twilight Garden, both incredibly moving novels, and her writing process – she’s so productive. I am always wanting to know how she does it!

What is your favourite thing about book festivals? It’s always so special to be invited to speak about my books, but my favourite part is actually the bit that comes after the event – when I get to meet my readers and sign books and have a chat with them. Writing books can be such a lonely experience and so meeting readers, who care about your characters as much as you do, is just amazing.

What is your favourite thing about being an author? It’s finding that special connection with readers, as I mentioned above, like when someone comes up to me at a book event or emails to tell me how much my book meant to them, that it moved or helped or inspired them, or made them think differently in some way. That level of connection, of feeling like my words have lingered with readers off the page – that’s just magical to me. A lot of people have written to me to tell me that Playing Games made them think a lot about their own siblings and family relationships, and that feels meaningful.

And your least favourite?! My least favourite thing about being an author is the drafting process. I’m currently knee deep in thousands of words that don’t yet make much sense, and I have to convince myself not to give up and fight every instinct to stop and edit and make it make sense! It’s all too easy in that first-drafting process to walk away from your work in progress, and to absolutely hate what you’re writing, but it’s also a very necessary process. I know I have to stick with it, and that at some point, I will start to love the process of writing again as the story becomes clearer on the page, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy this messy bit.

Part of the inspiration for North London Book Fest came from Biblio-Buzz our Children’s Book Award – what were your favourite books growing up and what made you want to become an author? My favourite book when I was little was The Borrowers by Mary Norton. As a girl, I read a lot of Enid Blyton; my children are big readers now and I love that they have so much more choice – some of my favourite contemporary children’s books are those by MG Leonard, Sam Sedgman and Robin Stevens. As a teenager, I fell in love with Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye and read a lot of Sylvia Plath, Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen, again and again. In my early twenties, I became a journalist, but really I wanted to tell my own stories, stories I had made up and I’d always wanted to do that since I was little, when I used to put together my own picture books. I’ve always just wanted to write stories about characters who feel real, whom readers might care about.

Have you been to Alexandra Palace before, and if so, what for? Absolutely! I walk through Alexandra Park and up to the top past Alexandra Palace every morning after I’ve dropped my children off at school for a brisk two and a half miles – it clears my head before a day of writing and the views of the London skyline from the Palace never get old. My children love to skate at the ice rink, and I was so excited to visit the Alexandra Palace theatre for a brilliant evening with Lucy Worsely discussing Agatha Christie. I used to live at the very foot of the park and the Palace, with a rather wonderful view of it from the bottom of my then-road. Even though I no longer live on its immediate doorstep, it’s still a big part of my everyday life.

Discover more about Huma Qureshi and Playing Games and view the full line up of North London Book Fest.

PinkPantheress‘ Alexandra Palace show on 20 February 2024, marked a defining moment in her career.

The electrifying show, her biggest to date, showcased her ability to connect with her audience, transitioning from online acclaim to a live spectacle. The venue was filled with 10,000 fans enraptured by her unique style and captivating stage presence.

Come with us as we recap this milestone show of a rising star of pop with pictures, the setlist, reviews and audience reactions:

★★★★ “Deft mashups from TikTok star who stepped seamlessly into real life” – The Guardian

★★★★ “Rising pop hero makes smart step up to arenas” – NME

“It’s PinkPantheress’ camaraderie with the audience between songs that makes the show.” – DORK

All photos © Patrick Gunning for Alexandra Palace

 

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@sozzles32 pinkpantheress in london love u #queen #pinkpantheress #eastafricansunite #fyp ♬ original sound –

@diamond.tmm performance at alexandra palace, london. shes my favourite artist omg i love her and i am OBSESSED with her such a fun night &lt3 #pinkpantheress #pinkpantheressconcert #pinkpantheresstour #heavenknows #justforme #passion #attractedtoyou #heavenknowsalbum #alexandrapalace #allypally #concert ♬ you guys r such cuties – ˚ ribbon ﾟ୭ৎ

@hummusenjoyer1234 honestly one of my fav shows ive ever been to the crowd was LITTT and she was so good #fyp #pinkpantheress #capableoflovetour #attractedtoyou #heavenknows ♬ original sound – sammy

There are more than 7,000 trees in Alexandra Park and our resident expert, Stephen Middleton from The Friends of Alexandra Park, is introducing us to them one by one!

Cherry plum blossom in an old tin jug —
Oh, it is lovely, beautiful and fair,
With sun on it and little shadows mixed
All in among the fragrant wonder there.
Cherry plum blossom on the workroom bench
Where we can see it all our working hours.
In all my garden days of ladyhood,
I never met girls who so loved sweet flowers.

“Cherry plum blossom in an old tin jug” a poem by Australian poet Lesbia Harford (1891-1927).

This month’s tree is sometimes deliberately planted, but also freely self-seeds in the park and the wider countryside. Our Tree of the Month is the Myrobalan Plum or Cherry Plum (Prunus cerasifera).

This is the wild version of last February’s Tree of the Month. It has green rather than purple leaves, but the same white cherry-like flowers. 

Our particular tree is located behind the “Gas Hut” – the small building on the left as you enter the park from the Bedford Road entrance. The tree stays quite quiet for most of the year before it shouts out its presence in late winter with bright white flowers standing out from the vegetation and building.

Myrobalan plums can stay as a shrub or grow as a small tree up to 8m to 10m high. The flowers come out just before the leaves. It blooms a little while before the related blackthorn and it can also have sharp spines. 

The bark of this tree has some horizontal bands of lenticels (lighter spots which are the tree’s breathing holes), but they are not so pronounced as on a true cherry.

The name myrobalan comes from two Greek words. Myron means plant juice and balanos means nut.

Take the time to inspect the flowers. There are five petals and in the middle of the flower a green patch with just one single stigma – the female part protruding. All around are many of the similar looking male stamens. Behind the petals there are five green sepals – smaller and less flamboyant versions of the petals. In this tree they are reflexed – bent back on themselves which distinguishes the tree from the blackthorn. 

The cherry plum is naturalised in the UK after being cultivated from the 1500s. It is not officially native (as it was not present before the land bridge to Europe was flooded about 9,000 years ago).

The cherry plum produces more fruit in its native lands than in this country. In Georgia it is a key ingredient in chakapuli stew and in Romania the fruit is used for giving soups a sour flavour.

If you are near the BBC Tower you can spot another example of this tree in flower on the edge of the car park.

If you are interested in finding out more about the wildlife in the Park check out the wildlife walks (fungi, wildflowers, trees etc.) on the Friends of Alexandra Park website.