A Life in the Peak District and Education
PGCE, B.Ed. (Hons), M.Phil. (Manc.)
Poet, Writer, and Author - Fact & Fiction
Wendy Louise Bardsley has lived in the Peak District most of her life and is a keen hill walker. She has three grown children from her marriage to William Bardsley, Reader in Biochemistry at Manchester University, where she has worked as a freelance lecturer in Educational Professional Development.
Education, Advocacy, and Cultural Outreach
She has taught widely in schools and colleges and has worked in The Manchester Inspection and Advisory Service as an advisory teacher for English, Drama, Cross Curricular Activities and Special Needs, at one time creating a whole curriculum for a school for children with blindness and visual impairment in Manchester.
She was also responsible for matters concerning The United Nations Convention for The Rights of the Child, which came into force in England in 1992 and has been heard on radio both at home and abroad.
She has organised and delivered international conferences and worked intermittently as a writer with The University Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester on an outreach scheme bringing together students from a variety of schools to work collectively on poetry.
She has also served on the Arts Committee of The Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society, where she delivered a lecture on Branwell Brontë to a large and varied audience.
Her talk featured in their Manchester Memoirs, volume 143, 2004-2005 Special Dalton Edition.
Wendy has presented at various festivals, including Dartington, Ilkley, and Rye.
Author, Poet, and Literary Reviewer
As a non-fiction author, she has published, with Longman Pearson, Introducing Information Technology, 1986 and 1987, arguably the first-ever student textbook on IT, and later co-wrote Journeys, a student textbook to address the National Curriculum Literary Strategy through Poetry for HarperCollins.
A published poet and novelist, she was a Literary Reviewer for The Independent on Sunday for a while.
Her work has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, and she has published several historical novels with Methuen, including:
- Branwell Bronte’s Creation
- The Passions of Mary Wollstonecraft
- William Wordsworth: A Conflict of Love
- The Troubled Mind of Mary Shelley
- Florence Nightingale: A Light in Darkest Crimea
She has also written A Step Beyond Time; The Life of Ada Lovelace, a novel awaiting publication.
Biographer and Anthologist
A biographer and anthologist, she is the editor of An Enduring Flame: The Brontë Story in Poetry and Photographs. The book contains poems from famous and well-known poets around the world inspired by the Brontë story and features many superb photographs by the well-known photographer Simon Warner. Another anthology she edited is Poetry in the Parks, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the National Parks of England and Wales in Poems and Photographs, with a foreword by Alan Howarth, CBE MP, Minister for the Arts, and introduced by Ewan Cameron, Chairman of The Countryside Agency. Her debut novel, The Other Concerto, published with Smith Settle, was greeted with acclaim and gained a star in The Bookseller, May 2002.