The TLS Discussion

What happened when Proust’s narrator dipped the madeleine in his tea?  How does memory work and when does imagination take over?  If poetry is ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’, is recollection then a literary technique - and how far is it possible, or necessary, for memoirs to tell the truth?  William Fiennes is the author of The Music Room, a childhood memoir that examines in parallel, through the story of his epileptic brother, the working of the human mind.  Maggie Gee’s new memoir, My Animal Life, weaves her own history into the context of the dramatic social changes of the second half of the twentieth century.  And Candia McWilliam has written a memoir to be published later this year, What to Look for in Winter, about the experience of going blind. They discuss the methods, challenges and rewards of writing about their own lives.

We are grateful to the Royal Literary Fund for sponsoring this lecture.