Please see below for:
 
• Details of our forthcoming event on ghost stories with Susan Hill and Sarah Waters
• Information about our joint event with the ECC on Proust
• News of other events that might be of interest

Monday 22 November at 7pm
Chaired by Philip Hensher
 
Susan Hill wrote her first ghost story, The Woman in Black, over a six-week summerholiday nearly thirty years ago, and theplay it inspired has been running in the West End since 1989. Last month saw the publication of The Small Hand, in which anantiquarian bookseller finds himself troubled by a phantom toddler. Sarah Waters’ fifth novel, The Little Stranger (2009), is set in a haunted mansion in Warwickshire, just after the Second World War. Described as ‘gripping, confident,unnerving and supremely entertaining’, it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In a conversation interspersed withreadings from their work, and chaired by novelist Philip Hensher, they discuss the seduction of the supernatural.

This event is free for Fellows and Members of the RSL. There is a limited number of tickets for members of the public at all RSL events, available on the door, from 6pm, on a first-come-first-served basis. Tickets are £8 (£5 concessions).
 
The talk will be held in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, Courtauld Institute, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA

Due to the Somerset House Ice Rink opening, you will need to use an alternative route to enter the Courtauld Institute.  RSL staff will be posted outside of the Strand entrance of Somerset House to direct you to the lecture hall.  We apologize in advance for the inconvenience.
 
Book online at www.rslit.org, or call us on 020 7845 4676.

Thursday 9 December at 7pm (doors open at 6.30)

RSL/EC Event
Chaired by Christopher Prendergast

Published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927, Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu could be seen as a monumental relic anchored in a historical moment that is no longer of any great concern. So why does it remain so popular to such a variety of twenty-first century readers? Novelist and critic Margaret Drabble, psychotherapist Jane Haynes, and poet and translator Ian Patterson, discuss their love of Proust with Christopher Prendergast, who recently oversaw the major new translation of À la recherche for Penguin.
 
This discussion is supported by the European Commission in the UK as part of a programme of events marking the opening of Europe House, its new premises which are shared with the European Parliament, at 32 Smith Square, London SW1P 3EU (nearest tube: Westminster or St James’s Park).
 
Seats are free of charge for Fellows and members of the RSL. To reserve a place, please book online at www.rslit.orgor call Hazel on 0207 845 4677.

If you missed Romesh Gunesekera and Michael Morpurgo in September, or Jane Gardam and Adam Mars-Jones in October, listen to the audio files on our website:

Who needs stories? with Romesh Gunesekera and Michael Morpurgo

The V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize with Jane Gardam and Adam Mars-Jones each reading a short story

Wednesday 17 November 2010, 5.30-7pm
Room ST273, Stewart House, 32 Russell Square, London

Maggie Fergusson read History at Oxford and began working for the Royal Society of Literature, of which she is currently Secretary, in 1991. Her prize-winning life of the Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown appeared in 2006 and draws on conversations in Orkney with the poet, his family and friends, together with unpublished correspondence held in the Edinburgh University archives. Maggie is currently working on a commissioned life of the children’s author Michael Morpurgo. She was elected FRSL in 2008.

This event is free of charge.  For more information, contact Open University (Arts-Post-Colonial-Lit-Res-Group@open.ac.uk or +44-1908- 652092).

Saturday 27 November
King's College London

Professor David Nokes FRSL, who contributed so much to literature over forty years, died suddenly last November.

There will be a memorial event for him at King's College in the Strand on the afternoon of Saturday November 27th 2010.  David’s friends, family and colleagues will be celebrating his many gifts and achievements, of which writing was only one.

Wednesday 15 December, 7pm
Chelsea Daunt Books, 158-164 Fulham Road, London

After the massive success of her illustrated talk at Daunt Marylebone, Picardie will speak at Daunts in Chelsea to discuss her biography of Coco Chanel. Vivid and engaging, Picardie manages to entertain as well as produce the informed and balanced account we have come to expect from the author of Daphne.

"The Chanel uncovered by Picardie is a storyteller. She spun her own myth, but each of her creations was a story as well." --Daily Telegraph

Tickets are £5 (including wine). They may be purchased from the Chelsea shop in person, by telephone (020 7373 4997).
Email: chelsea@dauntbooks.co.uk