Please see below for:

● A reminder of Monday’s RSL event with David Dabydeen and Charles Nicholl.
● Details of our forthcoming event celebrating the work of Seamus Heaney.
● News of other forthcoming literary events and publications that might be of interest to you.

Monday 14 December, 7pm
Chaired by Colin Grant

Born into slavery on a sugar plantation in Jamaica in about 1735, Francis Barber was brought to England in 1750, and two years later was sent to work for Samuel Johnson, who had been plunged into depression by the death of his wife. Johnson was a vociferous opponent of slavery, and he and Barber became devoted companions, Johnson organising Barber’s education at Bishop’s Stortford Grammar School, Barber going on to help Johnson with his Dictionary. When Johnson died in 1784, he left Barber a gold watch and £70 a year, and asked that he make his home in Staffordshire, where his descendants live to this day. Charles Nicholl, prize-winning biographer whose subjects have included Christopher Marlowe and Leonardo da Vinci, and David Dabydeen, novelist, poet and director of the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick, are both at work on Francis Barber: Nicholl on a biography, Dabydeen on a novel. Marking the tercentenary of Johnson’s birth, they read from their works in progress, explore Barber’s life, and discuss just how unusual Johnson’s friendship with him was for its time. They also talk more broadly about the lives of black men and women in eighteenth-century London, the cruel racism suffered by some, and the extraordinary patronage enjoyed by others.

We are grateful to the Fleming family for sponsoring this meeting.

The talk will be held in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre at the Courtauld Institute.

Kings Place, Monday 22 February, 7pm

The Nobel-Prize-winning poet ‘in conversation’ about his life and the influences and themes that inform his work. The conversation will be interspersed with readings from his poetry by four authors.

Seamus Heaney is arguably the most important poet writing in the English language. Ever since his first collection, Death of a Naturalist, was published in 1966 he has been recognised as a towering presence in poetry. He has been garlanded with countless literary awards, both in the British Isles and internationally, and he accounts for two-thirds of the sales of work by contemporary poets in Britain.

Bernard O’Donoghue, who will be interviewing Seamus Heaney, is himself a distinguished poet and literary critic. Author of Seamus Heaney and the Language of Poetry, published in 1995, he is a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.

A selection of Seamus Heaney’s poems will be read by Nick Laird, Andrew O’Hagan, Jo Shapcott  and Jon Stallworthy.

A substantial number of seats has been reserved for Fellows and members of the RSL. We will be informing them of how they can book in early January.

Keats House
Sunday 13 December, 2-3.30pm

The Poetry Ambassadors of Keats House will be reading extracts from Charles Dickens’s festive poetry and prose to help you get into the spirit of Christmas present. Readings will also take place throughout December in venues around the City.

Free with an admission ticket to Keats House (valid for one year). £5/£3. Under-16s free.

London Review Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, WC1A 2JL
Thursday 7 January, 7pm

Jonathan Lethem’s new novel Chronic City (Faber) is billed as a searing portrayal of Manhattanites wrapped up in their own delusions, desires and lies. Into the cloistered life of Chase Insteadman, handsome but inoffensive fixture on the social scene, comes Perkus Tooth, a wall-eyed free-range pop critic, whose countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw them into another Manhattan, as they attempt to unearth the answers to several mysteries that seem to offer that rarest of artefacts on an island where everything can be bought: truth. Lethem is the author of seven novels, including Fortress of Solitude, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Tickets are £6 (concs £4) from 020 7269 9030 or www.lrbshop.co.uk.
Nearest tubes: Tottenham Court Rd/Holborn. Free wine.

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