Royal Society of Literature

Where the heart is - Imtiaz Dharker, Daljit Nagra and Sathnam Sanghera - Monday 21 June 2010

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:17:32 Europe/Berlin

The Tagore Lecture

Do British writers of Asian descent consider their cultural and literary heritage to be principally British, or Asian? To what extent do they feel obliged to represent their Asian origins in their work? Imtiaz Dharker, poet, artist and documentary film-maker, grew up in a Lahori household in Glasgow, and describes herself as a Scottish Muslim Calvinist. Her fourth volume of poetry, Leaving Fingerprints, was published in September. Daljit Nagras parents came to the UK from the Indian Punjab, and he was brought up near Heathrow. The title poem in his debut collection, Look We Have Coming to Dover!, won the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Single Poem. Sathnam Sanghera was born to Punjabi parents in the West Midlands. His first book, The Boy with the Topknot: a Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton, was shortlisted for both the Costa Biography Prize and the PEN/Ackerley Prize, and was 2009 Mind Book of the Year. The three writers intersperse their discussion with readings from their work.

We are grateful to the Gavron Charitable Trust for sponsoring this meeting.

Discussion about the future of British manuscripts - Wednesday 9 June 2010

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:10:11 Europe/Berlin

An RSL/UK Literary Heritage Group/British Library event.

Rediscovering Russian Roots - Robert Skidelsky - Monday 7 June 2010

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:15:32 Europe/Berlin

The Skidelsky Lecture

Mother Russia personifies the emotional power of a country, whatever its politics, to command patriotic loyalty. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 produced a mass exodus of Russias aristocracy and educated bourgeoisie: many of the countrys most talented writers, artists, composers, scientists, professionals, managers and entrepreneurs fled abroad, depriving the Soviet Union of a huge and irreplaceable cultural resource. After the fall of communism, some of these exiles and their descendants started to reconnect with their old motherland. Lord Skidelsky is the biographer of J.M. Keynes and Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. Born in China, the son of Russian émigrés, he traces his own reconnection against the background of a turbulent, murderous, history.

Originality - Ian McEwan - Monday 10 May 2010

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:13:16 Europe/Berlin

Originality in science is synonymous with being first; originality in the arts is somewhat different. At what point do these two creative endeavours overlap? Ian McEwan is a novelist who has often taken science as a subject: Enduring Love was about a science writer, Saturday about a brain surgeon. His latest novel, Solar, is about global warming and its protagonist is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who has given up original work to enjoy his own celebrity. McEwans first book, the short stories First Love, Last Rites, was hailed for an originality astonishing for a young man still in his twenties. Yet original work by scientists is most often achieved while they are still young: do they develop differently? Richard Forteys original work is on fossils. He is a research palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum whose books include Trilobite!, shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, and Earth: an intimate history. A Fellow both of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Literature, he is a former President of the Geological Society of London.

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

Mere Fact, Mere Fiction - David Hare - Monday 12 April 2010

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:11:08 Europe/Berlin

The Garrick Lecture

Asked by a Sunday newspaper to name the best British film of the last 25 years, Sir David Hare suggested The Power of Nightmares, Adam Curtiss BBC documentary series about how Western politicians have, for reasons of their own, talked up a war on terror. But why, he wondered, did his mind go unhesitatingly to a documentary rather than a fiction? At a time when Hares own plays about the diplomatic process leading up to the Iraq war, about Labour Party funding, about the privatisation of the railways, and about the financial crisis have employed such a dizzying mix of reportage and invention, how does he answer sceptics who believe in the old forms? In this lecture David Hare contrasts the differences between a journalistic view of life and an artistic one.

We are grateful to the Garrick Trust for sponsoring this lecture.

Philip Pullman presents the work of First Story - Philip Pullman, Kate Clanchy, Helen Cross, William Fiennes and Katie Waldegrave - Tuesday 23 March 2010

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:08:00 Europe/Berlin

An event organized by the RSL and First Story for the Oxford Literary Festival. This event will be held in Christ Church Hall, Oxford.

'Writing,' says Philip Pullman, 'can liberate and strengthen young people's sense of themselves as almost nothing else can.' First Story, a charity which arranges for acclaimed authors to work as writers-in-residence in challenging state schools, has now launched in three schools in Oxford. At this special event, Philip discusses how creative writing can transform lives with First Story's Katie Waldegrave and writers Kate Clanchy, Helen Cross and William Fiennes, and introduces readings from pupils taking part in the project.

Tickets are £7 and can be purchased here.

Memory and Imagination - William Fiennes, Maggie Gee and Candia McWilliam - Monday 15 March 2010

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:09:14 Europe/Berlin

The TLS Discussion

What happened when Prousts 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 Gees 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.

Wordplay: Saturday Masterclass - Biography - Caroline Moorehead - Saturday 13 March 2010

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:51:17 Europe/Berlin

The Royal Society of Literature and the Arvon Foundation are delighted to announce a personalized and practical class in which to explore the different forms of autobiographical and biographical writing and the ways that they have altered over the years. Participants will be asked to submit a short piece of writing in advance which will they will then receive feedback on during the class. Participants will also be provided with a biography reading list. The class is open to writers at all stages, and it will be a discussion as much as anything, with people bringing their own ideas, skills and views.

Caroline Moorehead is an outstanding writer and journalist who throughout her career has combined writing of the highest quality with an unusual willingness to work for the benefit of other people. She has served on the committees of PEN, the London Library, the Society of Authors, and the Royal Society of Literature, of which she was vice-Chairman from 1998-2000. She has published nine books, which include biographies of Bertrand Russell (1992), Iris Origo (2001), and Martha Gellhorn, the last published to great acclaim in 2003 and short listed for the Whitbread Prize. Since the mid- Seventies, she has also written regularly as a journalist, first as a columnist for the Times, then for the Independent, and currently as a freelance, on prisoners of conscience and human rights, and for ten years (1990-2000) she co-produced an annual series for BBC television on human rights abuses, Human Rights, Human Wrongs. Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees (2005) is a study of the international refugee problem, arising out of a support progamme she has helped to start for African refugees in Cairo, where she worked extensively on the ground, interviewing refugees and transcribing their stories. Her most recent book, which was short listed for the 2009 Costa Biography Award, is Dancing to the Precipice: The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, Eyewitness to an Era. It is based on the Marquises first-hand accounts of surviving the French Revolution and navigating more than fifty years of political upheaval that followed.

This Masterclass is now sold out.

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Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:58:05 Europe/Berlin

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