RSL Events
- Fully Booked
Travellers in skirts
Dervla Murphy and Sara Wheeler
Joanna Kavenna
Somerset House, 7pm
Information
‘A lady an explorer? A traveller in skirts? … Let them stay and mind the babies, or hem our ragged shirts.’ So wrote a contributor to Punch in 1893. Yet since then women have proved that travel writing is not – and should not be – a male preserve. Dervla Murphy’s first book, Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, was published in 1965, and since then her travels have taken her to countries including Tibet, Nepal, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Peru. A Month by the Sea, published this month, charts a summer in Gaza. Sara Wheeler’s books include the international bestseller Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica. In the newly published O My America she looks at the lives of six women who escaped various kinds of misery to go and live in the Deep South in the 19th century. In a conversation chaired by Joanna Kavenna, whose debut, The Ice Museum (2005), was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize, they discuss why travel has proved the best way for them to explore their ideas; the appeal of a genre relatively free of convention and rules; and the particular challenges facing women travel writers.
Booking Information
Seats for guests (one per meeting, £5) must be booked and paid for in advance. This can be done through the RSL website as part of the usual booking process.
The RSL takes bookings from the public in advance of each event. We are able to take payment for bookings over the phone, but, as we do not have a box office, we ask that the public book online.
Tickets will be sold on a first come, first served basis, for £8 (£5 for students).
Read our Terms and Conditions for ticket purchases here.
Venue
Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House
