Royal Society of Literature

A celebration of Peter Porter - Sean O'Brien, Don Paterson, Fiona Sampson - Monday 13 December 2010

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:26:39 Europe/Berlin

THE T.S. ELIOT MEMORIAL MEETING

Peter Porter, who died in April, has been described as a cultural epoch all to himself. Having arrived in London from Australia in 1951, he established himself as one of the most distinguished poets in Britain, leaving, his work ranging from satirical verse about 1960s London to Exequy, his great elegy for his first wife. If there is a message in my poetry, Porter wrote, it is that human dilemmas are constant, evil exists alongside some manifestation of good, and that one must write out of all aspects of life as one encounters it. Four fellow poets - Anthony Thwaite, who knew Porter for over half a century, Fiona Sampson, editor of Poetry Review, and Don Paterson and Sean OBrien, who edited Porters recently published Selected Poems - celebrate his work.

This event will be held in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, Courtauld Institute.

Fellows and Members: book for this event (if you do not have internet access, call 020 7845 4676 to book). Seats for guests (one per meeting) must also be booked in advance.

Getting to grips with ghosts - Susan Hill, Sarah Waters - Monday 22 November 2010

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:31:20 Europe/Berlin

Susan Hill wrote her first ghost story, The Woman in Black, over a six-week summer holiday nearly thirty years ago, and the play it inspired has been running in the West End since 1989. This autumn, she brings out The Small Hand, in which an antiquarian bookseller finds himself troubled by a phantom toddler. Sarah Waterss 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 with readings from their work, they discuss the seduction of the supernatural.

This event will be held in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, Courtauld Institute.

Fellows and Members: book for this event (if you do not have internet access, call 020 7845 4676 to book). Seats for guests (one per meeting) must also be booked in advance.

Illegitimate daughters, absent fathers - Michael Holroyd - Monday 8 November 2010

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:28:46 Europe/Berlin

THE TLS LECTURE

Wandering through the galleries of the V&A after closing time one evening in the early 1970s, Michael Holroyd became intrigued by a Rodin bust. Eve Fairfax, Rodins subject and sometime muse, eventually led him from London to the Villa Cimbrone, a building of fantasy and make-believe on a hill above Ravello, and to a company of other women, all mysteriously connected. In an evening to celebrate the publication of A Book of Secrets a sequel to Basil Street Blues and Mosaic, and, he insists, his very last book Holroyd explains how his own life became entwined with the lives of his gifted, elusive, often tragic cast. His talk is chaired by travel writer Sara Wheeler.

This event will be held in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, Courtauld Institute.

Fellows and Members: book for this event (if you do not have internet access, call 020 7845 4676 to book). Seats for guests (one per meeting) must also be booked in advance.

A problem shared: securing a future for our planet - Margaret Atwood in conversation with Sir Brian Hoskins - Wednesday 3 November 2010

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:28:22 Europe/Berlin

Margaret Atwood is Canadas foremost novelist and poet, and a former winner of both the Booker and Orange prizes. The daughter of a forest entomologist, she is passionate about the natural world and this passion has increasingly informed fer fiction. The most important question facing us right now, she says, is whether we are going to continue along the road that we are on and choke to death, or whether we are going to make changes to the way we produce and conserve energy. In an evening hosted jointly by the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Literature, and chaired by Gabrielle Walker, a writer specialising in energy and climate science, Atwood discusses her concerns with Sir Brian Hoskins, Fellow of the Royal Society and Director of the Institute of Climate Change at Imperial College, and one of the world's leading weather and climate scientists.

This event will be held in Savoy Place (IET London), 2 Savoy Place, off Strand, WC2R OBL. No advance booking. Free entry; first come, first served.

We are grateful to ALCS for sponsoring this event.

The V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize - Jane Gardam, Adam Mars-Jones - Monday 25 October 2010

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:12:45 Europe/Berlin

Novelist and short-story writer Jane Gardam has been garlanded with prizes and awards. Her most recent collection of stories, The People on Privilege Hill, was described by critics as dazzling and pitch-perfect. Adam Mars-Jones, twice selected as one of Grantas 20 Best of Young British Novelists, is the author of three collections of short stories and two novels, the latest of which, Pilcrow, has been praised in Metro as a genuine, almost miraculous oddity. In an evening chaired by RSL prize administrator, Paula Johnson, Jane Gardam opens, followed by Adam Mars-Jones who reads his recent story Irrational Fear of Tom Stoppard. Finally, after the announcement and presentation of the Royal Society of Literature's annual V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, the winning entry is read by its author.

This event will be held in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, Courtauld Institute.

We are grateful to Prospect for sponsoring this event.

Fellows and Members: book for this event (if you do not have internet access, call 020 7845 4676 to book). Seats for guests (one per meeting) must also be booked in advance.

Who needs stories? - Romesh Gunesekera in conversation with Michael Morpurgo - Tuesday 28 September 2010

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:27:54 Europe/Berlin

THE COSMO DAVENPORT-HINES MEMORIAL LECTURE

Facts alone are wanted in life or so Mr Gradgrind believed. Michael Morpurgo, former Childrens Laureate and author of over 100 books, including Private Peaceful and War Horse (currently being made into a film by Steven Spielberg), and Romesh Gunesekera, whose prize-winning novels include Reef and The Sandglass, beg to differ. In a discussion chaired by critic and writer Nicolette Jones, they talk about the influences that lured them into storytelling, and ask, what are stories for? Where do they come from? Is it true that there are essentially only a dozen or so plots, which novelists endlessly re-jig if so, does this matter? Do grown-ups need stories less, or more, than children? And is it a good thing for fictional characters to live happily ever after?

This meeting is jointly hosted by the Royal Society of Literature and Kings College, London. It will be held in the Old Anatomy Theatre, Kings College (directions available at main, Strand entrance).

Fellows and Members: book for this event (if you do not have internet access, call 020 7845 4676 to book). Seats for guests (one per meeting) must also be booked in advance.

For heaven's sake - Marilynne Robinson in conversation with Maya Jaggi - Monday 20 September 2010

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:27:21 Europe/Berlin

THE HAWTHORNDEN MEETING

Marilynne Robinsons three novels Home (winner of the 2009 Orange Prize), Gilead (winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize), and Housekeeping (Pulitzer Prize finalist 1982) share a strain of wistful longing. She writes, one critic has noted, as if the sentences have been there for ever, waiting to be discovered. Between novels, she has published forceful, sometimes polemical, works of non-fiction. Mother Country (1989) exposes the British Governments record of nuclear pollution; The Death of Adam (1998) scorns the empty state of contemporary discourse; and Absence of Mind (2010) attacks the modern assumption that science and religion are incompatible. In a rare public appearance, Marilynne Robinson talks to award-winning Guardian critic and prolific writer Maya Jaggi about her love for her fictional characters; her belief that writing should not be a full-time job; and her conviction, held from childhood, that heaven is all about us.

This event will be held in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, Courtauld Institute, Somerset House.

Fellows and Members: book for this event (if you do not have internet access, call 020 7845 4676 to book). Seats for guests (one per meeting) must also be booked in advance.

Society news

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

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