Literary Calendar
Events for February 13, 2014 through March 2, 2014
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Alain de Botton on The News, Daunt Books, Marylebone
Alain de Botton discusses his latest book The News (all reviews). He suggests that we invest the news with an authority and importance which used to be the preserve of religion – but what does it do for us? Mixing current affairs with philosophical reflections, de Botton offers a brilliant illustrated guide to the precautions we should take before venturing anywhere near the news. Book tickets/more information
A Finger in the Fishes Mouth: The Legacy of Derek Jarman
Film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener and author Derek Jarman died on 19 February 1994. To mark the 20th anniversary of his death, we will be hosting an evening of readings and discussion. Our focus for the evening will be a little-known part of Jarman’s work, his poetry, and in particular the volume A Finger in the Fishes Mouth, recently reprinted in facsimile by the estimable Test Centre. Book tickets/more information  
Margaret Atwood in conversation with Peter Kemp, RSL
Margaret Atwood began writing poetry in high school, and the most thrilling moment of her writing career was the publication of her first poem: ‘I mean, all the other things that have happened since then were a thrill, but that was the biggest.’ She has gone on to publish 19 collections of poetry, as well as 14 novels – including The Handmaid’s Tale, The Blind Assassin and MaddAddam, published last summer. Organised and methodical in writing fiction, she writes poetry ‘in a state of&hellip
Toby Litt, Alex Preston, Holly Dawson at Waterstones Piccadilly
Don’t miss an unforgettable evening of readings and conversation in the company of Toby Litt, our Word Factory mentor Alex Preston and his apprentice Holly Dawson, at Waterstones’ flagship store in Piccadilly, Europe’s largest bookstore — brilliant fiction and a free glass of wine. Book tickets
Alain de Botton, Kings Place
The News: A User’s Manual looks at the peculiar place that ‘the news’ occupies in our lives. De Botton notes that we invest it with an authority which used to be the preserve of religion. But what does it do for us? Mixing current affairs with philosophy, de Botton offers a guide to the precautions we should take before venturing anywhere near the news and the ‘noise’ it generates. Book tickets/more information
Alison Macleod on Unexploded, Kings Place
Brighton, summer 1940. Fear of invasion brings unspoken desires to the surface as a middle-class English family anxiously awaits news. Geoffrey falls in love with a prostitute he suspects is a Jew; Evelyn is attracted to a ‘degenerate’ German-Jewish painter held in an internment camp. An exploration of chaos and xenophobia in an ordinary town, Unexploded was long-listed for the 2013 Man Booker Prize. Read all reviews for Unexploded. Book tickets/more information
5×15: Mike Figgis, Lisa Dwan, Melvyn Bragg, Sophie Hannah, Joe Klein
Mike Figgis, Lisa Dwan, Melvyn Bragg, Sophie Hannah, Joe Klein at the Tabernacle. Book tickets/more information
Robert Harris on An Officer and a Spy, Kings Place
An Officer and a Spy is Robert Harris‘s compelling recreation of the Dreyfus Affair, a scandal that became the most famous miscarriage of justice in history. Compelling, too, are the echoes for our modern world: an intelligence agency gone rogue, justice corrupted in the name of national security, a newspaper witch-hunt of a persecuted minority, and the old-age instinct of those in power to cover up their crimes. Harris has brought his talent for historical and political drama to The Dreyfus Affair&hellip
Jane Austen VS Emily Brontë with John Mullan and Kate Mosse, Royal Geographic Society
Jane Austen created the definitive picture of Georgian England – a landscape of Palladian mansions and handsome parsonages, peopled by rigidly-divided classes. No writer matches Austen’s sensitive ear for the hypocrisy and irony lurking beneath the genteel conversation. Never has a novelist written comic prose with such subtlety and restraint. If you want to understand the early 19th century – the power of money and inheritance, the clothes, the interior décor – Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudiceare worth a dozen history&hellip
Julie Burchill on Unchosen with Tanya Gold, Kings Place
At 14 Julie Burchill fell in love. Not with a boy, but “with a whole race of people – the Jews”. The journalist and novelist has been learning Hebrew and even chose Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, as her single record choice for Desert Island Discs. Unchosen, which will be published next spring through crowdfunding, is all about this love affair. In a special pre-publication event the inveterate nonconformist shares with Tanya Gold why she’s such a fan. Book tickets/more&hellip
Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld at RIBA
Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld will be discussing their new book The Triple Package: What Really Determines Success at the Royal Institute of British Architects More information/book tickets
Ruby Wax on Sane New World with Kathy Lette, Kings Place
he comedian and “poster girl for mental illness” launches the paperback of Sane New World, a manual for living with less everyday frenzy. In an upfront and compassionate style, Wax uses her experience of depression and study of neuroscience to explore how the mind works. Everyone can rewire their thinking, she says, using mindfulness techniques among others, to find calm in a crazy world. The paperback of Sane New World: Taming the Mind is published on 27 February 2014. Book tickets/more information
Sheila Heti and Gary Shteyngart at BOOKSLAM, The Tabernacle
We greet the penultimate evening of February and its wilfully controversial 28th day conclusion with an event so hip it looks back at us with contempt and, through a fug of smoke from its Gitanes, remarks, ‘You callin’ me hip, daddio? Even usin’ that vocab make you sound like a moldy fig right there.’ Quite. Joining us are GARY SHTEYNGART, the award-winning comic novelist whose ‘Little Failure: A Memoir‘ is published 35 years after he left Leningrad for the States, and SHEILA&hellip
David Grossman on Falling Out of Time with Ian McEwan, Kings Place
In a small village, in a kitchen, a man announces to his wife that he is leaving, embarking on a journey in search of their dead son. The “Walking Man” paces in ever-widening circles around the town. One after another, all manner of townsfolk fall into step with him – the Net Mender, the Midwife, the Elderly Maths Teacher, even the Duke – each enduring his or her own loss. Israel’s celebrated author David Grossman is back at Jewish Book&hellip
Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Sheila Heti, Christian Lorentzen, LRB
Gideon Lewis-Kraus’s memoir A Sense of Direction is an account of three pilgrimages – the Camino de Santiago, a tour of Buddhist temples on the island of Shikoku, and a journey to the tomb of a Hasidic Rabbi in the Ukraine – undertaken in the wake of a family crisis. Gideon will be at the shop to talk about pilgrimage, writing and reconciliation with Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be? and Christian Lorentzen, senior editor at the&hellip
Isabella and the Aristocracy, Somerset House
Isabella Blow was the eldest child of the 12th Baronet of Broughton.The tragic death of her brother at the age of two left the family without an heir to the 300 year-old title, and led Isabella into new and uncharted territory in a choice of career in her adult life. Even today, the aristocracy still differentiates between the sexes over inheritance. In this talk, Isabella Blow’s biographer Lauren Goldstein Crowe will join the sponsor of the Equality Bill, Lord Lucas,&hellip
Voices Of The Great War hosted by Sebastian Faulks, RSL
One hundred years after the outbreak of the Great War, Sebastian Faulks, whose novel Birdsong has sold over 2.5 million copies, introduces four writers, and the pieces of First World War literature that mean most to them. Poet and fiction writer Tobias Hill looks at Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes. The Irish poet Michael Longley, whose father was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry during the First World War, reads from the poetry of Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon and Edward&hellip
Sheila Heti on How Should a Person Be? with Rachel Cusk, Kings Place
With a twenty-something protagonist named Sheila, and a narrative based on conversations and emails between her and her friends, this 2012 sensation blurs the lines between fiction and nonfiction. Using transcribed conversations, real emails, plus heavy doses of fiction, the always innovative Heti crafts a work that is part literary novel, part self-help manual, and part bawdy confessional. Heti comes from Toronto to discuss with Rachel Cusk her totally shameless and dynamic exploration into the way we live now, breathing&hellip
Claudia Roth Pierpont on Roth Unbound, Kings Place
Philip Roth has produced some of the greatest literature of the 20th century, yet there has been no major critical work about him to date. Now, for the first time, Claudia Roth Pierpont brings us the story of Roth’s creative life. Touching on Roth’s family, inspirations, critics, and literary friendships with such figures as Saul Bellow and John Updike, Roth Unbound is filled with insights gleaned from Pierpont’s years of conversations and interviews with the author. Read all reviews for Roth Unbound. Book tickets/more&hellip
Gideon Lewis-Kraus with Gary Shteyngart and Naomi Alterman, Kings Place
“If David Foster Wallace had written Eat, Pray, Love it might have come close to approximating the adventures of Gideon Lewis-Kraus”, wrote Gary Shteyngart on his friend’s debut novel, A Sense of Direction. JBW brings the two writers together to discuss an incredible series of pilgrimages. Book tickets/more information