2023 Programme

Published in 2022, this wise and funny history of the book as a material object has been described as ‘a love letter to reading’. From ancient scrolls to the graphic novel, this fascinating history celebrates the magical power of the book.  Emma Smith is a Fellow of Hertford College and Professor of Shakespeare Studies in the University of Oxford.

In this talk Eleanor Parker will explore the story of Hereward the Wake, famous in medieval legend as the leader of a group of rebels against the Norman Conquest.  She will look at the origins of the legend and discuss the various ways it has been interpreted from the 11th century to the present.  Dr Eleanor Parker is a lecturer in Medieval English Literature and Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford.  She is the author of "The Last children of Anglo-Saxon England" (2022).

Our speaker on Thursday 13th April will be the novelist and critic Elizabeth Lowry, who is a frequent contributor to the "London Review of Books", the "Times Literary Supplement", the "Guardian", the "Wall Street Journal", the "Telegraph", and other publications.

Elizabeth Lowry will be discussing her new novel about Thomas Hardy, "The Chosen", and the challenges of writing historical fiction and biographical fiction in particular. Hardy’s first wife Emma died in November 1912 and this haunting novel explores his grief and regrets. The implicit question raised is, ‘Who pays the price of a writer’s fame?’ Praised by Hilary Mantel as being ‘delicate, finely judged and full of insight’, "The Chosen" is both a love story and a ghost story, as well as the story of how some of the greatest love poems in English, Hardy’s "Poems of 1912-13", came to be written.

Elizabeth Lowry’s previous books include "Dark Water", which was selected as a "Times" and "New Statesman" Book of the Year and was longlisted for the 2019 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. "The Chosen" – out in paperback in April – was a "Times" Best Historical Fiction Books choice for 2022 and is now also longlisted for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize.

In this talk, Professor Jeremy Black offers a guided tour through the mind and world of Agatha Christie during and between the two world wars.  As an historian analysing popular crime fiction, Jeremy Black places Christies’ plots in the context of both international events and the spiritual struggles of the age.  His critical readings of the novels show them to be more complex and interesting than their many film and TV adaptations would suggest. Professor Black is a Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Exeter.

This talk will offer new lines of thought on Shakespeare’s development as a dramatist.  Professor David Womersley is the Warton Professor of English in the University of Oxford, a Fellow of St Catherine’s College, and a Fellow of the British Academy. His book Thinking Through Shakespeare (2023) is published by Princeton University Press.

To illustrate the talk the Oxford School of Drama will present a selection of extracts.

Dante is known as both the “Supreme Poet” and the “Father of the Italian Language.” Very few literary figures have ever exerted such a far-reaching influence on their country or enjoyed such a long-lasting reputation in world literature. This talk will look at the scale of Dante’s achievements and why he’s still worth celebrating (and reading) more than 700 years after his death.

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NB:  Dr Sophie Duncan's talk on Ibsen has been rescheduled to Wednesday 22 May 2024, when students from the Oxford School of Drama will present extracts.

National literatures require a ‘genius’. The broad context for the discovery of Russia’s first literary genius is the reign of Catherine the Great (1761-1796) whose reign was marked by a major shift toward a secular culture. The creation of a vernacular language afforded literary opportunities and the adoption of Western literary models. Russian cultural pundits then wondered whether their country would ever have its own ‘genius’. That figure was to be Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), the author of a great body of poetry and narrative.  Society dandy, and a political upstart exiled by Tsar Alexander I, Pushkin had the sensational biography of a celebrity as well as a colossal talent. This talk will discuss how Pushkin became the Russian equivalent of Shakespeare in the course of the nineteenth century; how subsequently in the 1930s he became a mass cult figure; and how in the post-Soviet world his image was reinvented.

The talk will be illustrated with both music and images. 

Professor Kahn is a Professor of Russian in the University of Oxford, a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, and a Fellow of the British Academy.

In this talk, Zachary Leader will look the work of Kingsley Amis, described as not only the finest British comic novelist of the second half of the 20th century but also a dominant cultural force in the writings of his age, given his energetic defence of writing as a craft and as a profession.  Zachary Leader is Emeritus Professor of Literature at the University of Roehampton and a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature. He wrote the authorised biography of Amis in 2007 and edited his letters.  He was also the editor of "The Oxford History of Life Writing" (OUP 2015) and the authorised biographer of the American novelist, Saul Bellow.