Audio Described: Small Island by Andrea Levy British Library 2026-09-21 | Audio Described: Small Island by Andrea Levy
Journeys to the Land of Faerie.. and telling the Tale British Library 2024-08-15 | This event took place on 9 November 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Myths and stories about fairies and their worlds known as Faerie or Fairyland have a long and resonant place in British folklore especially. Multiple versions of these supernatural beings appear in ancient tales and classic texts from Gawain and the Green Knight to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Peter Pan. Fairies abound in fantasy novels including Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, John Crowley’s Little, Big, Susanna Clarke's Jonathan and Mr. Norrell and Jeannette Ng’s Under the Pendulum Sun. Fairies reveal themselves in our world throughout folk tradition and literature, but it is only through great courage or by mysterious accident that humans have travelled to the Land of Faerie itself.Join writers, artists and musicians Ellen Kushner, Jeannette Ng and Terri Windling in conversation with Diane Purkiss as they explore these fantastical journeys, and the realms discovered.Ellen Kushner is the author of acclaimed works of literary fantasy, an award-winning audio book narrator and stage performer, the past creator and host of public radio’s national series Sound & Spirit, and a popular teacher and lecturer. She divides her time between New York City, Paris, and anywhere else that will have her. Among her works, Ellen published her first novel in 1987, the cult classic urban fantasy Swordspoint, which was followed in 1990 by Thomas the Rhymer (World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award), and further novels in her Riverside series.Sam Lee is a Mercury Prize nominated folk singer, writer, conservationist, song collector, award-winning creator of live events, broadcaster and activist. Alongside his organisation, The Nest Collective, he has shaken up the music scene breaking boundaries between folk and contemporary music: inviting in a new listenership interrogating what the messages in these old songs hold for us today. His most recent album is Old Wow (2019) and his 2021 debut novel The Nightingale, notes on a songbird tells the epic tale of this highly endangered bird and their place in culture folklore, folksong, music and literature throughout the millennia.Jeannette Ng is an author best known for her 2017 novel Under the Pendulum Sun, for which she won the Sydney J Bounds Award for Best Newcomer at the 2018 British Fantasy Awards. She also won the Astounding for Best New Writer in 2019, and the Hugo Award for Best Related Work in 2020. Originally from Hong Kong, Jeannette now lives in Durham, UK. She has an MA in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. She runs live roleplay games, performs hair wizardry and sometimes has opinions on the internet. Diane Purkiss is Professor of English Literature at Keble College, Oxford. She is the author of the highly acclaimed The Witch in History, Troublesome Things: A History of Fairies and Fairy Stories and English Food: A People’s HistoryTerri Windling is a writer, editor, and folklorist specialising in fantasy and mythic arts. She has published over forty books, receiving ten World Fantasy Awards (including the Life Achievement Award in 2022), the Mythopoeic Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFWA Solstice Award. She has edited many of the major fantasy writers in the field; writes fiction for adults and children, nonfiction on fairy tales and faery lore, and a long-running blog on myth, nature, and creativity: Myth & Moor.
An Evening of Discovery and Illumination British Library 2024-08-15 | This event took place on 13 July 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.This celebratory event showcases a variety of precious items, from writers’ archives to single manuscripts, rare books and even rarer personal letters, that have been acquired by the British Library over the last five years. Marina is chair of the British Library Collections Trust, so has been part of the process in acquiring these exciting pieces.These often surprising items are introduced and explored by a panel of invited writers, scholars, musicians and Library curators. Each acquisition has been made possible largely through bequests to the British Library Collections Trust, which exists to promote the Library’s work across all the collection areas.Highlights include short talks on:- Jane Austen’s manuscript letter to her nephew Edward, with Professor Kathryn Sutherland, University of Oxford, and author of Why Modern Manuscripts Matter- Harris’ List of Covent Garden Ladies, with writer and historian Emily Brand- The John Galsworthy archive with writer, novelist and columnist Ferdinand Mount- The Andrea Levy Archive with journalist, author, academic and broadcaster Gary Younge- The Granta Archive with Granta editor Thomas Meaney- ‘Se tu non lasci amore’ manuscript sung live, with harpsichord accompanimentChaired by Ferdinand Mount who in 2018 oversaw the transformation of the Friends of the British Library into the British Library Collections Trust.
An Evening with Eddy Grant British Library 2024-08-15 | A musical legend in conversation with Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy at the British Library on 26 April 2024. This was a special event to launch the Library’s exhibition season Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music.Eddy Grant talks in depth about his long and prolific musical career which has spanned nearly six decades and has expanded the possibilities of rock and pop, funk, reggae, soca and even electronic experimentation. The evening featured vinyl playbacks of some of his greatest tracks, inspirations and overlooked gems.Born in Guyana, Eddy moved to north London in 1960 and as a teenager formed the pioneering multi-racial pop/rock outfit The Equals, best known for the classic, Baby, Come Back. Then after several years when he set up his own record label, pressing plant and recording studio Eddy once again achieved success with ‘Walking on Sunshine’ and ‘Living on the Frontline’ and international stardom with ‘I Don’t Wanna Dance’ and ‘Electric Avenue’ from his 1982 album Killer on the Rampage. He has been based since that time in Barbados where he has continued to record, and his Blue Wave studio has welcomed the likes of The Rolling Stones, Sting and Elvis Costello.Eddy was in conversation with DJ, Classic Album Sundays founder and radio host Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy. Classic Album Sundays tells the stories behind the albums that have shaped our culture and our lives. It is the world’s most popular album listening event.Tracks played at the event were:The Temperance Seven: ‘You’re Driving Me Crazy’The Equals ‘Black Skin Blue Eyed Boy’ (live version)Eddy Grant: ‘Stone Cold Cat’Eddy Grant: ‘Nobody’s Got Time’Eddy Grant: ‘Living on the Frontline’Eddy Grant: ‘Electric Avenue’Eddy Grant: ‘Gimme Hope Jo’Anna’Mighty Gabby: ‘Dr. Cassandra’
Queer Fantasy British Library 2024-08-15 | This event took place on 2 February 2024. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Some of the most intriguing fantasy fiction of recent years has featured queer and gender fluid themes and characters, bringing new levels of both realism and possibility. The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir began with Gideon the Ninth, described as ‘Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!’ New York Times best selling author of The House in the Cerulean Sea TJ Klune believes it's important—now more than ever—to have accurate, positive queer representation in stories. Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree is a feminist retelling of Saint George and the Dragon and Tasha Suri mixes powerful magic and sapphic fantasy in The Burning Kingdoms trilogy.At this event our writers discuss the rich and compelling worlds they have created, and how their own identity plays into their work. This vibrant and revealing conversation is hosted by Mendez.TJ Klune is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of The House in the Cerulean Sea, Under the Whispering Door, In the Lives of Puppets, and the Green Creek Series for adults, which began with Wolfsong, the Extraordinaries Series for teens, and more. Tamsyn Muir is the author of the Locked Tomb series, which begins with Gideon the Ninth, continues with Harrow the Ninth and Nona the Ninth and concludes with Alecto the Ninth. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the World Fantasy Award and the Eugie Foster Memorial Award. A Kiwi, she has spent most of her life in Howick, New Zealand, with time living in Waiuku and central Wellington. She currently lives and works in Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Samantha Shannon is the New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author of the mercurial and multi-stranded dystopian fantasy series The Bone Season. Her 2019 novel The Priory of the Orange Tree was her first outside of The Bone Season series and was a New York Times bestseller and was recently followed by the prequel A Day of Fallen Night. Tasha Suri is the award-winning author of The Books of Ambha duology, The Burning Kingdoms trilogy (The Jasmine Throne, The Oleander Sword and the forthcoming The Lotus Kingdom) and What Souls Are Made Of. She has won the Best Newcomer (Sydney J. Bounds) from the British Fantasy Society and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Her debut novel Empire of Sand was named one of the 100 best fantasy books of all time by TIME magazine. Mendez is a London-based Jamaican-British author, screenwriter and critic. Their first novel, Rainbow Milk was named one of the Observer's Top Ten Best Debuts for 2020. It was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Polari Prize, in the Fiction Debut category of the British Book Awards, and for the LAMBDA Literary Award in Gay Fiction. Mendez is currently adapting the novel for a TV series. Mendez is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and has also written for British Vogue, The Face, Attitude, Esquire, Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Foundation, the Guardian and the Brixton Review of Books. They are working on their second novel. This event accompanied the British Library exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination, supported by Wayland Games and Unwin Charitable Trust.
Simon Schama: Foreign Bodies British Library 2024-08-08 | This event took place on 19 May 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Cities and countries engulfed by panic and death, desperate for vaccines but fearful of what inoculation may bring. This is what the world has just gone through with Covid-19, and it has happened before. Simon Schama discusses Foreign Bodies, his new epic history of vulnerable humanity caught between the terror of contagion and the ingenuity of science, taking us back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when smallpox struck London, cholera hit Paris, and plague came to India. And through scenes of terror, suffering and hope – in hospitals and prisons, palaces and slums – he introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters: a philosopher-playwright burning up with smallpox in a country chateau, a vaccinating doctor paying house calls in Halifax, and the incredible story of an unsung hero, Waldemar Haffkine, a gun-toting Jewish student in Odesa turned microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute. Hailed in England as ‘the saviour of mankind’ for vaccinating millions against cholera and bubonic plague in British India, he was at the same time cold-shouldered by the medical establishment of the Raj. Schama is joined onstage by writer and broadcaster Kavita Puri for a conversation that will cross borders between East and West, Asia and Europe, the worlds of rich and poor, politics and science.
Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe British Library 2024-08-08 | This event took place on 30 April 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.The story of the sixteenth century is one of movement and meetings, of iconic explorers crossing great oceans and setting foot on strange shores, sowing the seeds of our modern global world. Yet for too long the narrative of this period has focused on Europeans ‘discovering’ America. In this fascinating talk, Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock draws upon years of research to present a compelling new history, one of the thousands of native Americans travelling to Europe during this period: from the Brazilian king who met Henry VIII, to the Inuit who harpooned ducks on the Avon; from the Aztecs who mocked up human sacrifice at the court of Charles V, to the Maya nobles who made chocolate for the Spanish king. They forged the course of European history, just as surely as Europe shaped America. For such indigenous travellers and discoverers, Europe was the savage shore. Chaired by Dr Adam Rutherford.
The Long History of the Chinese and Britain British Library 2024-08-08 | This event took place on 9 March 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.The Chinese presence in the UK goes back much further than many realise.Our panel of experts and historians come together to explore this long history – from the first recorded presence in the 1600s, to trade during the 17th and 18th centuries, and from the Opium Wars, to the Chinese communities now calling Britain Home.Dr Hao Gao is Senior Lecturer in Imperial and Global History at the University of Exeter. He is a historian of British imperialism in Asia, China in global history, particularly the encounters between the British and the Chinese empires in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dr Gao is the author of Creating the Opium War and various research articles in both English and Chinese journals, including History, Historical Research, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, and Britain and the World. He currently serves as the University's Academic Director for the UK-China Humanities Alliance (UKCHA).Julia Lovell is professor of modern China at Birkbeck, University of London. Her most recent book is Maoism: A Global History. She has translated many works of Chinese fiction into English, including for Penguin Classics Monkey King: Journey to the West and The Real Story of Ah Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun. She co-curated the 2023 British Museum exhibition ‘China’s Hidden Century’.Dr William Poole is a Tutor in English at New College, Oxford, where he is also Senior Tutor and Fellow Librarian. He is an expert in early modern literary, intellectual, and scientific history, and has interests in both early modern and modern educationDr Anne Witchard is Reader in English Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Westminster. She is the author of Lao She in London which situates the Chinese writer as a central figure of transcultural modernism, influenced by the collision of Chinese and British literary traditions. Other publications include, England’s Yellow Peril: Sinophobia and The Great War, and as a co-editor, Chiang Yee and his Circle: Chinese Artistic and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1930–1950. She is currently working on a book tracing Sino-British circuits of cultural exchange in the early twentieth century with a focus on performativity and dance.Frances Wood studied Chinese at the universities of Cambridge, Peking and London. She was head of the Chinese collections in the British Library until retirement and her books include Did Marco Polo Go To China?, the Blue Guide to China, The Silk Road, No Dogs and Not Many Chinese: Treaty Port life in China 1843-1943 , Betrayed Ally: China in the Great War and The Diamond Sutra.
Christopher de Hamel: The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club British Library 2024-08-08 | This event took place on 1 March 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.The illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest works of European art and literature. But we generally think much less about the people who made, saved and sometimes destroyed medieval manuscripts, over a thousand years of history.As introduced in his recent book The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club, world expert Christopher de Hamel discusses some of the extraordinary people who have spent their lives among illuminated manuscripts over the last thousand years. A monk in Normandy, a prince of France, a Florentine bookseller, an English antiquary, a rabbi from central Europe, a French priest, a Keeper at the British Museum, a Greek forger, a German polymath, a British connoisseur and the woman who created the most spectacular library in America.This exhilarating fraternity of keepers, companions and enthusiasts; all of them were participants in what de Hamel calls the Manuscripts Club.In the course of a long career at Sotheby's and at Cambridge University, Christopher de Hamel has probably seen and catalogued more medieval manuscripts than anyone alive, and his delight and enthusiasm run through all he writes. He is the author of many books, translated into numerous languages, including A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, The Book in the Cathedral, and Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, which won both the Duff Cooper Prize and the Wolfson History Prize. He is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
The British Empire and the Chinese Diaspora British Library 2024-08-08 | This event took place on 13 February 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Communities of Chinese people and their descendants can be found all over the world. In some cases this diaspora is a direct result of British imperial activity and colonisation. Exhibition curator, Lucienne Loh, talks to poet Hannah Lowe, filmmaker Wenlan Peng, and campaigner Yvonne Foley, about their family connections to China. Through these personal stories, via the Caribbean, India and Liverpool, we learn how British global expansionist ambitions has impacted their family history.Yvonne Foley is the daughter of a Chinese Seaman and an English Mother. She and her husband Charles have researched the story of the Chinese Seamen, like her father, who were forced to leave Britain after WWII. It has been a journey that has taken them some twenty years. It still continues.Hannah Lowe is a poet, memoirist and academic. Her latest book, The Kids, won the Costa Poetry Award and the Costa Book of the Year, 2021. Her first poetry collection, Chick, won the Michael Murphy Memorial Award for Best First Collection. Her family memoir, Long Time, No See, featured as Radio 4’s Book of the Week. She is a Reader in Creative Writing at Brunel University.Wenlan Peng was born in Calcutta, India, which had a large and thriving Chinese community by the middle of the 20th century, but along with many others, her family was forced to leave as a result of the Sino-Indian border disputes of the 1960s. She now lives in London and works as a documentary filmmaker. An oral history film she made for The Meridian Society entitled The Chinese from Bengal documents the life and work of the community in its heyday and the trauma of their subsequent persecution.Dr Lucienne Loh (chair) is Reader in English Literature at the University of Liverpool. She is co-curator, with Dr Alex Tickell, of the exhibition, Chinese & British. With Alex, she is co-founder and co-director of the British Chinese Studies Network. She works closely with the Liverpool Chinese community and is particularly interested in oral history projects by Chinese community groups from across the country.
Alexander: Between Fantasy and History British Library 2024-08-08 | This event took place on 27 January 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.A lecture by renowned historian and author Robin Lane Fox, whose biography of Alexander the Great remains one of the most authoritative. He was the historical advisor for Oliver Stone's epic film Alexander, taking part in many of its most dramatic re-enactments.Robin Lane Fox is currently a Fellow of New College, Oxford, and University Reader in Ancient History. He is the author of numerous books including The Classical World: An Epic History of Greece and Rome, The Unauthorised Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible, Travelling Heroes: Greeks and their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer and Pagans and Christians in the Mediterranean World from the Second Century AD to the Conversion of Constantine. His weekly gardening correspondence column for the Financial Times is the longest-running in Britain.
The British Cheese Playlist British Library 2024-08-08 | According to Ned Palmer, author of the acclaimed A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles, the story of cheese tells the history of this land. And in the view of Harry West, professor of anthropology at Exeter University and expert on artisan food, cheese production tells us much about our relationship to memory, tradition and change.Chaired by Patrick McGuigan, author of the British Library publication The Philosophy of Cheese, this event includes a virtual British cheese tasting session, alongside discussion of their history, culture and production Ahead of the event the audience will be provided with a list of cheeses being featured.Patrick McGuigan is a freelance food journalist and cheese writer, who contributes to The Telegraph, The Financial Times, delicious and BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme. His first book, The Philosophy of Cheese, was published by the British Library in 2020. He hosts regular cheese talks and tastings, and is a senior judge at the World Cheese Awards. He also teaches Academy of Cheese courses at the School of Fine Food and virtually via the Online Cheese School. Patrick co-founded the British Cheese Weekender in 2020 - an online festival to support small cheesemakers during the coronavirus crisis, which was backed by HRH The Prince of Wales. He is partial to a slice of Kirkham's Lancashire.Ned Palmer’s life as a cheesemonger began at Borough Market in the winter of 2000 when he ate a piece of cheese. Until that point Ned’s convoluted career path included degrees in philosophy, theatre, and psychology as well as librarianship, sound design, builder’s labouring and hospital portering. Since that moment, it’s been nothing but cheese. The inciting cheese was Trethowan’s Gorwydd Caerphilly whose maker Todd Trethowan, startled by Ned’s enthusiasm, got him a job at Neal’s Yard Dairy. Ned stayed there for seven years, working at the retail counter and in the cellars, washing, rubbing, patting and sometimes singing to the cheeses. In 2014 he set up the Cheese Tasting Company to bring proper cheese to the people, and when he is not eating or talking about cheese, Ned travels around Britain and the rest of Europe visiting cheesemakers and hearing their stories. Ned published his first book, A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles in October 2019, which was shortlisted for the André Simon, Fortnum and Mason’s and Guild of Food Writers prizes, and was a Sunday Times bestseller in 2020.Harry West was born in the USA and has held research and teaching posts at Sweet Briar College in central Virginia, at the London School of Economics, the New School for Social Research in New York and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He is currently Professor of Anthropology and lectures at the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Exeter where, among other things, he convenes the MA Food Studies. Harry’s research focuses on artisan foods and their place within the cultural economy, exploring how cheesemakers have preserved or transformed cheesemaking techniques while navigating a changing marketplace. Between 2005 and 2011 he conducted research with artisan cheese makers and cheese mongers in 13 countries including Turkey, Canada and the United States. He is particularly interested in how engagement with food—from making food, to sharing it and eating it—affords opportunities for people to remember, including the acquisition of memories of things they have not themselves directly experienced.Food Season supported by:kitchenaid.co.uk
Shirley Williams: A Life in Politics British Library 2024-08-08 | This event took place on 25 September 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.The late Shirley Williams MP played a key role in the introduction of comprehensive schools, price tags, and Ukraine's national constitution. Beyond her role as a 'Gang of four Rebel' she was also a distinguished scholar and an advocate for European unity. To celebrate the arrival of her archive into the BL collections and to explore her extraordinary life and legacy, this event brings together people closely connected to her life and work.
Eddie Kadi: Me, Myself and music from Africa British Library 2024-08-08 | This event took place on 11 July 2024. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Apart from being an internationally loved comedian, Eddie Kadi is also passionate about music from Africa. He is regular host of the world’s biggest afrobeats festival, Afro Nation and also fronts BBC 1Xtra Official Afrobeats Chart Show.Join Eddie and friends as they take a personal journey through some of the greatest music from Africa, past and present. Eddie’s special guests are DJ Abass; international broadcaster and radio personality Remi Burgz; Director of Africa at Sony Music UK Taponeswa Mavunga and leading promoter Moko.
What Do You Call It? 30 Years Of UK Garage British Library 2024-08-08 | This event took place on 16 July 2024. The information below is correct as of the publication date.As UK Garage celebrates its 30th anniversary, we mark this milestone with a star studded conversation. Joining Heartless Crew’s Bushkin are some of the people who were at the forefront of the scene that reshaped the relationship between Britain, black music and popular culture. From making Ayia Napa their own, to topping the charts, these youngsters paved the way for more than just music. It’s a story of business, taking on the music industry of innovation and success. With DJ & Producer DJ Spoony, vocalist Kele Le Roc, producer Zed Bias and Mega Man – leader of So Solid Crew.Event Produced by The Playmaker Group & Bush Bash Recordings for the British Library.MC Bushkin is a North London MC, songwriter and recording artist who established the UK garage group Heartless Crew with DJ Fonti and Mighty Moe in 1992. The crew has been credited with paving the way for UK grime music, along with So Solid Crew and Pay AS U Go. Taking inspiration from artists like Rory from Stone Love Movement, KRS-One and Shabba Ranks, the collective ran a mobile sound system playing hip hop, R&B and ragga, before focusing on UK Garage. MC Bushkin and the crew became well known for their performances in both clubs, on pirate radio and on BBC Radio 1Xtra. In 2002, Heartless Crew released their debut album, and were nominated for a MOBO Award.DJ SpoonyJohn St John Joseph, AKA DJ Spoony is a British DJ, radio and television presenter. He is a member of the Sony Award-winning UK Garage production trio Dreem Teem, who were instrumental to the UK Garage sound through pirate radio, Kiss 100 and BBC Radio 1. DJ Spoony was a resident DJ at the UK's top garage and R&B club night Twice as Nice for 7 years, mixing and compiling three gold selling compilation albums for the brand. He can now be heard every Friday evening with his show ‘The Good Groove’ on BBC Radio 2. Spoony was awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) in the 2023 New Year’s Honours services to charities through music during Covid-19.Kele Le Roc stage name of Kelly Biggs, is a British singer, songwriter and actor. She began singing at the age of three and found widespread acclaim in 1995 with the underground hit ‘Let Me Know’. She scored two top 10 hits in the UK Singles Chart with ‘Little Bit of Lovin’ and ‘My Love’ in 1999, when she also won two MOBO Awards for Best Newcomer and Best Single. Among those she has collaborated with are Basement Jaxx, Coolio, Cortney Pine, Shy FX and Omar Lye-Fook. Kele was among the artists selected to take part in a music project called Routes to Roots, connecting West African and English talent to create an album, book, and documentary for MTV.David Jones, better known as Zed Bias, is a British electronic musician based in Manchester. A producer and DJ within the UK garage/2-step, broken beat and UK funky genres, he is one half of duo Phuturistix. He is known for his single ‘Neighbourhood’ which reached number 25 in the UK charts in July 2000. He collaborated with various artists like DJ Spatts of The Criminal Minds. Zed Bias started to record under the name of Maddslinky in 2001 resulting in the album Make Your Peace in 2003, and a second, Make a Change in 2010. Bias’s releases, which explore a more experimental or progressive side of the 2-step garage sound, have been hailed as a crucial element in the establishment of dubstep as a definable sound or genre.Dwayne Vincent, AKA Megaman, is a songwriter and rapper, and one of the founder members of So Solid Crew, the phenomenally succesful UK garage and hip hop collective from London. They achieved success in the early 2000s, with the release of their debut album They Don’t Know, and the single ’21 Seconds’ which was the first of five consecutive top 20 hit singles for the group. Megaman, along with other members of So Solid Crew, including Asher D, (Ashley Walters) Lisa Maffia, Harvey and Romeo, are pioneers in the UK music scene: they took UK Garage from a dance-genre to one that was darker and more MC-oriented and on to mainstream success. Inspiring other young artists to experiment with sounds, this directly led to what would become known as grime music.
In Conversation with Leading UK Songwriters British Library 2024-08-08 | This event took place on 31 July 2024. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Watch our final panel of the Beyond the Bassline season, presented by Warner Chappell Music, home of some of the biggest and most exciting names in Black British Music.Among those talking about music and their own stellar careers are Shaznay Lewis, founder and songwriter of the legendary British girl group All Saints, the prolific singer-songwriter MNEK, best known for the chart topping "Head & Heart", and award-winning composer and multi-disciplinary artist Chisara Agor. Hosted by Co President of RCA Records Glyn Aikins.Chisara Agor is an interdisciplinary artist from Peckham. An award-winning composer, producer and writer, Agor’s sound combines elements of afro-folk, soul, pop, indie and jazz, creating a sound and unconventional arrangements that are truly their own. A graduate of Philosophy and Languages and with a strong music, dance and performance background, Chisara’s work reaches into meaning; from the politics of visibility, to exploring love, refuge and solidarity. With their musical The Garden in development, Chisara also composes bespoke scores for TV and film, songs in Spanish, and has a new musical in development. The latest single, My Soul, is out now, and EP, Shadows and Searchlights, is coming soon.MNEK is a Grammy award winning, BRIT and Ivor Novello-nominated artist / producer / writer who has clocked up over 4 BILLION streams of MNEK written, featured and produced tracks. He has worked alongside some of the biggest names in the industry, collaborating with the likes of Zara Larsson, Stormzy, Gorgon City, Years & Years and Craig David and written with international stars such as Beyoncé, Little Mix, Dua Lipa, Christina Aguilera, BTS, Mabel, Anne Marie, Madonna, Kelly Rowland, Selena Gomez and Clean Bandit. His back catalogue includes worldwide hits including ‘Ready For Your Love’, ‘Never Forget You’, and ‘Blinded By Your Grace’. His hit with Joel Corry, ‘Head & Heart’, became a global success, topping the charts in several countries and taking the reign as the longest standing UK #1 single in 2020. In recent years, he has seen continued success both on and off stage with “Where Did You Go?”, his collaboration with Jax Jones, going platinum plus the launch of Island UK & Republic US’s hotly-tipped female R&B trio FLO, and their debut EP “The Lead”, which he executively produced. MNEK is considered a musical icon amongst the LGBTQIA+ community and has previously performed at New York World Pride 2019, UK Black Pride and featured on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK as both a coach and guest judge. MNEK has continued efforts to strive for more inclusivity within the industry via the launch of Summer 2023's PROUD SOUND, an all-encompassing hub of queer talent in partnership with Warner Chappell and Spotify. MNEK's dedication to illuminating more inclusivity has also seen him become a contributor to the Guardian UK diversity panel as well as hosting his own YouTube panel ‘MNEKs Inter-Section’. Shaznay Lewis founded the legendary British girl group All Saints in 1993 and went on to write evergreen hits such as Pure Shores, Bootie Call and the indelible heartbreak classic Never Ever. In 2000 she won an Ivor Novello Award, the most prestigious award in British song writing for the Most Performed Work with All Saints’ fourth number one hit, Pure Shores. Her other awards include two Brits and a MOBO. Shaznay’s returning album Open was released in 2004 and was a lush masterpiece of psychedelic soul, cinematic strings and sophisticated R&B that combined her established songwriting chops with lyrical wisdom. Shaznay’s teenage inspirations came from Janet Jackson, Mary J. Blige, Prince and commercially minded American R&B. “It was the whole package: the way it looked, the fact that these people could sing, write, and perform. To a young British girl it was all so cool. There was also a lot of Bob Marley and Trojan records in my household that I grew up singing to, as well as a lot of 80s music which I love, so there is a real mixture in my style. As much as I loved the American stuff, my own music never sounded like that. I grew up in London with added cultural influences. It was always going to sound different.” Shaznay’s latest album Pages was released this year and features contributions from General Levy and Shola Ama. On this album Shaznay explains, “I felt free for the first time. For this album, myself and the people I worked with were making it for one reason only: to just make music that we felt was good, and for people to take and enjoy. You need to be in the right place and clear headspace to create good work and finally, I had that.”
The W.G.Sebald Lecture 2023: Alberto Manguel British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 23 March 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.This year’s W.G. Sebald Lecture on literary translation is given by Alberto Manguel, the Argentinian-born, Canadian writer, translator and editor and acclaimed author of The Library at Night and A History of Reading.His lecture Notes on the Art of Translation, explores Manguel’s thoughts on translation as a form of reading, of writing and of thinking. The translator is the secret sharer in the creation of a text, providing the original with what Borges called ‘a draft in another language’. Translation allows a text to come of age, generation after generation, and to enter a culture different from that of the original creator.The Sebald Lecture 2023 is presented by the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT), in association with the National Centre for Writing and the British Library.The Sebald Lecture is given annually on an aspect of literature in translation and is named after W.G. Sebald who set up BCLT in 1989. ‘Max’ was a German writer who opted to live in the UK and continue writing in German. His novels and essays include The Rings of Saturn, Austerlitz and On the Natural History of Destruction, and they established him as a leading writer of the 20th century.Alberto Manguel has written over 20 works of criticism including The Library at Night and A History of Reading and edited more than 30 literary anthologies. He is the author of six novels, including News from a Foreign Country Came, which won the McKitterick Prize. He has translated works by Amin Maalouf, Anna Seghers, Philippe Sollers and Marguerite Yourcenar into English, Katherine Mansfield and Arnold Wesker into Spanish. A Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France) and Officer of the Order of Canada, he has also been awarded the Formentor Prize, the Gutenberg Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. From 2016–2018 he was Director of the National Library in his native Argentina, following in the footsteps of Borges, and he is now Director of the Centre for the Study of the History of Reading in Lisbon.
Radical: Xiaolu Guo in conversation British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 13 April 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Xiaolu Guo launches her new memoir Radical, a playful, provocative and original take on striving for a life of her own. She is joined in conversation by writer and translator Lauren Elkin.Xiaolu brings her experience of living in different continents into all her books: from rural and urban China, to London, Europe, and now New York, where she spent a year, away from her husband and child, separated by place and language, and from people.Radical is a memoir about being an outsider and the desperate longing to connect. It is also a dictionary and an ardent love letter; an archive of an artist's search for creative freedom and an attempt to find a space between her fascination with Western culture and her nostalgia for Eastern landscapes.Xiaolu Guo was born in China. She published six books before moving to Britain in 2002, where in 2013 she was named as one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. Her books include: Village of Stone, shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, shortlisted for the Orange Prize; and I Am China. Her memoir Once Upon a Time in the East won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018. It was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her most recent novel A Lover's Discourse was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020. Xiaolu has directed several award-winning films including She, A Chinese, and documentaries about China and Britain. She was a judge for the Booker Prize in 2019, and is currently a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York.Lauren Elkin is a writer and translator, most recently the author of No. 91/92: a diary of a year on the bus and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel The Inseparables. Until recently based in Paris, her earlier Flâneuse: Women Walk the City was a finalist for the 2018 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and a Notable Books of 2017, a Radio 4 Book of the Week, and a best book of 2016 by the Guardian, the Financial Times, the New Statesman, and the Observer. Her next book, Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art is published in July 2023.
Beastly: Keggie Carew in conversation with Kate Humble British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 25 April 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Beastly, the vital new book by Keggie Carew, throws readers headlong into the mind-blowing glittering pageant of life, and goes in search of our most revealing encounters with the animal world to show where we’ve come from and where we’re going.Join Keggie Carew in conversation with writer, smallholder and TV presenter Kate Humble about the 40,000-year story of human-animal relations, how they have shaped civilizations and how they will shape our collective future. There has never been a greater urgency to understand this foundational relationship, it has shaped our lives, our land, our civilisation ... our planet, and if reimagined, could save it.Keggie Carew is the author of DADLAND which won the 2016 Costa Biography Award and was a Sunday Times bestseller. This event accompanied the British Library’s exhibition Animals: Art, Science and Sound.Keggie Carew was born in Gibraltar and has lived in West Cork, Barcelona, Texas, Auckland, and London. In 2016 she won the Costa Biography Award for her 'shape shifting memoir' DADLAND. Before writing, her career was in contemporary art. In 2014 she and her husband, Jonathan, bought 16 acres of land in Wiltshire to create a nature reserve and reinstate a bio diverse habitat for owls, bats, dragonflies, dormice and other wildlife. Now 24 acres, and featured on Radio 4’s Farming Today, they run various workshops, talks, the John Muir Award, and nature education for young people. Kate Humble is a writer, smallholder, campaigner and one of the UK's best-known TV presenters. She started her television career as a researcher, later presenting programmes such as Animal Park, Springwatch and Autumnwatch, Lambing Live, Living with Nomads, Extreme Wives, Back to the Land, A Country Life for Half the Price and Escape to the Farm. Her books include Humble by Nature, Friend for Life, Thinking on My Feet, A Year of Living Simply, Home Cooked and the forthcoming Where the Hearth Is. Thinking on My Feet was shortlisted for both the Wainwright Prize and the Edward Stanford Travel Memoir of the Year.
The Fight for Animal Rights: Kim Stallwood in Conversation British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 16 May 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.In September 2020, the British Library acquired the personal archive of animal rights activist Kim Stallwood. Explore the life of a leading campaigner, theorist and author who has been at the forefront of international animal advocacy for decades. Delve into the personal archive of this champion of animals and uncover the fascinating history of the movement from the 1970s to the present day. Kim’s veganism started over forty years ago, and since then plant-based lifestyles and animal rights have entered into the mainstream. These issues have never been more relevant, with environmental awareness and growing concern for the moral and legal rights of all creatures, so join Kim as he reflects on a lifetime of activism.2022 marked the bicentenary of the first recorded animal welfare legislation the ‘Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822’ also known as the ‘Martin’s Act.’ In the second half of this event legal expert Professor Paula Sparks will tell the broader story of animal rights legislation in the UK and discuss her role as chairperson of the UK Centre for Animal Law.Kim and Paula are joined by British Library curator Jonathan Pledge, who has been working on the Stallwood archive through his role as Lead Curator of Contemporary Archives and Manuscripts, Politics and Public Life.Kim Stallwood is an author, independent scholar, consultant, and speaker on animal rights. He has more than 45 years of personal commitment as a vegan and professional experience in leadership positions with some of the world’s foremost animal advocacy organisations. The British Library acquired the Kim Stallwood Archive in 2020. He is a consultant with Tier im Recht, the Zurich-based animal law organization, on projects preserving animal rights history.Paula Sparks is Chair of the UK Centre for Animal Law, Visiting Professor in Animal Welfare Law at Winchester University, Barrister at Doughty Street Chambers.Jonathan Pledge is Lead Curator, Contemporary Archives and Manuscripts, Politics and Public Life at The British Library.
Eating for the Elderly British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 17 May 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.In the midst of a cost of living crisis and an adult social care crisis, how does an increasingly ageing population feed itself? Or should the question be: how does a responsible society make sure that its elderly community has the nourishment needed for physical, mental and social well being?The challenges run across so many areas. Many elderly people live alone with health and mobility challenges - how can they feed themselves well and with pleasure? What support is available in learning how to cook at home for people who have lost a partner and find themselves in their advancing years suddenly feeding one for the first time? Or, at hospitals, where a large proportion of long-stay patients are older and waiting to be moved into adequate social care – what are the answers to dietary challenges here? And in nursing and care homes, how can they offer a stimulating eating environment and varied, nutritious diet their communities need? And what is the impact of the decline in funding for Meals on Wheels for older and disabled people living independently in the community – or after being released from hospital? Our older people are so often marginalised from access to food; and from the enjoyment of cooking, eating and sharing food that can make life so much richer. Yet despite the funding and priority challenges there are advocates and programmes across the country that are prioritising good food for the elderly. With broadcaster Dame Joan Bakewell, who is a long-time advocate of rights and support for the elderly; Kath Dalmeny, Chief Executive of Sustain; and Neel Radia, whose work with Meals on Wheels and other social enterprises tackles social isolation and loneliness.Introduced by Professor Dame Carol Black, Chair of the British Library and the Centre for Ageing Better.This event took place as part of the British Library Food Season 2023.
Daggers Drawn and Drawn Daggers: An Hour with Leonardo and Michelangelo British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 18 May 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti, the great Renaissance artists, expressed themselves vividly and originally in words. Leonardo produced many thousands of pages in his notebooks, covering an astonishingly wide range of subjects about man, nature and the arts. Michelangelo wrote powerful letters and deeply moving poetry. Together they redirected the course of the visual arts, particularly the dramatic portrayal of the human body. Yet, they were daggers drawn. In both personality and out-look they were deeply incompatible. Contemporaries tell of their bad personal relationship.This event has a more performative character than a typical lecture, blending images, readings and history. First, we encounter Leonardo in words and images; then it is the turn of Michelangelo. Each is introduced by readings that set the scene for the personalities and careers, before moving into their literary creations and ways of thinking. We are presenting a compelling and vivid Renaissance diptych in a new way.This event accompanied the two-day conference Leonardo da Vinci’s Papers: Invention and Reconstruction hosted at the British Library and The Warburg Institute, London.Martin Kemp is Emeritus Professor in the History of Art at the University of Oxford. He was trained in Natural Sciences and Art History. His books include, The Science of Art (Yale), The Human Animal in Western Art and Science (Chicago), Christ to Coke (Oxford), and Heavenly Visions: Dante and the Art of Divine Light (Lund Humphries). He has published extensively on Leonardo including. Leonardo da Vinci. The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man, and Leonardo (both Oxford). The essays he wrote for Nature have been published as Visualizations and developed in Seen and Unseen (both Oxford) and in Structural Intuitions (Virginia).Ruth Rosen formerly of the Royal Shakespeare Company has established an international reputation for her highly individualised literary portraits, appearing at major national and international festivals and theatres. She has worked in collaboration with writers including Harold Pinter and Michael Holroyd. She has devised and researched solo shows based on the work of Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Bronte, John Keats, William Blake, James Joyce, Gandhi and others.
Under the Sea British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 23 May 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.While oceans and seas cover over 70% of the planet’s surface, providing most of Earth’s living space, there is much that we do not know about life under the waters. Less than 10% of the ocean has been explored by humans. Teeming with weird and wonderful life forms – an estimated 80% of life on Earth can be found there – the ocean remains a deep and mysterious place.Join our panel of experts: natural scientists, researchers and conservationists, for a dive into the deep as we explore life under the sea and why it needs our protection. This event accompanied the British Library’s exhibition Animals: Art, Science and Sound.Miranda Krestovnikoff is a biologist, trained diver and resident wildlife expert on BBC One’s The One Show. She has presented natural history stories, ranging from robotic ants to rare dolphins and was one of the original members of the Coast team exploring Great Britain’s shoreline, revealing fascinating tales of marine life. Other recent credits include BBC Two’s Big British Wildlife Revival and guest appearances on Pointless Celebrities, Ready Steady Cook and Celebrity Masterchef. In 2010 Miranda co-presented the BBC Proms. She regularly writes articles on tourism and leisure for national newspapers and magazines and is the author of three books, Miranda Krestovnikoff’s Best British Beaches, Scuba Diving and her most recent book published in April 2019 The Sea.Tom Mustill is a biologist turned filmmaker and writer, specialising in stories where people and nature meet. His first book, How To Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication was published in 2022. He has worked with David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg, Stephen Fry and has won over 30 international awards and been nominated for a Primetime Emmy. He directed the blockbuster Inside Nature’s Giants series which won a BAFTA, Royal Television Society and Broadcast award, as well as the ZSL Award for Communicating Zoology.Miranda Lowe is a Principal Curator and museum scientist at the Natural History Museum, London. She cares for a plethora of historically important specimens from both the Challenger and Discovery oceanic expeditions. Miranda’s scientific expertise is in peracarid crustacea which includes crustaceans in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial habitats. She has presented lectures on curatorial research and popular science, appearing on shows such as the BBC Radio 4 series Natural Histories (2015) among others. In 2013 she was a finalist for the National Diversity Awards, receiving a Certificate of Excellence for her achievement.David Curnick is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Zoology, Zoological of Society London and head of the Ocean Predator Laboratory. He holds a PhD in marine ecology from University College London, has 14 years’ experience in the field of marine conservation science and has published over 30 scientific papers. David is currently an associate editor at the Journal of Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, on the management board for the Centre for Doctoral Training CDT on Sustainable Management of UK Marine Resources, and is marine lead on the Biome Health Project.
Fermentation: How Cultures Shape Culture British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 24 May 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Offering probiotic potential, wild flavours and cultural capital, ferments are having a moment. Beyond their trendy image, fermented foods are cornerstones of many culinary cultures, vital as a means of preservation, sustenance and food security. Join a star panel of fermentation practitioners, educators, authors and advocates as they lead us on an exploration of the cultural origins and importance of fermented foods. This will be accompanied by a tasting of fermented foods.This event took place as part of the British Library Food Season 2023. Leyla Kazim is a travel and food presenter, broadcaster and journalist. She is a critic on BBC One's MasterChef: The Professionals and a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s award-winning weekly show The Food Programme. Leyla is also a judge on the prestigious annual BBC Food & Farming Awards. She travels to eat and spent the best part of 2015 eating her way around the world. She drew on her catalogue of culinary experiences to co-create Lonely Planet’s book: The Ultimate Eatlist, The World's Top 500 Food Experiences. Leyla shares her global stories through a number of online and print publications and her social media platforms.Sandor Ellix Katz is a fermentation revivalist. He is the author of five books: Wild Fermentation; The Art of Fermentation; The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved; Fermentation as Metaphor; and his latest, Fermentation Journeys. Sandor's books, along with the hundreds of fermentation workshops he has taught around the world, have helped to catalyse a broad revival of the fermentation arts. A self-taught experimentalist who lives in rural Tennessee, the New York Times calls him ‘one of the unlikely rock stars of the American food scene.’ Sandor is the recipient of a James Beard award and other honors. For more information, check out his website.Alissa Timoshkina is a London-based food writer and historian specialising in Eastern European food culture. Originally from Siberia, Alissa comes from a Ukrainian-Jewish lineage, with her family history forming an important part of her culinary writing. Alissa holds a PhD in Soviet film and Holocaust history, however, her love of cooking pulled her away from an academic career. Since 2015 she’s been curating and hosting immersive dining experiences, offering cooking classes and authored a cookbook Salt and Time. In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Alissa initiated a global fundraising campaign, #CookForUkraine which raised over £2 million. Kenji Morimoto is a fourth generation Japanese American based in SW London whose cultural identity is grounded in food. As a child, he was in charge of making tsukemono (Japanese pickles) for family gatherings, learning from and surrounded by elders recreating flavours of home. During the pandemic, he started his Instagram @kenjcooks to document his interest in fermentation and connect the dots between diasporic traditions and his own. Since then, he’s cooked in fermentation focused kitchens in Poland and run fermentation focused supper clubs, led workshops on koji and kimchi, partnered with companies such as MOB and Souschef, and published in Waitrose Food.James Read’s mission is to smuggle bacteria back into our kitchens, and to make home-fermenting as approachable as home-baking. He is the founder of Kim Kong Kimchi (two Great Taste stars), Chief Trading Officer at the Fermenters Guild and his first book, Of Cabbages and Kimchi: A Practical Guide to the World of Fermented Food, is just out. It's full of stories about the surprising history and microbial wonder of fermentation, alongside over sixty recipes ranging from sauerkraut pierogi to kefir panna cotta, and is packed with Marija Tiurina's gastro-surrealist illustrations.
The Jhalak Prize 2023 British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 25 May 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.The Jhalak Prize is an annual literary prize for British or British-Resident writers of colour, established in 2016. Previous winners include Jacob Ross, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Guy Gunaratne, Johny Pitts, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi.The 2023 shortlist for the Jhalak Prize is: NONE OF THE ABOVE, Travis Alabanza (Canongate); TAKEAWAY, Angela Hui (Trapeze); THE SECRET DIARIES OF CHARLES IGNATIOUS SANCHO, Paterson Joseph (Dialogue); WHEN WE WERE BIRDS, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo (Hamish Hamilton); I'M A FAN, Sheena Patel (Rough Trade Books); HIDING TO NOTHING, Anita Pati (Liverpool University Press)The 2023 shortlist for the Jhalak Children’s & Young Adult Prize is: IN OUR HANDS, Lucy Farfort (Tate); WHEN OUR WORLDS COLLIDED, Danielle Jawando (Simon & Schuster); MIA AND THE LIGHTCASTERS, Janelle McCurdy, ill. Ana Latese (Faber); ELLIE PALLAI IS BROWN, Christine Pillainayagam (Faber); REBEL SKIES, Ann Sei Lin (Walker); DADAJI'S PAINTBRUSH, Rashmi Sirdeshpande, ill. Ruchi Mhasane (Andersen)Join this online celebration of great contemporary British writing, and the announcement of the Jhalak Prizes live from the British Library. Prize director Sunny Singh brings together the Jhalak Prize judges Haleh Agar, Anthony Vahni Capildeo and Monisha Rajesh; the judges of the Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult Prize Yaba Badoe, Maisie Chan and Irfan Master, and the Jhalak Artists in Residence. In addition to the announcement of the winner of the Jhalak Prize and the Jhalak Children’s and Young Adult Prize, the two Jhalak Artists-in-Residence reveal the works created to serve as the 2023 winners’ trophies. The evening showcases the independent bookshops championing the 2023 shortlists, in partnership with National Book Tokens. Sunny Singh is a London-based author and academic. She is the founder of the Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour, the Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize and the Jhalak Art Residency. She is also Professor of Creative Writing and Inclusion in the Arts at the London Metropolitan University.
Smashing the Food Hierarchy: Re-Evaluating the World’s Foods British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 27 May 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Africa has led the way in agriculture since its earliest days, with many of our cultivars having their roots in the continent. And many food cultures celebrated by the global majority – including plant-based eating, sustainability and nose-to-tail cookery – have been practiced on the African continent for generations. Yet for too long the narrative around food excellence has elevated French and European cuisine above all others. From the Michelin system to Italian food being crowned ‘healthiest’ in the world, the language and framing has done a disservice to global cuisines that have long set the standards that many celebrate today. Why is that the case, and how do we look beyond Escoffier to give global cuisines the credit they rightfully deserve? This event took place as part of the British Library Food Season 2023. Fatmata Binta is a chef and storyteller based in Accra, Ghana. She was born and raised in Freetown, Sierra Leone to first-generation Fulanis of Guinean descent. She describes herself as a ‘modern nomadic chef’, having trained in culinary school in Kenya studying French cuisine, before turning to her roots and celebrating Fulani cuisine through Dine on a Mat, a nomadic supperclub she founded. Her Fulani Kitchen foundation works to empower Fulani women through the growth of fonio, an ancient grain she believes has the potential to address several problems in food including shortages due to climate change. In 2022 she won the Basque Culinary Prize, becoming the first African to do so. Maria Bradford is an award-winning chef, writer and founder of Shwen Shwen catering company, meaning ‘fancy’ in the Krio language. Born and raised in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown, her love of food was cemented in the fresh local ingredients she was surrounded by in her youth. She moved to the UK, settled in Kent and enrolled at Leiths School of Food and Wine. In July, her debut book Sweet Salone will be published, the first Sierra Leonean cookbook to be published by a mainstream publisher in the UK. In 2022 she was listed in The Observer’s Top 50 in Food, and has written for and been featured in BBC Good Food, Olive Magazine, Women and Home and many more.Denai Moore is an acclaimed chef and author. She started her pop-up restaurant Dee's Table in 2017 to connect her nostalgia of Jamaican flavours from her childhood home. Inspired by her travels around the world and growing up in London, Dee’s Table is an intimate dining experience exploring a unique take on Jamaican food. Denai has also traded at prestigious London food markets while her work has been featured in Metro, Vice, Dojo. Dee has written for the Guardian, Leon, Tesco and more. Her new cookbook, Plentiful, is published this year with Hardie Grant.
Caribbean Connections: Stories and Recipes Across the Diaspora British Library 2024-07-29 | Join three of the UK’s most exciting Caribbean chefs, Andi Oliver, Melissa Thompson and Marie Mitchell as they explore the cultural and culinary legacies of their Caribbean heritage with the British Library’s Curator for Caribbean Collections, Nicole-Rachelle Moore. They discuss how they approach the intersections between recipe, biography, memory and history in their recently published and forthcoming books. The panel share their experiences of writing and the personal and cultural histories they have documented through their recipes. In partnership with the Oxford Cultural Collective.This event took place as part of the British Library Food Season 2023. Marie Mitchell is a writer, chef, co-founder of Island Social Club and founder of Like Cooked Food, Marie’s soon-to-launch project centred around community and kinship. Marie makes a considered effort to create space in which she can explore Caribbean culture and food with authenticity and without limits. Developing dishes by focusing on history, geography, and contemporary ingredients found in her locale and home, London, Marie is conscious of driving British Caribbean cuisine, and thus culture, forward. Outside of Island Social Club, Marie is a champion of social inclusivity, sustainability, and supporting and creating spaces for self-care and mental health awareness. Marie is due to publish her first book in spring 2024, Kin: Caribbean Recipes for the Modern Kitchen, (Particular Books, Penguin), which will feature a collection of recipes from the Caribbean and its diaspora, celebrating the powerful connection food gives us to our families, culture, and to places and people around the world.Nicole-Rachelle Moore is the British Library’s Curator of its Caribbean Collections. She has co-curated and taught courses on Andrea Levy and Toni Morrison and worked with the George Padmore Institute until 2021. Nicole-Rachelle co-edited Dream To Change the World on the life of John La Rose in 2018 and remains closely involved with New Beacon Books. Her poetry was included in the 2020 publication In Search of Mami Wata: Narratives and Images of African Water Spirits. Nicole-Rachelle Moore’s first book Memories, Musings and Unfinished Conversations is out soon.Andi Oliver is known to British audiences as host of both the BBC’s Great British Menu and the Sky Arts Book Club, amongst numerous other media roles. In a recent production for BBC2, The Caribbean with Andi and Miquita, Andi and her daughter embarked on an emotional journey to explore their heritage. Andi’s first cookbook, Pepperpot Diaries: Tales From My Caribbean Table, will be published in April 2023. Showcasing traditional and modern dishes, it will reveal the flavours of Andi’s childhood and track how Caribbean cuisine has evolved over time. In November 2022 Andi was appointed a Patron of the Oxford Cultural Collective.Melissa Thompson is an award-winning food writer, columnist and cook. A former national newspaper journalist, in 2014 she started a supperclub in her front room that eventually became a sell-out pop-up. As a food writer, she has penned powerful articles on the British food industry that became focal points for important discussions around identity, diversity and inclusivity. In 2021, she won the ‘Guild of Food Writers’ Food Writing Award and in 2022, was named Writer of the Year at the PPA Awards. Her debut cookbook Motherland was published by Bloomsbury in 2022. It explores the evolution of Jamaican food, from the island’s indigenous population to today. It was shortlisted for the Andre Simon Award in 2023. She is a regular panelist on Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet, has appeared on Saturday Kitchen and is co-director of the British Library’s Food Season. She is a columnist for BBC Good Food Magazine and has written articles and recipes for a range of publications for the Guardian, Conde Nast Traveller, Stylist, Vittles, Waitrose Weekend, Waitrose Magazine and others.
Cooking for Joy: Celebrating Joyce Molyneux British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 28 May 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.The late chef and restaurateur Joyce Molyneux knew she wanted to be a chef from the age of 16. At a time when a career with food for women typically meant housekeeping, school meals or canteens, Joyce entered the world of the restaurant kitchen and ended up being one of the country’s most loved and critically acclaimed chefs. The restaurant where she made her name, The Carved Angel in Dartmouth, became synonymous with locally sourced food, creatively cooked and generously served. Unassuming, modest and generous, she influenced UK food culture and paved the way for women chefs. Drawing from British Library recordings with Joyce the event celebrates her life and reflects on the changing space of the restaurant kitchen with three of the UK’s best loved and most respected women chefs, Ravinder Bhogal, Sally Clarke and Angela Hartnett in conversation with Food Season founder Polly Russell. This event took place as part of the British Library Food Season 2023. Ravinder Bhogal is a journalist, chef and restaurateur who was born in Kenya to Indian parents., Ravinder Her food is inspired by her mixed heritage and the UK’s diverse immigrant culture. Her debut restaurant, Jikoni, was ranked 56th in the UK by the National Restaurant Awards within seven months of opening and achieved a coveted place in the Michelin Guide in the same year. Ravinder has written three books; Comfort & Joy: Irresistible Pleasures from a Vegetarian Kitchen (Bloomsbury) published in May 2023 and the award-winning Jikoni: Proudly Inauthentic Recipes from an Immigrant Kitchen (Bloomsbury, 2020) and Cook in Boots (HarperCollins, 2009). She is a columnist at the FT Weekend and Guardian Feast and a contributing editor at Harper’s Bazaar.Sally Clarke grew up in Surrey and studied at Croydon College, followed by Le Cordon Bleu. She worked in Paris, London and California before opening Clarke’s Restaurant in 1984. She went on to open two shops, a wholesale bakery and a production kitchen. She has published three books: Sally Clarke’s Book: Recipes from a Restaurant, Shop and Bakery, 30 Ingredients, and First Put on Your Apron. In 2009 she was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s birthday honours list for services to the hospitality industry.Angela Hartnett, OBE, is one of the UK’s most loved chefs and restaurateurs, known for her sophisticated yet simple cooking instilled in her by her Italian grandmother and mother. After starting out in the kitchens at Aubergine, Zafferano, L’Oranger and Petrus, she became head chef at Petrus within seven short months, helping the restaurant to achieve a Michelin star. She went on to launch Amaryllis in Scotland; Verre in Dubai; MENU and The Grill Room at The Connaught, with Gordon Ramsay. In 2007 Angela was awarded an MBE for services to the hospitality industry, and the following year she opened her own restaurant, Murano in Mayfair, where she is Chef Proprietor, and holds a Michelin star and one of the few restaurants to hold 4 AA rosettes. In 2012 Angela opened Hartnett Holder & Co in partnership with Robin Hutson, and with Chef Luke Holder and from 2013 to 2019 three branches of Cafe Murano. Angela was the judge in BBC1’s Britain’s Best Home Cook in 2020, alongside Claudia Winkleman, Mary Berry and Chris Bavin. In June 2022 she launched the podcast, Dish by Waitrose & Partners, which she co-hosts with celebrity broadcaster Nick Grimshaw. Angela currently has three cookbooks to her name, Cucina (2007) and Angela’s Kitchen (2011) and bestseller, The Weekend Cook, Good Food for Real Life (2022). In January 2022 Angela was awarded an OBE for services to the hospitality industry and to the NHS during the Covid-19 pandemic.Polly Russell is a food historian, the founder and curator of the Food Season and the Head of the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. In 2002 while researching for her PhD on British culinary culture she conducted oral histories with people involved in the UK food industry, including an eight hour recording with Joyce Molyneux. Polly was the on-screen historian for BBC2’s Back in Time series and has a regular food history column in the Financial Times Saturday Magazine.
London Finds Itself British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 28 May 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Restaurant writing in London, as well the rest of the UK and the US, has transitioned from an era of reviews and cultural criticism to one of lists and maps, where multiple restaurants are ticked off as places to discover. But what are the successes and pitfalls of this emphasis on trying to find the city, and are there any alternative ways to write about restaurants and food spaces which are more equitable.Vittles editor Jonathan Nunn is joined by a group of editors and restaurant writers to discuss his latest book London Feeds Itself, as well as the future of restaurant writing in London and further afield.Jonathan Nunn is an award-winning writer covering food and cities. In 2020 he founded Vittles, a food and culture newsletter that has become one of the most prominent publications about food in the UK. In 2022 he edited London Feeds Itself, a book of essays by exciting prominent and newer voices in food talking about the myriad food cultures within London. He is the winner of 2021’s FPA Media Award for a report about food delivery drivers, for which he went undercover as one, and in 2022 won the Guild of Food Writers’ Investigative and Food Writing awards. This event took place as part of the British Library Food Season 2023.
Nose to Tail: Fergus Henderson at 60 British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 28 May 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Fergus Henderson is joined on stage by his wife, chef and restaurateur, Margot, and chef Jeremy Lee. With a roll-call of St John alumni and other leading food figures joining in to celebrate one of the most iconic and adored figures in restaurants in the year that he turns sixty.Fergus Henderson is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in the modern restaurant scene, both in the UK and internationally, responsible for transforming how and what people cook and eat. He co-founded the multi award winning St. JOHN restaurant in 1994, where he coined the now-ubiquitous phrase Nose-to-Tail eating. His eponymous and garlanded cookbook of the same name, Nose to Tail Eating, which was published in 1999 and went on to be named in the LA Times as the most influential cookbook of all time. This and his three subsequent books have remained in print ever since; widely read, used and admired and hailed as essential modern classics. In 2005 Fergus received an MBE for services to gastronomy, this was upgraded in 2020 to an OBE for services to the culinary arts. A Lifetime Achievement Award from the influential 50 Best Restaurants list, Tatler, Observer, and the BBC are just some of the accolades Fergus has been awarded. New Zealand born chef Margot Henderson began her career working at the iconic Eagle pub in Farringdon in the 1990s, and rose to prominence in the world of hospitality alongside her business partner, Melanie Arnold, with whom she ran The French House in Soho for seven years, together with Fergus Henderson. Margot and Melanie founded their catering company together, now the acclaimed East Shoreditch restaurant, Rochelle Canteen, where they offer a seasonal produce-led menu supporting local farmers, and she is the chef-owner of new venture The Three Horseshoes restaurant-pub-with-rooms in Somerset.Jeremy Lee joined the Hart brothers at Quo Vadis in Soho in early 2012, becoming Chef Proprietor of this venerable restaurant. Jeremy had previously manned the stoves of Blueprint Café on the first floor of the Design Museum, which Sir Terence Conran created on the south bank of the River Thames near Tower Bridge. This singular cook has worked with such distinguished restaurateurs as Simon Hopkinson and Alastair Little, who all played a considerable part in the great resurgence of modern British cooking. In 2012 Jeremy and Quo Vadis won the category of Best Restaurant Menu of the Year and in 2013 the Tatler Award for Best kitchen. In 2018, Jeremy was listed in The Evening Standard’s ‘Progress 1000: London’s most influential people – Tastemakers: Eat & Drink’. He writes for numerous newspapers and periodicals and has appeared on television Could You Eat an Elephant? For Channel 4 and several series of Great British Menu. Jeremy’s first cookbook, Cooking: Simply and Well for One or Many, was in 2022. This event took place as part of the British Library Food Season 2023.
Black Teachers: Jeffrey Boakye and Beryl Gilroy British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 1 June 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.An evening of conversation and celebration as author Jeffrey Boakye talks about his new book, I Heard What You Said, and we mark the British Library acquisition of the Beryl Gilroy archive. Two black teachers working decades apart, but how different were their experiences of the education system?Beryl Gilroy (1924–2001) was a writer, teacher and ethno-psychotherapist, who is best known for her innovative autobiography, Black Teacher (1976). Beryl was born in Guyana (then British Guiana) and emigrated to Britain in 1952. Her work explores the lives of families, particularly of women and children, and the impact of 20th-century migration and societal change that came as a result. These themes run throughout Gilroy’s archive, which was acquired by the British Library in 2020. Her life and work has been an inspiration for former teacher Jeffrey Boakye.Jeffrey Boakye is an author, broadcaster and educator with a particular interest in issues surrounding race, masculinity, education and popular culture. In his book - I Heard What You Said - Jeffrey recounts how it feels to be on the margins of the British education system. As a black, male – an English teacher who has had to teach problematic texts – his existence is a provocation to the status quo, giving him a unique perspective on the UK’s classroom.Professor Darla-Jane Gilroy is a Reader in Knowledge Exchange and Programme Director in the School of Design Technology at London College of Fashion. She has a career that spans design, consultancy, and education. Darla has built a successful fashion label, worked as a brand strategist and cultural analyst, and has contributed to fashion exhibitions at the V&A. Darla is the daughter of Beryl Gilroy.Beryl Gilroy’s book, Black Teacher, is described by the Guardian as “a vital story of survival doused in fury, humour and love.” It provides an insight into the Windrush Generation and the trial and tribulations people like Beryl were often forced to endure. Jeffrey Boakye's I Heard What You Said is described by SchoolsWeek as “an impassioned, articulate, and irresistible call to arms."Jeffrey Boakye is interviewed by Professor Darla-Jane Gilroy, Reader and Associate Dean of Knowledge Exchange at the Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London and daughter of Beryl Gilroy. Professor Gilroy will also be in conversation with Jeffrey about the life and work of her mother. They will be joined by Eleanor Dickens, Curator of Contemporary Literary Archives and Manuscripts at the British Library, to explore Beryl Gilroy’s legacy including the addition of her archive to the British Library collections last year.Jeffrey Boakye (D.Litt) taught English to secondary school students for fifteen years before becoming a Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Manchester. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Leicester in January 2023. Jeffrey’s other books are Hold Tight: Black Masculinity, Millennials and the Meaning of Grime; Black, Listed: Black British Culture Explored; What is Masculinity? Why Does it Matter? And Other Big Questions; Musical Truth: A Musical Journey Through Modern Black Britain and Kofi and the Rap Battle Summer. He is also the co-presenter of BBC Radio 4’s double award-winning Add to Playlist.
Leïla Slimani in conversation with Bonnie Greer British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 5 June 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.An evening with one of the leading literary voices of our time, Leïla Slimani, who came to the British Library to discuss her latest novel Watch Us Dance, the second part of a trilogy of novels based on her family’s roots in revolutionary Morocco. Leïla talks to writer and broadcaster Bonnie Greer, who came of age in Chicago during the Civil Rights Movement. In the follow up to the best selling In the Country of Others, the rebellions within an interracial family play out against the countercultural rebellions of the 1960s. Of two siblings, one is studious and aspires to become a doctor; the other falls in with the American and European hippies descending en masse on Tangier and Casablanca. Both are dreaming of radiant futures in a newly independent Morocco, but find the ideals of their youth colliding with the realities of racism and corruption, power and privilege.Leïla Slimani is the first Moroccan woman to win France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, which she won for Lullaby. Her other books include Adèle, Sex and Lies, and In the Country of Others and Watch Us Dance and a new non-fiction work The Scent of Flowers at Night. A journalist and frequent commentator on women’s and human rights, she is also the Chair of the International Booker Prize 2023 judges. Born in Rabat, Morocco, in 1981, Leïla now lives in Portugal. Bonnie Greer is an American-British playwright, novelist, critic and broadcaster. She was born on the South Side of Chicago and began writing plays at the age of nine, later studying theatre in Chicago under David Mamet’s supervision at the Actors Studio in New York. Living in Manhattan’s West Village in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she moved to Britain in 1986. Bonnie has often appeared on television programmes such as Newsnight Review and Question Time and has served on the boards of several leading arts organisations. Her numerous books and novels include a biography of writer and social activist Langston Hughes, and explorations of the lives of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Marilyn Monroe and Ella Fitzgerald and a memoir, Parallel Life.
Indigenous Remix: How Native American History Shaped the American Past British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 8 June 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.From the Revolution to the Cold War, from the Constitution to the last election, from foundational legal decisions to the contemporary Supreme Court, American Indians have been intricately interwoven into American history.And yet Native peoples are often considered only a minor afterthought, the subject of vague and guilt-assuaging laments about the sad costs of colonial settlement. There is a different story to be told: of centuries-long struggles over tribal sovereignty and citizenship, of American laws, rights, and possibilities, of contests over land and culture.In this Bryant Lecture, Philip Deloria weaves Native histories into traditional topics in American history, offering tools for reconceptualising the American past.Presented by the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library.Philip J. Deloria is the Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University, where his research and teaching focus on the social, cultural and political histories of the relations among American Indian peoples and the United States, as well as the comparative and connective histories of indigenous peoples in a global context. Deloria received the Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1994, taught at the University of Colorado, and then, from 2001 to 2017, at the University of Michigan, before joining the faculty at Harvard in January 2018. He is a trustee of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. He is former president of the American Studies Association and the Organization of American Historians, an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of numerous prizes and recognitions. He is the author of several books, including Playing Indian (Yale University Press, 1998), Indians in Unexpected Places (University Press of Kansas, 2004), American Studies: A User’s Guide (University of California Press, 2017), with Alexander Olson, and Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract (University of Washington Press, 2019), as well as two co-edited books and numerous articles and chapters.
The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour: The Poet in the Garden British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 20 June 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.The story of life, Oscar Wilde said, began with a man and a woman, in a garden.For this edition of the Poetry Hour a cast of leading actors explores enduring poetic images of gardens from William Blake, Rupert Brooke, Dante, T. S. Eliot, John Keats, Rudyard Kipling, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Pope, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Dylan Thomas.Readers include Sophie Cookson (Kingsman/Confessions of Frannie Langton/Red Joan) and others to be announced soon. Presented by The Josephine Hart Poetry Foundation. The Poetry Hour was founded by novelist and poetry anthologist Josephine Hart. Launched as The Gallery Poets in Mayfair in the mid1980s, it later became The Poetry Hour and won fame for bringing classic ‘great poetry read aloud by great actors’ to a wide audience. The British Library has supported Josephine Hart’s mission from 2004 and continues to do so in her memory on a regular basis.
Insects: Small but Perfectly Formed British Library 2024-07-29 | This event took place on 23 June 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.A close up look into the miraculous world of insects with Martha Kearney, George McGavin, Levon Biss and Karen Wimhurst.Celebrating the alien and magical insect from Robert Hooke's 1664 study of minute bodies Micrographia to cutting-edge contemporary photography.With acclaimed entomologist, author and presenter Dr George McGavin and leading macro photographer Levon Biss.Also featuring a performance by the composer and musician Karen Wimhurst, whose project 'JUMP' is a musical interpretation of insect and amphibian sounds and rhythms that transports listeners to a summer riverbank and beyond, harnesses the music of bog bush crickets, mottled grasshoppers and cicadas.Chaired by broadcaster and beekeeper Martha Kearney.In partnership with the Royal Entomological Society and part of Insect Week.
Hand to Mouth: The Multiple Lives of the Sandwich British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 10 July 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.The Sandwich: at once the simplest and most complicated food. Food writers Rebecca May Johnson, Nigella Lawson and Jonathan Nunn pick apart what is arguably Britain's most widely beloved food format, discussing approaches to sandwich-making from the mass-market to the personal.Nigella Lawson is an internationally renowned food writer and TV cook whose successful TV series have made hers a household name around the world. In 1998 she wrote her first cookbook, How To Eat, The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food, and now has 12 bestselling books to her name, including her latest, Cook, Eat, Repeat: Ingredients, Recipes and Stories. Her books have sold over 12 million copies worldwide. Her first TV series, Nigella Bites aired in 2000, followed by a string of successful series broadcast in the UK, USA, Australia and beyond. Nigella was voted author of the year at the 2001 British Book Awards (Nibbies), and Best Food Personality 2014 at the Observer Food Monthly Awards.Jonathan Nunn is an award-winning writer covering food and cities. In 2020 he founded Vittles, a food and culture newsletter that has become one of the most prominent publications about food in the UK. In 2022 he edited London Feeds Itself, a book of essays by exciting prominent and newer voices in food talking about the myriad food cultures within London. He is the winner of 2021’s FPA Media Award for a report about food delivery drivers, for which he went undercover as one, and in 2022 won the Guild of Food Writers’ Investigative and Food Writing awards.Rebecca May Johnson is a writer whose first book Small Fires, an Epic in the Kitchen was published in 2022 by Pushkin Press and is described by The Sunday Times as, “A manifesto for reclaiming cooking as an intellectual”. Johnson has published essays, reviews and nonfiction with Granta, Times Literary Supplement, Daunt Books Publishing, among others. She was a creative writing fellow at the British School at Rome in 2021 and has a PhD in Contemporary German Literature from UCL.
Lit, Laugh, Love British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 11 July 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.A stellar combination of the nation’s best-loved authors share from their own work, and one treasured work from the last five decades. This light-hearted and joyful exchange is chaired by broadcaster Nikki Bedi.Monica Ali is a bestselling writer whose work has been translated into 26 languages. She is the author of five books: Brick Lane, Alentejo Blue, In the Kitchen, Untold Story and Love Marriage. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2003 was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. She has been nominated for the Booker Prize, the George Orwell Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Monica is currently adapting her fifth novel, Love Marriage, for television in conjunction with New Pictures.David Nicholls is a bestselling novelist and BAFTA-nominated screenwriter, best-known for the globally bestselling love story One Day, charting the lives of two people over 20 years on the same day, which won the 2010 Galaxy Book of the Year Award. Subsequently made into a hit film, the book has sold over five million copies and been translated into forty languages. David Nicholls’ other novels include Starter for Ten, The Understudy, Us and Sweet Sorrow. Starter for Ten will premier as a musical at Bristol Old Vic in spring next year.Roger McGough is, according to Carol Ann Duffy, “the patron saint of poetry." The legendary poet, performer and broadcaster was one of the Liverpool Poets, and has published over 100 poetry books for adults and children. He has won numerous awards including The Cholmondeley Award in 1988, received the Freedom of the City of Liverpool in 2001, and was awarded a CBE in 2004. He is a Fellow of The Royal Society and President of The Poetry Society, he also presents the popular Radio 4 Poetry Please series.Nikki Bedi is an international broadcaster with a passion for making arts and culture accessible. She’s been described as a ‘culture courier who is decolonising the world one show at a time’. Nikki curates, writes and presents The Arts Hour on the BBC World Service. On BBC Radio 4 she presents Saturday Live and on television she travels the globe for the new BBC World News series Encounter Culture. She was the first person to speak in Hindi as a panellist on QI, and in her spare time she watches inordinate amounts of TV.
Emily Brontë: No Coward Soul British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 20 July 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.The timeless works of the Brontë sisters and the landscapes that shaped them still inspire writers today – including Blake Morrison, who reworked Chekhov’s The Three Sisters as a play about the Brontës.In this talk Morrison explores the sisters’ remarkable legacy and discusses some of the sisters’ rare manuscripts and first editions that form part of the Blavatnik Honresfield Library.The Blavatnik Honresfield Library was purchased for the nation in 2022 by the Friends of the National Libraries with the support of the Blavatnik Family Foundation, the National Heritage Memorial Fund and many other generous supporters.Blake Morrison is a poet, novelist, librettist and the author of two bestselling memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? and Things My Mother Never Told Me. His play adaptations for Northern Broadsides included one based on the Brontës, We Are Three Sisters. He is Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths University, London.With dramatic readings by Kate Ashfield. Kate has recently shot the feature film Stockholm Bloodbath directed by Mikael Håfström. She was in the second series of the hit ITV show Sanditon starring opposite Kris Marshall, Rose Williams and Anne Reid. Kate’s big break came off the back of Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead where she starred alongside Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Kate’s other credits include the BBC mega-hit Line of Duty, as well as A Confession opposite Martin Freeman. Kate is also a BAFTA nominated writer, who created the acclaimed Channel 4 series Born to Kill starring Jack Rowan.
Disinformation in the 21st century…and what to do about it? British Library 2024-07-26 | What is at stake with the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation? What are the risks for democracy in an era of growing public mistrust? And what information can we believe in an age of social media, bad actors, deep fakes, bots and AI? Chaired by Fulbright alumnus Mukul Devichand, Editor of Audio Programming at the New York Times, this discussion invites leading UK investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr and US media scholar, blogger and internet activist Professor Ethan Zuckerman (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) to examine both the causes of disinformation and new approaches to dealing with it. Presented by the US-UK Fulbright Commission in partnership with the British Library’s Eccles Centre. The 2023 Fulbright Eccles Debate will be the first to be held in front of a live audience since 2019 and forms part of the Commission’s 75th anniversary celebrations, promoting dialogue and knowledge exchange between the peoples of the UK and US.Mukul Devichand is the Editor of Audio Programming for the New York Times. With a long background in international, investigative and longform reporting for radio and TV, he spent 17 years at the BBC running a number of journalism units for BBC News and BBC World Service where he was recognised for introducing innovative forms of digital publishing. From 2017 he became the BBC’s first Executive Editor of Voice + AI taking the values of public broadcasting into the new space of AI Assistants. Mukul is a Fulbright Alumnus having studied Journalism at Columbia University and now sits on the US-UK Fulbright board of trustees. Carole Cadwalladr is a British author, investigative journalist, and features writer. She is a regular features contributor to the Guardian and Observer and formerly, The Daily Telegraph. Carole rose to international prominence in 2018 for her role in exposing the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal for which she was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Carole has won numerous other awards including the British Journalism Awards: Technology Journalism Award in 2017 and The Orwell Prize for Political Journalism in 2018. She is the author of The Family Tree, published in 2006 and shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize.Ethan Zuckerman is associate professor of public policy, information and communication at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and director of the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure. He is the author of Mistrust: How Losing Trust in Institutions Provides Tools to Transform Them and Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection. Ethan is co-founder of the international blogging community Global Voices which showcases news and opinions from citizen media in more than 150 nations and 30 languages. Previously, he directed the Center for Civic Media at MIT and taught at the MIT Media Lab. Ethan is a Fulbright alumnus who spent his fellowship at the University of Ghana.
42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 8 September 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.When Douglas Adams died in 2001, he left behind 60 boxes full of notebooks, letters, scripts, jokes, speeches, fleeting thoughts and even poems. Now in, 42 a new book compiled by Douglas’ long-time collaborator Kevin Jon Davies, hundreds of these personal artefacts appear in print for the very first time,Douglas was as much a thinker as he was a writer, and his artefacts reveal how his deep fascination with technology led to ideas which were far ahead of their time: a convention speech envisioning the modern smartphone, with all the information in the world living at our fingertips; sheets of notes predicting the advent of electronic books; journal entries from his forays into home computing – it is a matter of legend that Douglas bought the very first Mac in the UK; musings on how the internet would disrupt the CD-Rom industry, among others. 42 also features archival material charting Douglas’ school days through Cambridge, Footlights, collaborations with Graham Chapman, and early scribbles from the development of Doctor Who, Hitchhiker’s and Dirk Gently. Alongside details of his most celebrated works are projects that never came to fruition, including the pilot for radio programme They’ll Never Play That on the Radio and a space-inspired theme park ride.This special event with Kevin Jon Davies, writer Sue Limb and other special guests was hosted by broadcaster Clive Anderson, who collaborated with Douglas in his Cambridge Footlights days.
Africa Writes: Blitz the Ambassador British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 29 September 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Blitz Bazawule (Blitz the Ambassador) is a multidisciplinary artist whose creative brilliance covers an array of art forms. His film, The Burial of Kojo, premiered on Netflix, his paintings have been featured at The Whitney Biennial, and his direction on Beyoncé’s Black is King won him a Grammy nomination. His musical take on The Colour Purple is set to grace screens globally in December.Africa Writes has the honour to host him for this illuminating exchange as he talks about his debut novel, The Scent of Burnt Flowers. The book takes us on a journey from Alabama to Accra in the 1960s, via harrowing escapes and dangerous journeys into a coup d’état, woven together with music and magic.Steeped in the history and mythology of postcolonial West Africa at the intersection of the civil rights movement in America, it is a gripping debut merging political intrigue, magical encounters, and forbidden romance in an epic collision of morality and power.
Laurence Engel and Roly Keating in conversation British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 6 October 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Laurence Engel is the first woman to lead the national library of France in its more than 500-year history. Join her and the British Library’s Chief Executive, Sir Roly Keating, as they discuss perspectives from within two of the world’s largest libraries. Hear them touch upon stewardship of national collections, the future role of national libraries in a world of fast changing technological advances, and their respective leadership journeys. Laurence Engel was appointed President of the National Library of France (BnF) in April 2016, and saw her position renewed in 2021 for a second mandate. She devoted her professional career to cultural public policies, in particular for the French-German television channel Arte, for the Ministry of Culture, where she worked as a permanent Secretary for French Minister of Culture Aurélie Filippetti (2021-2014), and for the City of Paris, as Director of Cultural Affairs. She is also the President of Réseau Francophone Numérique, an international non-profit association, which currently comprises 30 members (national libraries, national archives, university libraries, institutes) in 20 countries.She has published several books and articles in magazines such as Esprit or for the Bartillat Editions (‘Que peut la culture?’). Sir Roly Keating has been Chief Executive of the British Library since September 2012. In his tenure so far, he has overseen a series of significant developments including: the launch in 2015 of Living Knowledge, an ambitious new vision and strategy; a major expansion of cultural and learning activities, including landmark exhibitions on Magna Carta and Harry Potter; new pan-UK partnerships with public libraries including the successful Business & IP Centre national network; digital initiatives including Save Our Sounds to preserve the UK’s audio heritage; the creation of the Knowledge Quarter, an innovative partnership of knowledge-based organisations near the Library’s London HQ; and the initiation of major new capital projects in London and Yorkshire, including full-scale renewal of the Library’s Boston Spa campus and creation of a major new public space in Leeds. Roly joined the Library after a long and successful career as a programme-maker and broadcasting executive at the BBC, where he played key roles in the launch of UKTV, as its first Head of Programming, and BBC Four, as its launch Controller in 2002, before moving on to become Controller of BBC Two and Director of Archive Content, with editorial oversight of the BBC's online services including BBC iPlayer.
A Stroke of the Pen: Terry Pratchett’s Lost Stories British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 10 October 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.The arrival of new stories by the late, great Terry Pratchett, the award-winning author and creator of the phenomenally successful Discworld series, was thought to be an impossibility. As per his wishes to not have anything unpublished released, his hard drive was crushed with a steamroller after his death. But now, twenty lost tales have been rediscovered - written by Pratchett under a pseudonym and printed in newspapers during the 1970s and 1980s. Whilst none are set in Discworld, they hint towards what he would go on to create, containing all of his trademark wit, satirical wisdom and fantastic imagination. This unmissable event for Pratchett fans will be, for most, a first chance to discover these unearthed stories. We are joined by Pat and Jan Harkin, who went through decades’ worth of old newspapers to rediscover the lost treasures. Plus special guest readings and more. Hosted by Katy Guest.Each story is a gem. Meet Og the inventor, the first caveman to cultivate fire, as he discovers the highs and lows of progress; haunt the Ministry of Nuisances with the defiant evicted ghosts of Pilgarlic Towers; visit Blackbury, a small market town with weird weather and an otherworldly visitor; and go on a dangerous quest through time and space with hero Kron, which begins in the ancient city of Morpork...This event accompanies the British Library exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination, supported by Wayland Games and Unwin Charitable Trust.Pat and Jan Harkin are retired doctors living in Leeds, West Yorkshire. Pat has been a Pratchett fan for many years. He was dubbed “Lord of the Uber-fans” by Sir Terry, and has a large collection of Discworld books and Pratchett related memorabilia, along with an improbable number and variety of small rubber ducks. Sir Terry used him as a source of expert opinion in slightly obscure areas, such as how much earwax a person creates in a lifetime. Pat is one of the members of The Venerable Order of the Honeybee, a group Sir Terry had created to acknowledge those who had helped in his writing. Jan (aka Dr Jan Clarke) acts as travel organiser and supporter for Pat on many international Discworld conventions and tolerates his massive collection of books, prints and collectables. She worked alongside Pat on the Quest for The Quest for the Keys.
The PEN Pinter Prize 2023: Michael Rosen British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 11 October 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Watch writer and performance poet Michael Rosen accept the prestigious PEN Pinter Prize for 2023. He delivered his keynote address at a ceremony hosted by English PEN and the British Library. The Prize judges praised Rosen’s work, saying he ‘has a rare, invaluable gift: the ability to address the most serious matters of life in a spirit of joy, humour, and hope. Fearless in holding power to account.’ The PEN Pinter Prize was established in 2009 by the charity English PEN, which defends freedom of expression and celebrates literature, in memory of Nobel-Laureate playwright Harold Pinter. The prize is awarded annually to a writer of outstanding literary merit resident in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland or the Commonwealth who, in the words of Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize in Literature speech, casts an ‘unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the world and shows a ‘fierce intellectual determination ... to define the real truth of our lives and our societies’. Former winners of the PEN Pinter Prize include Malorie Blackman, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Hanif Kureishi. The prize is shared with a Writer of Courage: a writer who is active in defence of freedom of expression, often at great risk to their own safety and liberty. The co-winner, selected by Michael Rosen from a shortlist of international cases supported by English PEN, was announced at the event. Michael Rosen is one of Britain’s best loved writers and performance poets for children and adults. His first degree in English Literature and Language was from Wadham College, Oxford and he went on to study for an MA at the University of Reading and a PhD at the former University of North London, now London Metropolitan. He is currently Professor of Children’s Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London where he teaches critical approaches to reading on an MA in Children’s Literature. He has taught on MA courses in universities since 1994. He was the Children’s Laureate from 2007–2009 and has published over 200 books for children and adults, including the recent bestseller Many Different Kinds of Love and On the Move: Poems about Migration. English PEN is one of the world's oldest human rights organisations and the founding centre of PEN International, a worldwide writers’ association with 147 centres in more than 100 countries. The charity works to promote literature and to defend freedom of expression in the UK and internationally. Harold Pinter (1930 - 2008) was a Vice President of English PEN. He visited Turkey on behalf of PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee with Arthur Miller in 1985 where they were accompanied by Orhan PamukThe PEN Pinter Prize is supported by the generosity of the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Ruth Maxted.
Hilary Mantel: A Life in Writing British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 24 October 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Although Hilary Mantel died in 2022 and is much missed, her inimitable voice lives on: sharp, often very funny, always luminous Join us as we launch her final book A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing. This collection of her journalism, lectures, literary criticism and personal writing, much of it in first person, stands powerfully alongside Hilary’s remarkable novels, unspooling stories from her own life and illuminating the world as she found it. In an evening hosted by Alex Clark, fellow writers including Sarah Perry celebrate Hilary Mantel and her achievement, with readings by Lydia Leonard who played Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall on stage.Her subjects in A Memoir of My Former Self are wide-ranging. She discusses nationalism and her own sense of belonging; our dream life flopping into our conscious life; her family and past lives, the mythic legacy of Princess Diana; the many themes that feed into her novels – revolutionary France, psychics, Tudor England; literature and films reviews, and published for the first time, her stunning Reith Lectures, which explore the process of art bringing history and the dead back to life.Hilary Mantel was the bestselling author of many novels including Wolf Hall, which won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Bring Up the Bodies, Book Two of the Wolf Hall Trilogy, was also awarded the Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book Award. She also wrote A Change of Climate, A Place of Greater Safety, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, An Experiment in Love, The Giant, O'Brien, Fludd, Beyond Black, Every Day Is Mother's Day, Vacant Possession, and a memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. Mantel was the winner of the Hawthornden Prize, and her reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books.
Black to the Future: Genre Marauders British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 4 November 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.A panel event chaired by Irenosen Okojie MBE (Nudibranch), featuring Arthur C Clarke award-winning author Tade Thompson (Rosewater) and Bafta-nominated narrative designer Chella Ramanan (Before I Forget), who write within and across genres (fantasy, science fiction, crime, historical) and media (books and games).The panellist each map out the arc of a recent work, providing insights into why they're drawn to these genres, while demystifying their writing processes.Black To The Future is an Afro-Futurist celebration of outstanding Black artists, a space for visionary imaginings to thrive. It begins as Black History Month ends, with the theme of ‘Black Phantasmagoria’, accompanying Fantasy: Realms of Imagination. A festival founded and directed by Irenosen Okojie MBE in collaboration with the Royal Society of Literature and the British Library, with a focus on invigorating dialogues and genres within which Black literature and art is flourishing. Irenosen Okojie MBE is an award-winning author who has curated for the Southbank Centre, the BBC, Duckie and programmed the Maverick Women and The Moon strand at Moon Festival featuring Margaret Atwood. She co-presented Turn up for the Books podcast on BBC Sounds with Simon Savidge and Bastille front man, Dan Smith, and judged the 2023 Women’s Prize. Chella Ramanan is a narrative designer on the writing team for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, at Ubisoft Massive in Sweden. She is half of 3-Fold Games, a female game development team from the UK, whose games include the BAFTA-nominated Before I Forget and the upcoming Windrush Tales, a narrative adventure featuring the triumphs and tribulations of two Caribbean immigrants in post-war Britain.Tade Thompson is a full-time hospital psychiatrist, who writes science fiction, fantasy and crime thrillers. In 2019 he won the Arthur C Clarke award, the UK’s most prestigious prize for science fiction novels, for Rosewater, part of a trilogy set in a mid-2060s Nigeria, where alien animals and bacteria are unleashed. Two of Thompson’s novels are in development for the screen; Edgar Wright is producing The Murders of Molly Southbourne for Netflix, and Ray Donovan writer Sean Conway and producer Big Talk are adapting African Noir Making Wolf for television.This event accompanied the British Library exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination, supported by Wayland Games and Unwin Charitable Trust.
The Bideford Witches: John Callow and Shami Chakrabarti in Conversation British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 4 November 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.On a Thursday in 1682, a magpie tapped at the window of a prosperous Devon merchant. Within a matter of hours, his family and servants had convinced themselves that the bird was an emissary of the devil, invoked by witchcraft. As the result of the fearful allegations that followed, three women of Bideford were condemned as witches. They were the last group of women to be executed in England for the crime. In his fascinating book The Last Witches of England: A Tragedy of Sorcery and Superstition, John Callow charts the changing attitudes towards the Bideford women, from revulsion to regret, into celebration in our own age. He is joined by human rights lawyer, campaigner and writer Shami Chakrabarti. Together they’ll uncover the tragedy of the Bideford women and ask what it tells us about present day persecution and the dangers of demonising others. John Callow is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Suffolk, UK, who has written widely on early modern witchcraft, politics and popular culture. His latest book is: The Last Witches of England: A Tragedy of Sorcery and Superstition (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021). Shami Chakrabarti (Baroness Chakrabarti CBE PC) is a human rights lawyer and campaigner, Labour Peer and was Shadow Attorney General, 2016 to 2020. She was the Director of Liberty from 2003 to 2016 and a panellist on the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics after the phone-hacking scandal. She was the Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University and of the University of Essex and served on the Board of the British Film Institute (BFI) for many years. Shami has written and broadcast widely and is the author of two books; On Liberty (2014) and Of Women (2017).
Witch-Hunt: A History of Persecution British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 4 November 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.The English Witch Trials raged across the country for three centuries, engulfing the lives of thousands of ordinary people and seeing the execution of five-hundred victims. The national witch paranoia began in the Mediaeval period, reached its peak during the reign of Elizabeth I and was only formally outlawed by Parliament in 1735. The vast majority of those accused were older women, living alone or widowed, often poor and disabled. This event addresses the dark history of mistrust, incrimination and public violence that all too often led to the gallows. It asks why the trials came to an end in England and reflects on the fact that we are spared having to suffer the experience of them today. Our panel of leading historians will delve into the forces that fueled the violence and consider its legacy on legal history, religious belief and attitudes towards those perceived as ‘other’. Chaired by critic, academic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari.Malcolm Gaskill is Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia. One of Britain's leading experts in the history of witchcraft, his works include the highly-acclaimed Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy and Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans. In 2010, Malcolm was a visiting fellow in North American studies at the Eccles Centre of the British Library, where he conducted research for his book Between Two Worlds. In November 2021, Allen Lane published his most recent book The Ruin of All Witches. Marion Gibson is Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter. She is the author of seven books on witches in history and literature including: Reading Witchcraft (Routledge, 1999), Possession, Puritanism and Print (Pickering and Chatto, 2006), Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft (Routledge, 2017) and with Jo Esra Shakespeare’s Demonology (Bloomsbury, 2014). Her latest book Witchcraft A History in Thirteen Trials was published by Simon & Schuster in June 2023. Shahidha Bari is a professor at London College of Fashion (University of the Arts London). She has presented Inside Culture on BBC Two and hosts BBC Radio Three’s Arts and Ideas programme Free Thinking. Her writing has appeared in Aeon, Art Review, The Financial Times, Frieze art magazine, The Guardian, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement and others. Shahidha is a trustee for the Brontë Society and Art Night and has been a judge for the Forward Poetry Prizes, the Baillie Gifford Prize, the PEN Hessell-Tiltman History Prize and the 2022 Booker Prize. She is the author of Dressed: A Philosophy of Clothes.
A New Coven: Witches in contemporary fiction British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 4 November 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.Our panel of authors explore feminine resistance, historical injustice, identity, rebellion and hidden power. Their spellbinding stories are reinventing the much-maligned figure of the witch for modern readers. Enter the world of ‘WitchLit’ – the new genre of historical and fantasy fiction that is conquering 2023. With Kirsty Logan, author of Now She is Witch; Juno Dawson, author of the fantasy trilogy Her Majesty’s Royal Coven; A K Blakemore, author of The Manningtree Witches; and Stacey Thomas on her debut novel The Revels. Chaired by historian, broadcaster and founder of HistFest Rebecca Rideal. Kirsty Logan is a writer of novels and short stories. Her latest book is Now She is Witch, is a medieval witch revenge quest. Her other books include Things We Say In The Dark, The Gloaming, The Gracekeepers, A Portable Shelter, and The Rental Heart & Other Fairytales. Juno Dawson is a #1 Sunday Times best-selling novelist, screenwriter, journalist, and columnist for Attitude Magazine. Her books include the global bestsellers, This Book Is Gay and Clean. She won the 2020 YA Book Prize for Meat Market. Her first adult fantasy trilogy Her Majesty’s Royal Coven launched in 2022, becoming an instant best-seller. A K Blakemore is a poet and novelist from London. She is the author of two full-length collections of poetry. Her debut novel, The Manningtree Witches, won the Desmond Elliot Prize and was shortlisted for the Costa Award for Best First Novel and The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, among others. Her second novel, The Glutton, was recently released by Granta books. Stacey Thomas is a contributor to Bad Form and an alumna of the Curtis Brown Creative novel writing course. The Revels is her debut novel. Rebecca Rideal is an historian of early modern England, and the director of the history festival, HistFest. She is the author of 1666: Plague, War and Hellfire and host of the history podcast Killing Time. Rebecca spent over a decade working in specialist factual television where she developed and produced a wide range of programming, including Bloody Tales of the Tower, Adventurer’s Guide to Britain, Escape from Nazi Death Camp, and the triple Emmy award-winning series, David Attenborough’s First Life. In 2024, she’ll be tutoring “That old and crafty serpent”: Magic and Witchcraft in the Seventeenth Century at Oxford University's School for Continuing Education.
Tales of the Weird British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 14 November 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.The British Library’s hugely popular Tales of The Weird series unearths and republishes strange and uncanny stories from its collections. They range from Crawling Horror: Creeping Tales of the Insect Weird to The Uncanny Gastronomic: Strange Tales of the Edible Weird, and from Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic to Sunless Solstice: Strange Christmas Tales for the Longest Nights. Whether delving into ghostly horror or unsettling folk nightmares, every volume is a treasure trove of extraordinary writing from the past and present, each lovingly collected and introduced. This affectionate celebration of weird writing, hosted by author and broadcaster Matthew Sweet, features an introduction to series highlights with collection editors Tanya Kirk and Zara-Louise Stubbs, and series editor Jonny Davidson, after which two of our finest writers of the strange, including Reece Shearsmith (League of Gentlemen, Inside No. 9) discuss the ways that the weird and uncanny influences their own work.This event accompanied the British Library exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination, supported by Wayland Games and Unwin Charitable Trust.
The Worlds of Terry Pratchett: Neil Gaiman and Rob Wilkins British Library 2024-07-26 | This event took place on 21 November 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date.A special celebration of the remarkable creative life of Sir Terry Pratchett, forty years after the publication of the first Discworld novel The Colour of Magic. Soon after the book was published, it inspired a young journalist Neil Gaiman to meet Terry, beginning a long collaborative friendship that was epitomised by their joint novel Good Omens, which appeared in 1990. The TV version of Good Omens was created by Neil Gaiman, with the first season on screen in 2019 and the second earlier this year Neil is joined by Terry Pratchett’s biographer and former assistant Rob Wilkins, in a conversation hosted by Kat Brown.Terry Pratchett (1948 – 2015) is the internationally bestselling author of dozens of books, including his phenomenally successful Discworld series. His young adult novel, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, won the Carnegie Medal, and Where’s My Cow? his Discworld book for “readers of all ages” was also a New York Times bestseller. Pratchett received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2010. With more than 100 million books sold worldwide in 43 languages, Pratchett was the UK's best-selling author of the 1990s. Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author and creator of books, graphic novels, short stories, film and television for all ages, including Norse Mythology, Neverwhere, Coraline, The Graveyard Book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and The View from the Cheap Seats. His fiction has received Newbery, Carnegie, Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner Awards. American Gods, based on the 2001 novel, is now a critically acclaimed, Emmy-nominated TV series, and he was the writer and showrunner for the mini-series adaptation of Good Omens, based on the book he co-authored with Sir Terry Pratchett. Gaiman was an Executive Producer and co-showrunner for Netflix’s TV adaptation of his Sandman comic book series, and he is developing the TV adaptation of his novel Anansi Boys. In 2017 Gaiman became a Global Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Originally from England, he lives in the United States, where he is a Professor in the Arts at Bard College.Kat Brown is a freelance journalist, commentator and social media editor. Her writing has appeared in The Telegraph, Grazia, The Mail On Sunday, You Magazine, The I, Pilot, Marie Claire and more. Her first book, No One Talks About This Stuff, will be out in 2024 through Unbound.This event accompanied the British Library exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination, supported by Wayland Games and Unwin Charitable Trust.
