In a recent Guardian interview, the actress Harriet Walter reflected on the impossibility of ever really knowing another human being. Yet, like the novelist Hilary Mantel, she has devoted her professional life to inhabiting characters not her own, often historical ones. Walter’s notable roles include Elizabeth I, Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, while Mantel has twice won the Man Booker Prize for her extraordinary portrayal of Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies – adapted for the stage by the RSC, currently playing in the West End, and soon to be serialised on BBC2. In a conversation jointly hosted by the RSL and Intelligent Life magazine, and chaired by the playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker, they reflect on how they get to grips with a character, compare notes on capturing personality on the page and the stage, and discuss how to maintain a sense of self while becoming someone else.

We are grateful to the Ronald Duncan Literary Foundation for supporting this event.

In partnership with Intelligent Life.

Hilary Mantel and Harriet Walter in conversation with Timberlake Wertenbaker

Nothing grants insight into lived experience quite like a memoir, and the form is currently having a resurgence. This month, we celebrate the memoirs that take us from the experience of giving birth to coming out to what it’s like to be in a world-famous band, via all the richness and thorny issues that this form promises. Our guest is Viv Albertine, former guitarist in the hugely influential all-female punk band The Slits. Her first memoir, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys, was published in 2015, and she came in to talk to us about its follow-up, To Throw Away Unopened. It's published this month, and is about many things but mostly her complicated relationship with her extraordinary mother and growing up as a working-class kid in London.

Literary Friction - Memoir With Viv Albertine

Download: https://www.xlr8r.com/news/daniel-avery-shares-gorgeous-ambien-work

@danielavery

Download

Download: Daniel Avery - Visible Gravity

A monthly conversation about books and ideas on NTS Radio hosted by friends Carrie Plitt, a literary agent, and Octavia Bright, a writer and academic. Each show features an author interview, book recommendations, lively discussion and a little music too, all built around a related theme - anything from the novella to race to masculinity. Listen live on NTS Radio www.nts.live

Literary Friction - Memoir With Viv Albertine

LiteraryFriction

Related tracks