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Margaret Atwood

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Dressed in black and based in the US, Neil Gaiman has, in the past decade, become an author hero among readers of all ages, including the 1.8 million who follow him on Twitter. In prize-winning, best-selling novels including Coraline, Neverwhere, American Gods and The Graveyard Book, he combines the everyday and the other-worldly, drawing on sources from English folklore, science fiction, fantasy, horror and fairytales to rock music and the Midrash. An element of enchantment runs through all his work. To mark the publication of The Ocean at the End of the Lane, an unsettling and very personal fable about memory, magic and survival, he is making one public appearance in London. Interviewed by the Guardian's literary editor, Claire Armitstead, he reflects on the boundaries between children's and adult literature; the appeal of working in multiple forms - such as comics, picture books and screenplays; the writers - from Kipling to Edgar Allan Poe - who have most influenced him; and the lure of darkness.

The Guardian  is media partner for this event.

Neil Gaiman in conversation with Claire Armitstead: June 2013

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Margaret Atwood began writing poetry in high school, and the most thrilling moment of her writing career was the publication of her first poem: ‘I mean, all the other things that have happened since then were a thrill, but that was the biggest.’ She has gone on to publish 19 collections of poetry, as well as 14 novels – including 'The Handmaid’s Tale', 'The Blind Assassin' and 'MaddAddam', published last summer. Organised and methodical in writing fiction, she writes poetry ‘in a state of free float’, very often in hotel rooms or on planes. Her poems tend to begin with a cluster of words, around which they form – she has compared the process to ‘dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation’ – and sometimes they result in novels. In a conversation with Peter Kemp, Chief Fiction Reviewer of the Sunday Times, Atwood talks about how she believes that poetry and fiction use different parts of the brain, explains how poems can open doors into rooms which novels then enter and explore, and reads from her work.

We are grateful to the Canadian High Commission in the UK for hosting this event at Canada House. We are grateful to the TLS for supporting this event.

Margaret Atwood reads her poetry

Recorded at TED 2014. Transcript and context: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/03/20/neil-gaiman-ghost-stories/

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Neil Gaiman on why scary stories speak to us

Neil Gaiman on why there is no such thing as "children's" books

Recorded at TED 2014 in Vancouver. Background and context: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/03/20/neil-gaiman-ghost-stories/

Neil Gaiman on the haunting ghost of dead ideas

Background and poem text: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/07/02/patti-smith-jack-kerouac-last-hotel/

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Patti Smith reads Jack Kerouac's "The Last Hotel"

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

A little something I improvised on the piano. It's the sherlock theme as a ballad.

If the soundcloud download doesn't work, download it via a downloader from my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftIQtWnhn8U

BBC Sherlock Ballad

Elaine Showalter discusses the enormous impact of the Brontës - through Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Vilette and Mrs Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë - on American women's writing in the 19th century: writers black and white, novelists and poets, from Emily Dickinson to Sarah Orne Jewett, who used the lives and novels of the Brontës as inspirations for American stories.  Chaired by Ion Trewin.

American women writers & the Brontes (Elaine Showalter)

Twenty years after her untimely death from cancer, novelist Angela Carter continues to challenge, delight and provoke her readers. Her literary executor, the theatre critic Susannah Clapp, joins novelist Caryl Phillips and writer and broadcaster Bidisha to celebrate Carter’s work and consider her legacy.

Angela Carter (Bidisha, Susannah Clapp & Caryl Phillips)

Piano Solos.

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All Too Close (Piano)

Dicing with darkness (Hilary Mantel & James Runcie)

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The Time To Run (Finale)

Margaret Atwood and Sir Brian Hoskins discuss their concerns for the planet anf their thoughts on producing and conserving energy in a conversation chaired by Gabrielle Walker.  An event hosted jointly by the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society.

A Problem Shared (Margaret Atwood, Sir Brian Hoskins)

"You can’t treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires," Rosencrantz insists in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. So do different rules apply when writing about royals? Jane Ridley’s 'Bertie: A Life of Edward VII' (2012) was praised as "a model of how royal biographies should be written … impeccably researched, balanced, sensible, disrespectful without being offensive". William Shawcross wrote the official biography of the Queen Mother, described as "a magisterial work". He also edited the Queen Mother’s letters, published last year. In a conversation chaired by Anne Chisholm, they discuss whether royal biography is changing; the joys and drawbacks of working in the royal archives; the extent to which they were given a free hand to write what they wanted; how much time needs to elapse before it is possible to explore sensitive subjects, such as the madness of George III; and whether they feel tempted to tackle further royal subjects, or plan to stick firmly to commoners from now on.

We are grateful to the Logos Trust for sponsoring this event.

The TLS is proud to be the media partner for this event.

Jane Ridley & William Shawcross on writing about royalty

Founded in 1820, the RSL acts as a voice for the value of literature, honouring and supporting emerging and established writers whilst creating a bridge between authors and audiences of all backgrounds and experiences to engage as many people as possible with the wealth of literature in the UK.

A Problem Shared (Margaret Atwood, Sir Brian Hoskins)

Royal Society Literature