Almost 10 minutes before we heard from the first guest.  Why don't you edit your podcasts. They would be less boring.

Literature

THE COSMO DAVENPORT-HINES MEMORIAL MEETING

Tens of thousands of novels are published in the UK every year – so how do new voices get heard? Two well-established authors, Michael Holroyd and Deborah Moggach, introduce two outstanding young writers with novels coming out this month. Karin Altenberg’s first novel, Island of Wings, was set on St Kilda, and was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book Prize. Her second, Breaking Light, is set on Dartmoor. ‘I am a hard rock of a reader,’ says Michael Holroyd, ‘but this has more than once moved me to tears.’ Jessie Burton’s debut, The Miniaturist, set in the 17th Century, follows a young woman as she travels to Amsterdam to marry an illustrious merchant trader, and finds herself in a closed and dangerous world. It is, says Deborah Moggach, ‘complex, involving and deeply atmospheric’. As well as talking about their own work, Altenberg and Burton ask Holroyd and Moggach about their lives in literature. Michael Holroyd’s novel A Dog’s Life, started when he was 19, is re-released today (rather too hurriedly, he believes), and Deborah Moggach’s Tulip Fever – also set in 17th-century Amsterdam - is currently being made into a Hollywood film.

This meeting is generously sponsored by Richard and Jenny Davenport-Hines, and is held in memory of their son Cosmo.

Beginning, middle and end

"I began my literary career with short stories," A.L. Kennedy wrote recently. "I banged together my first anthology … and a publisher actually inflicted it on a waiting world." Since the publication of that first collection in 1990, Kennedy has produced five more – her most recent, All the Rage, published earlier this year – and six novels, including the Costa Prize-winning Day. The Sunday Telegraph has called Kennedy "one of the most brilliant writers of her generation" and her prose has been described in the Observer as “pure, full of tenderness and courage". In conversation with Paula Johnson, who runs the RSL's prizes, Kennedy reads from her work, and explores the craft of the short story. The V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize is awarded for the best unpublished short story of the year. After the announcement and presentation of the V.S. Pritchett Prize for 2014, the winning entry will be read by its author.

We are grateful to ALCS for supporting this event, to Christopher and Jennie Bland for sponsoring the V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, and to Prospect for publishing the winning entry.

A.L. Kennedy on the craft of the short story

The 9 November 2014 marks a quarter of a century since East and West Germans tore down the wall that had separated them since 1961. The anniversary has inspired two outstanding books. Maxim Leo grew up in East Berlin and was 19 when the Wall came down. In Red Love, described in the Sunday Telegraph as “beautiful and supremely touching”, he shows how his parents’ marriage was derailed by ideological difference, and how the GDP continues to haunt his family like a “ghost that can’t find peace”. Rory MacLean has known three Berlins: West Berlin, where he made movies with David Bowie and Marlene Dietrich, East Berlin, where he researched his bestseller Stalin’s Nose, and the unified capital. Berlin: Imagine a City is an intimate biography of the city from medieval times to the present, told through the lives of 23 of its former residents. Jan Morris called it “a wonderful achievement … hauntingly representing, as in a tangled dream, 600 years of history”. In an event co-hosted by the European Commission, they revisit the reality and myth of the Cold War capital, and explore its remarkable capacity for reinvention.

This event is held in partnership with the European Commission in the UK.

In Berlin

Published last year, Lucy Hughes-Hallett's 'The Pike' scooped three major prizes for non-fiction: the Samuel Johnson, the Duff Cooper and the Costa Biography Award. Her subject, the Italian poet and soldier Gabriele D'Annunzio, was a debauched artist who became a national hero, and as one critic put it his life "becomes more repellent with each page". Richard Davenport-Hines, the author of highly praised studies of Proust and Ivy Compton-Burnett, international drug traffickers and the Profumo Affair, has also written about the lives of Jack the Ripper, Robert Maxwell, Lord Lucan and Dr Shipman. In a conversation chaired by Selina Hastings, acclaimed biographer of Evelyn Waugh, Rosamund Lehmann and Somerset Maugham, they ask whether sinners are more easily brought to life on the page than saints; whether living with a dark character gets a writer down, or makes them feel better about themselves; and how they think they would have got on with their chosen monsters in real life.

Writing about monsters

Ever since Sinbad the Sailor washed ashore there, Ceylon – now Sri Lanka – has drawn writers and storytellers from all over the world. But it is only in the last 20 years or so that Sri Lankan literature has come to international attention. Romesh Gunesekera grew up in Sri Lanka and the Philippines. His first book, Monkfish Moon, was a collection of short stories reflecting the ethnic and political tensions that have threatened Sri Lanka since independence in 1948. His second, 'Reef', was shortlisted for the Man Booker. Earlier this year, he published 'Noontide Toll', a novel set a post-war Sri Lanka still haunted by trauma. V. V. Ganeshananthan is a fiction writer, essayist and journalist whose 'Love Marriage' (2008), about two Tamil families in Sri Lanka and North America, was longlisted for the Orange Prize. In a conversation with BBC journalist Razia Iqbal they discuss the long shadow that war has cast over Sri Lankan literature, the challenges of writing fiction in the context of a troubled political climate, and the connection between writers living in Sri Lanka, and those of the diaspora working in Canada, America, Australia and the UK.

We are grateful to the Robert Gavron Charitable Foundation for sponsoring this event.


The Sri Lankan Novel

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.

In Berlin

Royal Society Literature

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