If Virginia Woolf came back to life today, what would she make of it? How would she feel about what’s happening to books, and to the reputation of her own books, and of the Bloomsbury group?  The acclaimed novelist Maggie Gee, whose thirteen previous books include The White Family, My Cleaner and My Animal Life, this month publishes her new novel, Virginia Woolf in Manhattan, which imagines what ensues when an author working in the New York Public Library becomes so passionate about Woolf that she suddenly materialises. In a conversation chaired by Anne Chisholm, biographer of Frances Partridge, the long-lived Bloomsbury diarist who remembered Woolf from her youth, Maggie Gee discusses her novel with Alexandra Harris, author of Romantic Moderns, which explores connections between some of the 20th Century’s greatest writers and artists, including Virginia Woolf, Eric Ravilious and John Piper, and of a short biography of Woolf. They reflect on her imaginings of both past and future, and ask what she means to readers and writers today. Is she, for women writers in particular, a hard act to follow?

We are grateful to the Royal Literary Fund for sponsoring this event, and to the Bloomsbury Hotel for supporting it.

Virginia Woolf in the 21st Century

Dinosauria, We (born like this) by Charles Bukowski (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

https://www.youtube.com/user/SpokenVerse

born like this
into this
as the chalk faces smile
as Mrs. Death laughs
as the elevators break
as political landscapes dissolve
as the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
as the oily fish spit out their oily prey
as the sun is masked

we are
born like this
into this
into these carefully mad wars
into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
into bars where people no longer speak to each other
into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings

born into this
into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die
into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty
into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

born into this
walking and living through this
dying because of this
muted because of this
castrated
debauched
disinherited
because of this
fooled by this
used by this
pissed on by this
made crazy and sick by this
made violent
made inhuman
by this

the heart is blackened
the fingers reach for the throat
the gun
the knife
the bomb
the fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
the fingers reach for the bottle
the pill
the powder
we are born into this sorrowful deadliness
we are born into a government 60 years in debt
that soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt

and the banks will burn
money will be useless
there will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
it will be guns and roving mobs
land will be useless
food will become a diminishing return
nuclear power will be taken over by the many
explosions will continually shake the earth
radiated robot men will stalk each other
the rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante's Inferno will be made to look like a children's playground
the sun will not be seen and it will always be night
trees will die
all vegetation will die
radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
the sea will be poisoned
the lakes and rivers will vanish
rain will be the new gold
the rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
and the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
and the petering out of supplies
the natural effect of general decay
and there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
born out of that.

Born Into This (Dinosauria, We by Charles Bukowski) (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

Gustav Mahler Symphony No7, Frédéric Chaslin, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, February 2017

Running Through the Grapevine (From "Patrick Melrose")

Journey

Track from Toctoctoc's album "Bonsoir Clara"
Released by Paroles de planches

Connect with Toctoctoc
Website : http://www.mustradem.com/spectacles/la-maison/toctoctoc
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/Toctoctoc

Toctoctoc - Nous, d’un côté/Vache folle

In a Classical Mood

Route Of Spring

Yann Tiersen - Penn ar Roc'h (EUSA) [Edit; Bonus]

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Fritz Reiner, conductor
Yehudi Menuhin, violin

Wagner: Prelude To Act I of Lohengrin (March 1960)

Works Vol. 1

Uspud: Act 1 (instrumental)

YouTube Music

The Dead Can Dance

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.

Virginia Woolf in the 21st Century

Royal Society Literature

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