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When a writer produces a novel as impressive as Jane Eyre, their fame is assured – like it or not. Even publishing under a pseudonym didn’t save Charlotte Brontë from the difficulties of celebrity and from being identified with her heroine. Claire Harman’s biography of Charlotte was published last autumn to rave reviews – it is, as one critic put it, “elegant, sensitive, beautifully paced and moving”. The playwright Moira Buffini wrote the screenplay for the 2011 film of Jane Eyre, starring Mia Wasikowksa and Michael Fassbender. Rachel Joyce, author of the bestselling novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, has been fascinated by the Brontës since childhood. Harman, Buffini and Joyce ask who was the real Charlotte Brontë? How did she negotiate the exposure that came with publication– especially after the deaths of Emily and Anne? And can a writer ever be free of her creations?

We are grateful to the National Portrait Gallery, our partner for this event.

Celebrarting Charlotte Brontë

In a celebration of the eighteenth V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize for short stories, Ali Smith talks to the four shortlisted authors about their work. Short stories ‘consume you faster’ Smith has written. ‘They’re connected to brevity. With the short story you are up against mortality. I know how tough they are as a form, but they’re also a total joy.’ Smith has published five volumes of stories – most recently Public Library and Other Stories – as well as eight novels. How to be Both (2014) won the Baileys Women’s Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel Award. At the end of the evening, the winner of the V.S. Pritchett Prize will be announced.

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

Telling Tales

To mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Beatrix Potter, and the centenary of the birth of Roald Dahl, we devote an evening to children’s literature. The writer and broadcaster Nicolette Jones talks to bestselling children’s author Michael Morpurgo, who has written over 130 books – including War Horse, Private Peaceful and Kensuke’s Kingdom – and who was Children’s Laureate 2003–2005 and is the current President of BookTrust. They reflect on whether children should be exposed to suffering (Morpurgo has written about the Holocaust and Nagasaki); why it is important to pass on a knowledge of history to children; the magic of stage adaptations, and how children can be encouraged to read – and write.

Michael Morpurgo Afraid Of The Dark

In his BBC series ‘The Face of Britain’ historian and writer Simon Schama explored British portraiture and what it revealed about the ‘individual and collective psyche’ of the time. With the NPG’s wide-ranging Autumn exhibition of Picasso’s portraits, he turns his attention to the painter’s evocations of lovers, family and friends. With writer and novelist Lisa Appignanesi, Chair of the RSL, Schama reflects on some of the differences between representing character in words and on canvas.

We are grateful to the National Portrait Gallery, our partner for this event.

Picasso's Faces

Born in the Gorbals in 1955, Carol Ann Duffy has been Poet Laureate for the past eight years. Her poems blend humour and warmth with sharp social commentary and are on GCSE and A-level syllabuses.Her work has been garlanded with prizes, including the Forward Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize and the PEN/Pinter Prize. She reads alongside two emerging poets whose work she admires. Since starting to submit his poetry to journals three years ago, Keith Hutson has had work published in Magma, The North, The Rialto and Stand. His debut pamphlet, Routines, has recently been published by Poetry Salzburg. Mark Pajak, born in Merseyside, has had poetry published in Magma, The North and The Rialto, and won first place in the 2016 Bridport Prize. His first pamphlet, Spitting Distance, was selected as a Laureate’s Choice and is published with smith|doorstop. The readings are introduced by Tim Robertson, Director of the RSL and features Young People's Laureate for London Caleb Femi.

We are grateful to the the T.S. Eliot Estate for sponsoring and for the Roehampton Poetry Centre for co-hosting this event.

Annual T. S. Eliot Memorial Reading Carol Ann Duffy

Summer 2017 marks the bicentenary of the death of Jane Austen at the age of 41. What explains her enduring appeal? Four writers discuss this as well as arguing for their favourite of her novels. Paula Byrne is the author of The Real Jane Austen, which introduces us to a woman deeply involved in the world around her, yet far ahead of her time in emotional and artistic development. She champions Austen’s Mansfield Park. Helena Kelly, who admires Persuasion, is the author of Jane Austen, the Secret Radical, ‘a sublime piece of literary detective work’. The novelist Kamila Shamsie speaks up for Pride and Prejudice, which she has loved since childhood. Their discussion is chaired by John Mullan, author of What Matters in Jane Austen? He praises Emma.

We are grateful to the Royal Literary Fund for sponsoring this event.

What's So Great About Jane Austen?

Following the publication of La Belle Sauvage, Philip Pullman talks with Erica Wagner – author, critic and former literary editor of The Times – about his writing life, and about the books that helped shape him. Philip Pullman is one of the best-loved and most highly acclaimed children’s authors in the world, and his books are consumed by readers of all ages. He has won numerous awards, including the Whitbread Book of the Year. He has also become known for his views on Christianity, our education system and the role of the author in public life. He is, in his own words, ‘a passionate believer in the democracy of reading’.

We are grateful to Richard and Jenny Davenport-Hines for sponsoring this event in memory of their son Cosmo.

Philip Pullman - Literature Matters:The Democracy Of Reading

We're celebrating 50 years of the Man Booker Prize this July with Man Booker 50 festival and it spurred us to look back on some of the previous Man Booker Prize winners we've had here in recent years.

In this first episode of Southbank Centre's Book Podcast, we bring together extracts from talks with four previous Man Booker Prize-winning authors here at Southbank Centre: Eleanor Catton, Richard Flanagan, Marlon James and George Saunders.

Man Booker 50 festival takes place at Southbank Centre from 6 - 8 July 2018 and is packed full of talks with some of the world's most celebrated novelists. Highlights include talks between Julian Barnes & Peter Carey, Hilary Mantel & Pat Barker, Kazuo Ishiguro & Michael Ondaatje, and the closing event of the festival, Golden Man Booker Live, which crowns the best of the winning novels from the last five decades.

Tickets to the events in Man Booker 50 festival are available here: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/festivals-series/man-booker-50?utm_source=Soundcloud&utm_medium=Lit%20podcast%20June&utm_campaign=SC%20Lit%202018

Four Man Booker Prize-winning novelists

Ahead of the 2018 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, Southbank Centre welcomed the six shortlisted authors for an evening of live readings and discussion, hosted by writer columnist and playwright Damian Barr.

The Man Booker Prize is a byword for the finest literary fiction, with its list of past winners containing some of the greatest writers of the last five decades. In the running for this year’s award are the following authors, who joined us on Sunday 14 October, to read from their shortlisted novels.

Anna Burns (UK) – Milkman (Faber & Faber)
Esi Edugyan (Canada) – Washington Black (Serpent’s Tail)
Daisy Johnson (UK) – Everything Under (Jonathan Cape)
Rachel Kushner (USA) – The Mars Room (Jonathan Cape)
Richard Powers (USA) – The Overstory (William Heinemann)
Robin Robertson (UK) – The Long Take (Picador)

The 2018 Man Booker Prize winner is revealed on the evening of Tuesday 16 October at a special dinner at London’s Guildhall.

2018 Man Booker Prize Readings

Set on ‘a Wednesday in mid-June’, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (like James Joyce’s Ulysses) takes place over the course of a single day. Virginia Woolf’s biographer Hermione Lee talks to novelist Alan Hollinghurst about Woolf’s legacy and influence, especially on his most recent novel, The Sparsholt Affair. During this celebration of one of the 20th Century’s most important novels, literary critic Elaine Showalter, author of the seminal A Literature of their Own, and Sarah Churchwell, Chair of Public Understanding in the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, discuss the significance of Mrs Dalloway and its ongoing influence on literary culture.

Dalloway Day 2018

In this special episode, Southbank Centre literature team's Ted Hodgkinson and Debo Amon turn their focus to the TS Eliot Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in the poetry calendar.

Listen to extracts from the nominated poets’ collections read by the nominees, and, fresh from the 2019 ceremony, Debo shares reaction from the event, including an interview with the winner, Hannah Sullivan. 

Plus the pair discuss the themes and the nerves of this year’s competition as well as asking if 2019 is the year of the debut collection?

'Very often collections have an overarching narrative, or approach a particular subject… however this is a very uncategorisable series of poems, because it really does encompass universal and gigantic themes which have run across literature'.

'Very often collections have an overarching narrative, or approach a particular subject… however this is a very uncategorisable series of poems, because it really does encompass universal and gigantic themes which have run across literature'.

Ted Hodgkinson on Hannah Sullivan’s Three Poems

TS Eliot Poetry Prize featuring Hannah Sullivan, Zaffar Kunial and Richard Scott

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1995, Seamus Heaney said, ‘I credit poetry because credit is due to it, in our time and in all time, for its truth to life, in every sense of that phrase.’ Five years after his death, we celebrate the lasting power of Heaney’s verse, his ability to ‘credit marvels’, and his enduring presence in the work of poets writing now. Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright and performer. He is a Complete Works poet alumnus and was elected an RSL Fellow in 2018. Sinéad Morrissey has published six books of poetry and was Assistant Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast. She is now Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Andrew O’Hagan, prize-winning novelist, and friend of Seamus Heaney, chairs the evening’s readings. 
 
We are grateful to the T. S. Eliot Estate for sponsoring this event, and a series of new commissioned writing in response to the NPG’s Seamus Heaney portraits.

Truth To Life

On International Women’s Day 2019, three women working in the fields of business, law and politics discuss affecting change through writing, and what it means to be a woman with influence. Baroness Helena Kennedy is a leading barrister and expert in human rights law. In her 1992 book Eve Was Shamed, which was re-issued in 2018, Helena Kennedy examines the pressing evidence that women are still being discriminated against throughout the legal system. Gina Miller is a political campaigner and businesswoman who initiated the legal case challenging the British government over its authority to implement Brexit without approval from Parliament. Her memoir Rise: Life Lessons in Speaking Out, Standing Tall & Leading the Way was published in 2018. Rachel Reeves has been MP for Leeds West since 2010. Her book on 100 years of women in parliament, The Women of Westminster: MPs who Changed Politics, will be published in 2019.

Women In Power

In this episode of Southbank Centre’s Book Podcast we have an excerpt from writer and director Richard Ayoade in conversation with Adam Buxton, as he reflects on his award-winning films and comedy.

As well as reading extracts from his latest book 'Ayoade on Top', the author explains how he drew inspiration from the unlikely source of cabin crew rom-com 'View From the Top' starring Gwyneth Paltrow.

Richard Ayoade in conversation with Adam Buxton

Celebrating 15 years of the RSL Ondaatje Prize, four past winners discuss the challenges and delights of writing to evoke the spirit of a place. Pascale Petit’s collection of poetry, Mama Amazonica, which explores motherhood, illness and pain through the foliage and creatures of the Amazon rainforest, won the 2018 Prize. Peter Pomerantsev’s winning book in 2016, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, is a journey into the political and ethical landscape of modern Russia. In 2013, former Home Secretary Alan Johnson won the Prize with This Boy, a visceral memoir of growing up poor in 1950s and 60s London. Hisham Matar’s debut novel set within the highly charged political landscape of Libya, In the Country of Men, won in 2007. In this event, chaired by presenter and broadcaster Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, past winners discuss their prize-winning books and how the connections between the physical, cultural and personal landscapes of our lives can be revealed through literature.

The RSL Ondaatje Prize was founded in 2003. We are grateful to Sir Christopher Ondaatje for sponsoring the Prize.

The Spirit Of A Place

Suede frontman Brett Anderson joins Miranda Swayer in conversation about his second volume of memoirs, Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn, the book he’d previously said he would never write.

Recorded live at Queen Elizabeth Hall this podcast sees Anderson discuss the writing process, Suede’s critical reception and the positives and pressures that brought, the difference between person and persona, and the shocking moment that served as a wake-up call to his hedonistic lifestyle.

“Everyone in a band is just an awful show off, and I’m no exception to that, hence the fact I’m standing up here talking about myself again”. 
Brett Anderson

Brett Anderson: Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn

In this podcast, recorded live at Southbank Centre, author and journalist Will Self joins Alex Bilmes, to discuss his newly released, and typically funny and frenzied memoir, Will. 

In an entertaining half hour, Self discusses why he wrote Will, the challenges of memoir writing and how it can lead to criticism that is much more ad hominem. 

Will, perhaps inevitably, is also a book about drugs and drug use, a subject which Self expands upon to talk about the evolution of drug culture and why stories of drug use often draw in people who would never entertain the idea of drug-use themselves.

Will Self: a life in writing

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five international bestsellers and was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine.

In this podcast, recorded from a London exclusive live appearance here at Southbank Centre, Gladwell discusses his latest book, Talking to Strangers, with broadcaster and former barrister Afua Hirsch.

In this fascinating and entertaining talk, the author examines the misinterpretations and misunderstandings at the heart of the tragic case of Sandra Bland. He also asks, why are human beings so bad at detecting lies? And discusses taking risks in his writing.

But there is also a lighter side to this podcast as Hirsch and Gladwell discuss how most rich people are really terrible at being rich, why no-one wants to fight a naked pensioner, and suggest that if we are to have meaningful televised political debates, they should not be between politicians, but between their former spouses.

Malcolm Gladwell: Talking to Strangers

At the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Phoebe Waller-Bridge stepped on stage to debut her new one-woman show, Fleabag. Now, six years on, that character has grown into a full-on phenomenon, with a sell-out runs in London’s West End and off-Broadway, and two critically acclaimed award-winning television series.

In this podcast, Waller-Bridge joins host of The Guilty Feminist, Deborah Frances-White, on stage at Southbank Centre to discuss all things Fleabag. Listen to the pair discuss the how the camera came to represent outside pressure to deliver a performance; combatting loneliness by trying to find connections through sex and family relationships, and how the character of the priest became ‘Hot Priest’. 

Waller-Bridge also explains how Fleabag evolved from a ten minute monologue written to try and make her friend laugh and cry, and how one drunk woman’s feedback propelled it to the current phenomenon it is.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge - Fleabag: The Scriptures

British author Hilary Mantel reveals the eagerly awaited third novel in her thrilling Thomas Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and the Light. 

The book offers a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision. It’s the story of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

In this podcast, chaired by journalist and broadcaster Alex Clark, Mantel reflects on the finale of one of the most compelling and celebrated trilogies of modern times, ending with a special reading of The Mirror and the Light.

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