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Claire Harman 503
Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen
Conquered the World
12pm / McKenna Room, Christ Church / £7.50
The author of acclaimed lives of Robert Louis
Stevenson and Fanney Burney, Claire Harman is one
of our most accomplished biographers. In her new
book, she takes an intriguing new approach to Jane
Austen, concentrating not so much on the woman as
the reputation. Tracing the growth of Austen’s fame,
and the changing status of her work in English culture
in the last 200 years, Harman examines her conversion
into a classic English author in the twentieth century,
and the critical wars that erupted as a consequence. The
result is a refreshing new view of a much tilled subject.
Helen Rappaport 505
Ekaterinburg:
The Last Days of the Romanovs
12pm / Festival Room 1, Christ Church / £7.50
Ever since 1918, mystery and conjecture has
surrounded the death of Tsar Nicholas II and his
family. In her highly involving book, Helen Rappaport
offers an intimate account of the last days of
their lives, from the day a new commandant took
control of them in their closely guarded house in
Ekaterinburg, to the moment they were gunned
down in the house’s basement thirteen days later.
Marshalling overlooked evidence from key witnesses,
and challenging accounts of their death, Rappaport
brings those final tragic days vividly alive.
Gates to the Masters Garden, Christ Church
John Ashton, Peter Gingold,
Jay Griffiths, Philip Pullman
Chaired by Georgina Ferry
Writing for a Change -
Responses to Climate Change
524
12pm / Newman Rooms, St Aldates / £8.00
Why has the artistic and particularly the written
response to climate change been so muted Is a
new self-awareness going to be motivated more by
fiction than by the writing of activists or is this not
the role of the writer With authors Philip Pullman
and Jay Griffiths, John Ashton (the government’s
Special Representative for Climate Change) and Peter
Gingold, Executive Director of Tipping Point. Chaired
by Georgina Ferry, science writer and author of Max
Perutz and the Secret of Life.
Henry Hitchings 511
THURSDAY APRIL 2009
The Secret Life of Words:
How English Became English
12pm / Festival Room 2, Christ Church / £7.50
How often do you stop to think about where the words
we use have come from, or which words in English
have been borrowed from Arabic, French or even
Dutch In this award-winning book, a work of great
precision, clarity and grace, and the first work
of non-fiction to have won the prestigious John
Llewellyn Rhys Prize, Henry Hitchings delves into our
promiscuous language and reveals how and why it
has absorbed words from more than 350 languages.
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