What can a historical house tell us about the person who lived there? Do we shape the buildings we live in, or are we formed by the places we call home? And why are we especially fascinated by the houses of the famous and often long-dead?
Join us for ‘Lives of Houses’ — the 2020 London Weinrebe Lecture, hosted by the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing – which sees a panel of leading literary and historical biographers consider the relationship between biography and home. With:
Professor Dame Hermione Lee FBA: one of Britain’s leading biographers and scholars of life-writing. Her many works of biography include studies of Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton and Penelope Fitzgerald. She is currently writing the biography of the playwright, Tom Stoppard.Professor Margaret MacMillan: modern historian and former head of St Antony’s College, Oxford. Her books include The Peacemakers and History’s People. Personalities and the Past.
Professor MacMillan was BBC Reith lecturer in 2018.
Jenny Uglow: is a leading biographer and publisher whose many books include studies of William Hogarth, Charles II, the Lunar Circle and most recently Edward Learchaired by Dr Kate Kennedy (Associate Director, Oxford Centre for Life-Writing)
The London Weinrebe lecture is hosted by the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW), at Wolfson College,Oxford University, in association with the Institute of Historical Research, the Institute of English Studies and the School of Advanced Study, University of London.
The event accompanies the publication of Lives of Houses, a collection of essays edited by Hermione Lee and Kate Kennedy, and published by Princeton University Press (March 2020).
The OCLW Weinrebe Lectures are an annual series named in memory of Harry Weinrebe, a philanthropist and the founder of the Dorset Foundation. The 2020 lectures will be held in Oxford, London and Birmingham.
This event is free to attend but advanced registration is required
Book now via: https://www.history.ac.uk/events/lives-houses-london
Location: The Chancellor’s Hall. Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU