London WC2R 2LS
UK
Bainbridge’s later work often focuses on the representation of historical events and figures. The sinking of the Titanic, Captain Scott’s failed mission to Antarctica and Dr Samuel Johnson are among the people and moments from the past that populate her pages and canvases. Bainbridge’s work invites us to ask: what is at stake in a fictional representation of history? A panel of Sarah Dunant, Louisa Young, Diana Wallace, Huw Marsh and Katharine Harris will consider the question.
Sarah Dunant is the author of a number of bestselling historical novels about Renaissance Italy. Her most recent novel Blood and Beauty (2013) focuses on the fifteenth century Borgia family. Sarah also teaches renaissance studies at Washington University in St Louis. She lives in London and Florence.
Louisa Young’s novel My Dear I Wanted to Tell You (2011), a historical novel set during the First World War, has been chosen as the London Cityread for 2014. Louisa studied history at Cambridge. Her published work includes short-stories, history, biography and historical fiction. Her book A Great Task of Happiness (1995) is a biography of her grandmother Kathleen Scott (wife of Captain Scott and the subject of one of Bainbridge’s paintings).
Professor Diana Wallace’s research focuses mainly on women’s writing, with a special interest in historical fiction. She is the author of The Woman’s Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900–2000 (2005) which includes explorations of Bainbridge’s historical works.
Katharine Harris is currently researching historical fiction at the University of Sussex. Her research focuses on the marginalisation of certain social groups from canonical historical narrative and the response to this in twenty-first century historical fiction.
Dr Huw Marsh teaches at Queen Mary University of London and is the author of Beryl Bainbridge (2014), forthcoming in the Northcote House series Writers and their Work. His research focuses mainly on post-war and contemporary fiction, with particular interests in the historical novel, gender, comedy, and the construction of the contemporary canon. He is currently working on a study of comedy in the contemporary British novel.