Linton Rd
Oxford OX2 6UL
UK
A one-day colloquium convened by Oliver Cox & Sandra Mayer, and hosted by OCLW in collaboration with TORCH will bring together academics, biographers and curators to explore the ways in which the life stories of well-known individuals are preserved and presented through the architecture and material culture of their homes. Talks on musicians’, architects’ and writers’ houses will focus on the intersections of life-writing and notions of fame and celebrity through physical spaces and objects. A plenary lecture by Daisy Hay on “Writing Space in Mr and Mrs Disraeli and Dinner with Joseph Johnson” and papers by:
• Gillian Darley (Sir John Soane)
• Lucy Walker (Benjamin Britten’s The Red House)
• James Grasby (Edward Elgar Birthplace)
• Alexandra Harris (William Cowper, John Clare and Virginia Woolf)
• Frankie Kubicki (Charles Dickens Museum)
• Nicola Watson (Shakespeare’s New Place)
Finally, a round table featuring Head of Specialist Advice for the National Trust, Nino Strachey, biographer and broadcaster Alexandra Harris, and art historian and curator Serena Dyer, the expert panel will cast a spotlight on the strategies available to those who open and present these houses to the public today.