Date/Time: 18th March 2014

‘Let England have my bones!’ wrote the German Hansel Pless. Miranda Seymour’s talk takes its title from her recent book, an intimate study of two countries which several reviewers have compared, in its scope, detail and vitality, to War and Peace.

In this lecture Miranda Seymour is going to introduce us to some of the unforgettable men and women who, when asked in wartime to which country they belonged, found it impossible to give a simple answer. Loving both, they could not make a choice.

Speaker biography

Miranda Seymour, a former Visiting Professor at Nottingham Trent University, has written in several genres. Today, she is best known for her prize-winning memoir, In My Father’s House, and for the biographies which she has written of personalities as diverse as Hellé Nice (a record breaking French racing driver of the 1930s) and Mary Shelley, of whom she has written what is considered to be the definitive life.

She has recently focussed on a different and pioneering work: a multifaceted portrait of two countries evoked through interlinked stories, each of which acts as a touchstone and connecting point to the next.

Miranda Seymour is now working on a study of reputations which examines Byron’s wife and daughter through their correspondence and the scandals they provoked.