Preceded by:

Opening of the Literary Leicester 2009 Festival

Professor Robert Burgess, Vice-Chancellor, University of Leicester

John Carey on William Golding: How Novels Happen

Chair: Professor Martin Stannard

John Carey is Emeritus Merton Professor of English at Oxford University, a distinguished critic, reviewer and broadcaster, and the author of many books, including studies of Donne, Dickens and Thackeray.

His guide to twentieth century literature, Pure Pleasure, was described by James Wood in the London Review of Books as "likable, wise, and often right … One feels an attractive sense of partisanship in Carey's writing, an alliance with the ordinary, the plain spoken, the unfettered, the sympathetic and the humane. Carey writes with an Orwellian attention to decency."

Carey has been a regular critic on BBC2’s Newsnight Review and is also the editor of the best-selling anthologies The Faber Book of Reportage, The Faber Book of Science and The Faber Book of Utopias.

His latest book, published in September, is the first authorised biography of one of the foremost novelists of the twentieth century, William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies and a series of remarkable novels including The Inheritors, Pincher Martin and The Spire. In his talk, Professor Carey will concentrate on Lord of the Flies and Darkness Visible.

Professor Martin Stannard (Chair) is Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Leicester.

• This is a ticketed event. For free tickets, please contact Rebecca Vickerman on 0116 252 2320 or rv40@le.ac.uk.

• Followed by a book-signing.

Links

• John Carey at Faber & Faber