Story-Teller Talks of Story-Telling

The writer and critic, Dame Antonia Byatt DBE, gave a lecture on modern European story-telling to a University audience this week.

Dame Antonia Byatt at Newnham College after her lecture.

The lecture took place at Lady Mitchell Hall, and the writer was introduced by another Cambridge English Alumnus, the Rt Hon. Chris Smith, Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport. In his introduction he claimed that "there was no better preparation for public life than the study of English literature."

Dame Antonia then addressed the audience, discussing European authors as diverse as Roberto Calasso, Italo Calvino, Karen Blixen, Hans Christian Andersen - and Terry Pratchett. Her themes included story-telling and death, circular stories, images of infinity, the use of mirrors and the problem of political correctness. She concluded that folk and fairy tales remain just as powerful and important as the traditional novel.

Dame Antonia studied English at Newnham, and has since become a well known novelist, winning many awards for her 1990 novel, Possession, as well as writing about authors such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Browning and Iris Murdoch. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University earlier this year.

Although the lecture was free and open to everybody, it also marked the start of the English Faculty's fund-raising campaign for a new building, which would hopefully, Chris Smith said, "provide it with a respectable home for the first time ever."