Between Private and Public: Writing a Memoir about Raphael and Myself

Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture 2016

Raphael Samuel (1934-1996) was one of Britain’s foremost postwar historians. A leading light in the New Left, in the 1960s Raphael founded the History Workshop movement; in 1994 he established the history centre which now bears his name.

The Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture 2016 commemorates the twentieth anniversary of Raphael’s death with a lecture by his widow, the writer Alison Light: ‘Between Private and Public: Writing a Memoir about Raphael and Myself’.

Wedding Day in Brighton, July 1987 (Courtesy of Alison Light)
Wedding Day in Brighton, July 1987 (Courtesy of Alison Light)

Memoirs are a history from inside – like memories, they appear plural, unreliable, random, and potentially interminable. In her lecture, Alison Light will talk about some of the challenges and pleasures of writing a memoir of her marriage to the social historian, Raphael Samuel.

Alison Light is a writer, Honorary Professor in the Department of English, University College, London, and a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.  She edited two volumes of Samuel’s essays and is also the author of Forever England: Literature, Femininity and Conservatism between the WarsMrs Woolf and the Servants, and most recently, Common People: the History of an English Family.

This event is free of charge, but please reserve your place here.

Date:  7th December 2016, 7.00pm – 8.30pm (with wine reception to follow)
Venue: Arts 2. Lecture Theatre, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS.

One Comment

  1. This promises to be an exceptional Raphael Samuel lecture – and a memorial lecture about how to write a memoir about marriage to the man in whose honour the lectures are held.

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