From his arrival in London in 1981 – clutching a suitcase and sewing machine – to his death from AIDS on New Year’s Eve 1994, Leigh Bowery – the man described by Boy George as ‘modern art on legs’ – led an extraordinary life; a life chronicled in the equally extraordinary biography by his closest friend and confidante Sue Tilley, reissued by Thames and Hudson this February.
Tilley was at the shop to discuss Bowery’s life and legacy with Charlie Porter, author of What Artists Wear, and whose debut novel Nova Scotia House was published by Particular Books in March.
Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod
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Deborah Levy & Adam Thirlwell: The Position of Spoons
In The Position of Spoons novelist, essayist and playwright Deborah Levy invites the reader to share in her interior world, mapping her own life through the lives and works of the artists and writers who have shaped her own practice, from Marguerite Duras to Colette and Ballard, and from Lee Miller to Francesca Woodman and Paula Rego.
Levy, described by Lauren Elkin as ‘one of the most exciting voices in contemporary British fiction’, talks about it here with Adam Thirlwell.
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Matthew Hollis & Norman McBeath: The Seafarer
Matthew Hollis has reworked the classic Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer into a poem desperately relevant for our times: in a society threatened by climate change and the coming-loose of social bonds, Hollis invites us to hear, as the Anglo-Saxons did, the spirit music of land, wind and sea.
Hollis’s text is one half of a collaborative project with the photographer Norman McBeath, who was at the shop with Hollis to present and talk about their work. The discussion was chaired by Sara Hudston of Hazel Press.
Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod
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Carol Mavor & Lauren Elkin: Serendipity
In Serendipity (Reaktion) Carol Mavor uses Anne Frank’s journal, discovered in the Secret Annex after the Second World War, Emily Dickinson’s poems, scribbled on salvaged envelopes hidden in a drawer, Lolita, rescued from incineration by Nabokov’s wife Véra and her own memory of eating a frozen hot chocolate in New York’s Serendipity 3, a dessert café favoured by Andy Warhol, to muse upon the serendipitous afterlives of objects. Mavor, Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Manchester and prolific author of books and articles about art and culture, was in conversation about fragments, remnants and what remains with novelist, essayist and translator Lauren Elkin.
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Philip Terry & Marina Warner: Dante’s Purgatorio
In his 2014 Dante’s Inferno poet and provocateur Philip Terry moved the action to Essex University. His Purgatorio (Carcanet) transports us to nearby Mersea Island, where Ted Berrigan leads our author up an artificial mountain to meet with artists Grayson Perry, Rachel Whiteread and Damien Hirst, as well as Christopher Marlowe, Boris Johnson, Lady Diana, Jean Paul Getty, Hilary Clinton, Allen Ginsberg, Samuel Beckett, Martin McGuinness, Ciaran Carson and Anoushka Shankar.
Philip Terry was joined in conversation with Marina Warner at the Bookshop.
Find more events at the Bookshop: https://lrb.me/eventspod
Listen to the latest literary events recorded at the London Review Bookshop, covering fiction, poetry, politics, music and much more.
Find out about our upcoming events here https://lrb.me/bookshopeventspod
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