Harriet Baker, Alex Clark & Peter Swaab | Lolly Willowes at 100
Sun 26 Apr 2026 | 10:00am - 11:00am
“Women have such vivid imaginations, and lead such dull lives,” says the eponymous heroine of Lolly Willowes to the Devil. This year marks the centenary of the publication of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s satire about a single woman who steps outside societal expectations in the aftermath of the Great War. Join our panel of experts as they celebrate this subversive novel and its continuing significance in 2026.
Chaired by Erica Wagner.
Venue: Old Divinity School
Duration: 1 hour
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Speaker Biographies
Harriet Baker is a writer and critic. She has written about books and art for the London Review of Books, Paris Review, New Statesman, Times, Financial Times and TLS, among others. Her first book, Rural Hours: The Country Lives of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann, was published by Allen Lane in 2024. It was awarded the Biographers’ Club Tony Lothian Prize and the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award.
Alex Clark is a broadcaster and journalist, who writes for many publications including the Guardian, the Observer, and the Times Literary Supplement. She is a co-host on the Graham Norton Book Club for Audible and hosts the TLS podcast. She is a professional chairperson and appears all over the UK at Cheltenham, Hay and the Southbank Centre. Alex is a festival honorary patron.
Peter Swaab is a Professor of English Literature at University College London. He is the editor of ‘Over the Land and Over the Sea’: Selected Nonsense and Travel Writing by Edward Lear and of the first editions of poetry and prose by Sara Coleridge. His other publications include a BFI Film Classic book on Bringing Up Baby and a co-edited book about the British film director Thorold Dickinson. He edits the Sylvia Townsend Warner Journal and he is working on a book about Warner.
Chair Biography
Erica Wagner was born in New York and moved to the UK in the 1980s becoming literary Editor for The Times in 1996; a position she held for 17 years. In addition to her career at The Times, Erica has published numerous articles and books, her first being Gravity, a collection of short stories; this was followed 3 years later by the publication of Ariel’s Gift. She has also written for The New York Times and frequently appears on television and radio. and has judged many of the literary World’s most prestigious prizes (The Orange Prize, The Whitbread First Novel Award and the Forward Prize). Erica was part of the panel of judges who declared Yann Martel’s Life of Pi the 2002 Man Booker Prize winner.
