Helena Kelly, Alex Clark & Bharat Tandon | The Life, Writing & Legacy of Jane Austen

Sun 27 Apr 2025 | 10:00am - 11:00am

Alex Clark
Helena Kelly
erica wagner
Bharat Tandon

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Cambridge Literary Festival must be in want of a Jane Austen event to mark the 250th anniversary of her birth. We have gathered a veritable throng of experts to celebrate and revere the brilliance that is Jane Austen and to ignite your passion to read her books all over again. 

Venue: Old Divinity School

Duration: 1 hour

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  Helena Kelly, Alex Clark & Bharat Tandon The Life, Writing & Legacy of Jane Austen Full Price
10am | 27 April | Old Divinity School
£17
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  Helena Kelly, Alex Clark & Bharat Tandon The Life, Writing & Legacy of Jane Austen Concession (U25s, unwaged and those feeling the pinch)
10am | 27 April | Old Divinity School
£10
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Panellist Biographies

Bharat Tandon has taught at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and is now Lecturer in Literature at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. He is the author of Jane Austen and the Morality of Conversation (Anthem Press, 2003), and the editor of Austen’s Emma: An Annotated Edition (Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2012). He has spoken and lectured on Austen around the world and on BBC Radio 4, and written about her for publications including The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, and The Spectator. He was also a judge for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2012.

Helena Kelly holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford, where she taught classics and English Literature. Brought up in Kent, she now lives in Oxford. She is also the author of Jane Austen, The Secret Radical and The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens.

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.  

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.