Hermione Lee | Anita Brookner: Art & Life

Sun 22 Nov 2026 | 2:00pm - 3:00pm

headshot-Tanjil Rashid

In her lifetime, art historian and Booker Prize-winning novelist Anita Brookner was seen as an object of wonder and fascination – a formidable and inspiring teacher, a witty and perceptive art critic, and a writer like no other. What a perfect subject for Hermione Lee, one of our outstanding literary biographers, who has previously captured Virginia Woolf, Penelope Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton and Tom Stoppard. Join Hermione as she reveals this brilliant, idiosyncratic and complex woman and goes deep into Brookner’s marvellous work, in all its stylishness and daring.

In conversation with Tanjil Rashid.

Venue: Old Divinity School

Duration: 1 hour

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Author Biography

Hermione Lee is a biographer, Professor Emeritus of English Literature, and former President of Wolfson College, Oxford. Her writings include biographies of Virginia Woolf (1996), Edith Wharton (2006), Penelope Fitzgerald (2013) and Tom Stoppard (2020). She is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature and in 2024 was made a Dame Grand Cross (GBE) in 2024 for services to literary scholarship and literature. She lives in Oxford. 

Chair Biography

Tanjil Rashid is a British journalist and Culture Editor at the New Statesman magazine. Tanjil has written regularly for the Financial Times, The Times, The Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, The Washington Post, and has served as a judge for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.