Hermione Lee | Anita Brookner: Art & Life
Sun 22 Nov 2026 | 2:00pm - 3:00pm
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 Michael Prodger from the New Statesman.
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
Michael Prodger is a writer, editor and academic. He gained his degree in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art where he also studied for his PhD on Baron Gros and Napoleonic Painting. He was literary editor at the Sunday Telegraph and has been a judge for literary prizes including The Booker, the Samuel Johnson, the David Cohen and the Costa Prizes. He is Associate Editor of the New Statesman.
