There Was An Old Man With A Beard: Celebrating Edward Lear
Channel: British Library
Date: 2022-06-10

Join our celebration of all things Lear with a spotlight on his newly-emerged work, The Last of the Octopods.

Noreen Masud is a Lecturer in Twentieth Century Literature at the University of Bristol, working on aphorism, flatness and nonsense. Her book on Stevie Smith and aphorism comes out this year; her memoir-travelogue on flat landscapes comes out with Penguin in 2023.

Sara Lodge is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of St Andrews, specialising in nineteenth-century literature. Her book, Inventing Edward Lear (Harvard University Press, 2018) explores Lear’s music, and she recently anchored a documentary for RTE Lyric FM on Lear’s Irish journeys.

Amy Wilcockson is a PhD researcher at the University of Nottingham working on the letters of Thomas Campbell. On a sleepy afternoon in the British Library she uncovered previously overlooked Edward Lear manuscripts, which were subsequently published in The Times Literary Supplement in June 2021. Her research is funded by the Midlands4Cities DTP (AHRC).

Andrew Hunter Murray is a writer and comedian; host of the No Such Thing As A Fish podcast, a writer on BBC2’s QI, and one of the team at Private Eye magazine. His first novel The Last Day was a Sunday Times bestseller; his next, The Sanctuary, will be published in May.

Dominic West is an actor, director and musician. He is best known for playing Jimmy McNulty in The Wire and Noah Solloway in The Affair. He won the Best Actor BAFTA for portraying serial killer Fred West in Appropriate Adult, and played Jean Valjean in the BBC miniseries Les Misérables.