Forthcoming   Biographies

Welcome to the Biographers' Club

The Biographers' Club is an umbrella organisation which seeks to educate, inspire, promote and foster a better understanding of the art of biography and its relevance across the broad spectrum of human endeavour. Through our events, we create a forum for this understanding, a public benefit for all in the art of biography across all media and disciplines, and a professional and social interaction among its membership.

Tickets £32.50.

Women In History - A Force To Be Reckoned With - 24th February, 7pm. In conjunction with the Biographers' Club, Historians Susan Ronald (The Pirate Queen), Carol Dyhouse (On Glamour) and David Waller (The Magnificent Mrs. Tennant) discuss some famous and lesser known women in history. Ask our authors some questions, talk about your own heroines and join in the discussion.

Phoenix Artists Club (Members Bar), 1 Phoenix Street, off Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0DT. £3 per ticket (price of ticket includes glass of wine).

To reserve a ticket please contact marcus.gipps@blackwell.co.uk

Many of you will remember Diane Middlebrook - a regular attendee of Biographers Club events, a distinguished biographer and a good friend to many of us – who sadly died of cancer two years ago. In her memory the Diane Middlebrook Memorial Writers Residence , which will fund 40-50 writers annually, is being set up at the Djerassi Resident Artists Programme in California. £35,000 is being sought from the “British Friends of Diane Middlebrook” and I very much hope that members of the Biographers Club will want to contribute. Those wishing to do so should go to www.djerassi.org, click support and then “Diane Middlebrook Building Fund”. Click on “donate now”, enter the requested information being sure to add “Diane Middlebrook Building Fund” in the Gift Acknowledgements box

This year the Biographers’ Club presented three prizes: the Lifetime Services to Biography Award, Best First Biography and the Tony Lothian Prize.

The inaugural Lifetime Services to Biography Award was presented to Sir Michael Holroyd, whose books include biographies of Lytton Strachey and George Bernard Shaw and the memoir Basil Street Blues. A tireless campaigner for the promotion of literature, Michael Holroyd is a former Chairman of the Society of Authors and the National Book League (now Booktrust) and a past President of English PEN. He was Chairman of the Strachey Trust between 1990 and 1995, and of the Literature Panel of the Arts Council of England until 1995. He was also, until recently, Chairman of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Public Lending Right Advisory Committee. In 1989 he was awarded the CBE for services to literature and was knighted in 2007. His most recent biography A Strange Eventful History (Chatto & Windus) won the James Tait Black Award in August.

Click here to find out more!

Conspirator by Halen Rappaport