Learning Curve Connection to place: where writers choose to call home

Living and writing on a Mediterranean island sounds idyllic, but does the reality match the dream? This lecture will look at Charmian Clift, George Johnston and Leonard Cohen on Hydra, Lawrence Durrell on Corfu and Cyprus, and Robert Graves on Mallorca, exploring how their island homes shaped their lives and their writing.

When Russian–American novelist Vladimir Nabokov was asked why he lived in the Hotel Montreux in Switzerland, he said freedom. He was not alone in choosing a hotel as his home. Arthur C Clarke, Bob Dylan and Arthur Miller lived in New York’s famous Chelsea Hotel in the 1960s, Agatha Christie stayed regularly in the Pera Palace in Istanbul, and Tennessee Williams spent the last 20 years of his life in the Hotel Elysée in New York. Discover the importance of these hotel residencies and the masterpieces these writers created during their stay. 

There is a long tradition in literature of writers with a similar mindset coming together, from CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien exploring their extraordinary imaginary worlds, to Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein swapping stories at Stratford-on-Odeon in Paris. This lecture will consider the influence of some of the greatest literature communities, including London’s Bloomsbury group, where EM Forster and Virginia Woolf exchanged ideas, and Oxford’s The Inklings.

Many writers need solitude in which to write, but a few also choose relative isolation in which to live. Thomas Pynchon shunned the limelight from the moment his first books were published and Emily Dickinson became a recluse long before the world even knew of her poems. This lecture will explore the effect seclusion had on these writers and others like Harper Lee, Marcel Proust and JD Salinger, who all gradually withdrew from public life following their early success.