From Memory: Isaiah Berlin, Literary Encounters and Life-Stories

Professor Lee presented a lecture in the Old Hall concerning encounters between great men and women, and how they are remembered, narrated, and turned into legend.

Professor Lee focused on an encounter between Wolfson College founder Isaiah Berlin and the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, which took place in Leningrad in 1945. Drawing on her research as one of our most renowned literary biographers, she recounted a number of other literary encounters, in order to explore questions about remembering and storytelling, disputed rival accounts, and how encounters can harden into myth.

In dealing with life-writing, memory, and versions of the truth, the lecture addressed isues at the forefront of the College's Oxford Centre for Life Writing, one of a series of new research clusters at Wolfson