This is the speech I gave at Tolstoy’s home, Yasnaya Polyana, for the 2012 International Tolstoy Festival. In her address to the Edinburgh International Writers’ Conference in August 2012, Adhaf Soueif challenged the idea that novels can, or ought to, be political.”Is a novelist a literary activist?” she asked. “Should the novel be political? I … Read More
Month: March 2013
St John’s College Sermon
On Remembrance Sunday, 2012, I preached my first ever sermon on a wintry Oxford evening at St. John’s College Chapel. Here it is. “The wolf shall lie down with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid… The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall … Read More