Marina Warner
2024
Marina has contributed to the booklet charting Marcia Farquhar’s wonderful artwork, Acts of Clothing, marking 25 years since it was first performed. A sneak peak at the booklet here:
Contact marciafarquhar [at] mac [dot] com to enquire about buying a copy!
5 December, Marina Warner on Uncanny Visions, Holborn Museum, Bath, 7 – 8.30pm
Marina Warner is a writer of fiction, criticism and history; her works include novels and short stories as well as studies of art, myths, symbols and fairytales. She wrote the introduction for Paula Rego’s 2010 publication of Nursery Rhymes and her recent collection, Forms of Enchantment, includes an essay on Rego. She has described the artist as one of her heroes, and will reflect on Rego’s admiration for, and inspiration by, Goya’s fantastical etchings.
The exhibition will be open from 6pm until 7pm
Garden Cafe open from 6pm for drinks
Tickets here
6 December, Alternative Lessons and Carols, LRB event, 7 – 8.30pm
Tickets here!
Since its invention in Cornwall on Christmas Eve, 1880, the familiar sequence of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, at King’s College Cambridge and in churches great and small across the land, has been one of the defining rhythms of the festive period. It has become a tribal custom that transcends the usual terms of churchgoing, of bible readings and hymn-singing. But what if, almost 150 years on, these terms really were transcended – or at the very least, remixed? Why cleave so loyally to Christianity when something else is clearly going on: something nostalgic, reflective, ritualistic…
So here, instead, are nine ‘lessons’ selected and read by writers and artists including the ‘shamanic cult hero of contemporary queer poetry,’ CA Conrad; Andrew O’Hagan, author of this year’s most talked-about novel, Caledonian Road; the artist and musician Jem Finer, who co-wrote the greatest of all Christmas songs, the Pogues’ ‘Fairytale of New York’; and Marina Warner, the mythographer whose many books includeAlone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary. Each lesson loosely tracks the arc of the traditional service’s journey through scripture, from the fall of man to the mystery of the incarnation via prophesy, annunciation, shepherds and wise men, etc. – while offering more radical, transgressive, inclusive kinds of wisdom, by drawing on alternative literatures and traditions.
‘Carols’ will be arranged by composer Kieran Brunt and performed by the experimental vocal ensemble, Shards. Join in if you can.
This is the second of two shows on consecutive nights with different line-ups; you can book tickets for the first here.
21 November, Finding the Words – Fundraiser for Freedom from Torture
Finding the Words celebrates the strength and resilience so often required when we try to express ourselves. For torture survivors and refugees in the UK, it is often a struggle to find the words to explain their journey and the trauma they have experienced. The readings will highlight life changes, hope, grief and new beginnings.
Enjoy the opportunity to mingle with leading lights from the literary world at our drinks reception with stars from the literary world. Fine wines from Farr Vintners will flow throughout the evening alongside light refreshments.
There will be signed copies of The Redstone Diary 2025, which includes an introduction by Marina. The theme is Moments of Happiness!
All funds raised on the night went directly to supporting survivors of torture in the UK.
More about the event here
13 November, Philip Terry & Marina Warner: Dante’s Purgatorio, 7pm (London Review Bookshop 14 Bury Pl London, WC1A 2JL)
In his 2014 Dante’s Inferno poet and provocateur Philip Terry moved the action to Essex University. His Purgatorio (Carcanet) transports us to nearby Mersea Island, where Ted Berrigan leads our author up an artificial mountain to meet with artists Grayson Perry, Rachel Whiteread and Damien Hirst, as well as Christopher Marlowe, Boris Johnson, Lady Diana, Jean Paul Getty, Hilary Clinton, Allen Ginsberg, Samuel Beckett, Martin McGuinness, Ciaran Carson and Anoushka Shankar.
Terry will be at the shop to read from and talk about Purgatorio with Marina Warner, acclaimed mythographer, historian and iconologist.
More information here
25 September 2024, 6-8pm, Carnegie Lecture, West Court, Edinburgh College of Art (74 Lauriston Place Edinburgh EH3)
‘Sanctuary: Places of Refuge, Sites of Memory, Grounds of Home’
In this lecture, taking a cue from Alfred Korzybski’s axiom, ‘The map is not the territory’, Marina will explore the interrelations between telling and dwelling in the making of home and consider the principles that establish such places of refuge and explore their potential today.
The ancient law of sanctuary granted fugitives the right to protection from the law; certain sites were sacred, and a sanctuary seeker would be safe there, able to seek asylum (from Greek, meaning not-to-be-seized/plundered). In antiquity such sites were temples or groves; in the Middle Ages, cathedrals, churches, and shrines offered shelter. No armed defence was needed, no walls, no ditches, no borders in a physical sense, no barbed wire. By common consensus the special, hallowed character of the place and the inviolability of the suppliant was recognised. Henry VIII abolished the law across his kingdom, but it had lasted over a thousand years, and vestiges remain. The practice and theory of sanctuary lives on especially in times of conflict (civil rights activists, Vietnam protestors and draft dodgers were protected by churches in the 60s); today, when millions are fleeing wars and the effects of climate change, Cities and Universities of Sanctuary have been established to support refugees, asylum seekers and migrants.
The meanings of sanctuary range broadly – from the most sacred spot in a church where the high altar is placed – to an enclave such as a nature reserve (a wildlife sanctuary) or even a health spa, to a quiet safe retreat such as a library. Sanctuaries were physical sites hallowed by associations with the divine and heroic, sometimes guaranteed by a relic, by a myth or legend, or by a memory of a historic event that took place there. Stories shape relations to territory and place. The stories hallow the site and change its meaning and function: the effect is analogous to a children’s game, with a designated safe area, the ‘den’ or ‘home’. Can this form of magical thinking be reconfigured, in today’s hostile climate, to create broader, inclusive ideas about home and security? Can the underlying principles of sanctuary be retrieved and applied to the circumstances of contemporary asylum seekers? Can stories be told and retold in the new places of arrival to overcome a sense of alienation or at least confront home-sickness and exile and foster a sense of belonging?
More information available here
Torrents of Magpies, Spheres of Hope, essay for The New York Review of Books on Rikki Ducornet, September 19 2024 Issue
Marina has written a piece on Rikki Ducornet for The New York Review of Books most recent issue. Torrents of Magpies, Spheres of Hope looks over Ducornet’s vast body of writing over the decades, where she has adhered to a Surrealist commitment to dream knowledge as well as a belief in literature’s ability to confront all of experience. Read it online here.
Foreword, Granada: The Complete Trilogy, by Radwa Ashour (trans. Kay Heikkinen) (Cairo: Hoopoe Press, 2024)
Marina has written the foreword to the trilogy of novels, Granada: The Complete Trilogy, available in English in its entirety for the first time. All three novels—Granada, Maryama and The Departure—are brilliantly retranslated in this outstanding new paperback edition. The book is available here.
19 September 2024, New Treasures of the British Library: A BL Playlist, 7 – 8.45pm, British Library Pigott Theatre
Samira Ahmed hosts an evening of stories of remarkable items from the British Library collections. With guest speakers including Tracy Borman, actor and writer Charlie Higson, economist Mariana Mazzucato and poet and writer Fiona Sampson. Marina is chair of the British Library Collections Trust, which have recently acquired various precious items, from archives to single manuscripts, rare books and even rarer personal letters to the British Library. From manuscript accounts of Elizabeth I’s court where, to avoid offending the new King, passages were hastily hidden by the writer, to revealing letters between James Bond creator Ian Fleming and his wife Ann, these exciting and often surprising items are introduced and explored by invited writers, scholars and Library curators, who explain their unique stories and their incomparable value to researchers and our collective history.
Doors and Bar open at 18:00. The event starts at 19:00.
More information available here
23 August 2024, (3.30-4,30pm @ EFI Spiegeltent) Edinburgh International Book Festival: Looking at Art, the Art of Looking
Marina took part in this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, in conversation with the wonderful Octavia Bright about her book Forms of Enchantment: Writings on Art & Aritists, which came out in paperback this year. More about the event can be found here.
July 2024, ‘Get Up, Stand Up / Redemption Song / Women Rise Up!’, Literary Review, Review of Monique Roffey’s novel Passiontide
Marina has written a review of Monique Roffey’s latest novel Passiontide, published in July’s issue of the Literary Review
19 June – 6 July, Programme notes for Echo and Narcissus at Theatre Royal Bath
Marina has written programme notes for Kim Brandstrup’s choreographic work, Echo and Narcissus:
Kim Brandstrup returns to the Ustinov Studio with a brand new work to complete his mythological trilogy.
Following the huge success of Minotaur and Metamorphoses in Deborah Warner’s first and second seasons, which explored notable characters and relationships from Greek mythology, Olivier Award-winning choreographer Kim Brandstrup presents the final installment of the triptych with Echo and Narcissus.
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Echo is doomed only to repeat the words of others. Never able to speak nor to be heard, she circles the beautiful Narcissus, who only sees and hears himself. Misapprehension prevails as they move through a strange, echoing hall of mirrors and reflection.
Continuing the theme of featuring works by Benjamin Britten throughout Deborah Warner’s seasons (Phaedra, The Turn of the Screw), Echo and Narcissus is preluded by a performance of Britten’s Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, a work for solo oboe, and Leda and the Swan, a short film created by Brandstrup, both similarly inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
‘Foreword’ for Kate Forsyth’s The Maiden Made of Blossoms and Other Tales of Transformation (Australia: Serendipity Press, 2023)
June 2024, Contribution to Dorothy Bohm at 100: A Life in Photography (Nottingham: Beam Editions, 2024)
Marina has contributed a chapter to the monograph of photographer Dorothy Bohm’s work. Each contributor has been asked to respond to a single photograph of Bohm’s – other writers include Maria Balshaw, Lydia Goldblatt, Mark Haworth-Booth, Esther Leslie, Pelumi Odubanjo and George Szirtes.
Dorothy Bohm’s work is currently available to view at Burgh House, with the exhibition About Women: Photographs by Dorothy Bohm on display until 15 December 2024. There was also a solo exhibition titled Dorothy Bohm at 100 from 12 April – 23 June 2024 at the Photographers’ Gallery. See more here.
26 June 2024, Keynote speech, Women and the Arts Forum Conference 2024
More here
10 June 2024, BBC Radio 4: Front Row, Discussion with Clare Pollard about her book, The Modern Fairies
Marina spoke with Samira Ahmed and Clare Pollard about Pollard’s second novel (out on 13 June 2024), The Modern Fairies. The book is set in 17th century France, where stories of trapped princesses and enchanted beasts are performed at the home of Madame Marie D’Aulnoy, who invented the term “conte de fée” or fairytale. Listen back here (from about 16 mns into the programme).
June 1/2 2024, FT Weekend Magazine – Shakespeare Issue
Marina contributed her own ‘cold case’ question on Shakespeare to a roster of other academics, actors and writers considering a particular moment or query of the bard. Marina asks the question: ‘Why doesn’t Perdita speak to her long-lost mother at their reunion?’. Her answer is amidst other small pieces by Kamila Shamsie, David Hare, Harriet Walter and Emma Smith, to name a few!
20 May 2024, LRB Screen X MUBI: Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One, 8pm, The Garden Cinema (London WC2B 5PQ)
At The Garden Cinema, Marina introduced the film Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One (2015), the first in a trilogy of films by the Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes. The screening was organised by the London Review Bookshop with MUBI, part of their long-running film series exploring of the art of literary adaptation.
Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One uses the framing device and other structural elements of its titular inspiration to explore the state of austerity in contemporary Portugal across all strata of society. Tonally and formally various, weaving together stories from diverse sources, locations, characters and scenarios, it’s a satirical, sobering and invigorating account of how meaning is made, power challenged and justice sought. It’s also a vivid, uninhibited celebration of the imagination itself. Hugely acclaimed upon its release, Jonathan Romney wrote in the Observer that ‘it was the most authentically crazy film on show here, the biggest splash of true innovation in Cannes, and an unmissable art event.’
More here
9 May 2024, In Conversation: Cultures of Enchantment, event at Murray Edwards
To accompany The Goddess, the Deity and the Cyborg exhibition Murray Edwards partnered with the Fitzwilliam Museum on a programme of events to coincide with their exhibition, William Blake’s Universe.
Join novelist, critic and cultural historian Marina Warner, art historian and curator Dr Amy Tobin and interdisciplinary scholar and art writer Dr Alice Butler at Murray Edwards College. Panellists will discuss art’s place in society both as a site of enchantment and a realm in which imagination holds the key to knowledge and understanding.
The event includes a drinks reception. More here.
8 May 2024, A Living Almanac at Keynes Library, Birkbeck Arts Week 2024 – book to join here
The next Living Almanac workshop is part of Birkbeck 2024 Arts Week, organised with Steve Willey, with guest speaker Briony Hughes. An almanac is a book of days, a calendar, and a diary but it differs from these, as it gathers together all kinds of lore – weather forecasts, astrology, auguries, folk remedies and proverbial wisdom. It is above all proleptic not retrospective – it isn’t a journal of what has happened but of the year ahead. It builds on experience of the past to anticipate what might lie in store and equip its user with means to meet adversity – and forestall it. Its temporality is attached to present and the future – this is important as we try to re-imagine ways of being during the Anthropocene, when climate change and other serious threats are growing. Many writers and artists are engaging with place; a Living Almanac will engage with time, through writing, drawing, dreams and memories.
April 2024, Marina’s piece ‘Arabesque in Action’ is in the publication Aby Warburg 150: Work, Legacy, Promise (De Gruyter), edited by
Writing for Fairy Tales: In Art and Film book catalogue, Exhibition at Queensland Art Gallery (2 Dec 2023 – 28 Apr 2024)
Marina has contributed to the ‘Fairy Tales’ catalogue, to accompany the exhibition at Queensland Art Gallery, Queensland, Australia.
Step into the enchanting world of once upon a time. From opulent carriages to sumptuous gowns, twisted woodlands to mystical mirrors, ‘Fairy Tales’ at GOMA explores centuries of beloved folk stories through art, design and film. Exclusive to Brisbane, this exhibition brings together exceptional contemporary art, breathtaking costumes, immersive installations and stunning cinema from visual storytellers around the world to untangle themes of bravery and justice, loyalty and humility, cunning and aspiration.
‘Fairy Tales’ features the work of artists Abdul Abdullah, Del Kathryn Barton, Destiny Deacon, Gustave Doré, Rachel Feinstein, Trulee Hall, Carsten Höller, Anish Kapoor, Yayoi Kusama, Ron Mueck, Tracey Moffatt, Henrique Oliveira, Polixeni Papapetrou, Patricia Piccinini, Kiki Smith, Jana Sterbak and many others. It includes original papercuts by Hans Christian Andersen, a nineteenth-century photograph by Lewis Carroll and a costume designed by Henri Matisse for the Ballets Russes adaptation of ‘The Nightingale’. Also featured are film costumes and props from Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête 1946, Jacques Demy’s Donkey Skin 1970, Jim Henson’s Labyrinth 1986, Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are 2009, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland 2010, Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror 2012, Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella 2015 and more.
A free curated film program screens alongside the exhibition in the Gallery’s Australian Cinémathèque with ongoing screenings of Jim Henson’s The StoryTeller television series throughout the season.
17 April, 6.30pm-7.45pm, Alternative stories: women, allegory and painting, panel discussion at the Royal Academy (The Benjamin West Lecture Theatre | Burlington Gardens) Tickets £15/£9. More information here.
Throughout art history, women have appeared in paintings as allegorical characters, often as tropes from religious or mythological sources from Eve to Medusa.
But alternative histories were also presented. Artists such as Angelica Kauffman foregrounded women as powerful characters, drawing on contemporary female creatives such as Emma Hart (Lady Hamilton) as inspiration for female ‘types’ in her history paintings. Now, contemporary artists are using mythology to reframe many of the traditional narratives associated with women.
In this discussion, our expert panel (Sutapa Biswas, Marina Warner and Annette Wickham, chaired by Sarah Turner) will discuss female characters in painting, and how artists working from Kauffman’s time to the present, have sought to subvert allegorical tropes.
This talk is programmed alongside the exhibition, Angelica Kauffman, on at the RA from 1 March – 30 June 2024.
7 March 2024, Forms of Enchantment: Writing on Art and Artists (Thames & Hudson) out in paperback!
”To gambol upon gossamer’: Fairy Tales in Performance’, essay published in the Exhibition Catalogue accompanying the exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination, on until 25 February 2024
Marina’s essay is included in the book Realms of Imagination: Essays from the Wide Worlds of Fantasy, edited by Tanya Kirk and Matthew Sangster. The book includes other essays by Rachel Foss, Cristina Bacchilega, Dimitra Fimi and Maria Dahvana Headley, to name a few. Get your copy now, on the British Library website shop.
23 February – 12 March, Window Display @ bookartbookshop
22 February, ‘Multiplying Marys’ London Review of Books, Vol.46, No.4 and online
Marina wrote a review for the LRB, writing about Mary Magdalene: A Cultural History by Philip C. Almond and Mary Magdalene: A Visual History by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona.
21 February, ‘Communities of Fate: Magical Writing and Contemporary Fabulism’ from the book Volume 1 The Languages of World Literature
Marina’s piece is part of the multi-volume work The Many Languages of Comparative Literature, published by De Gruyter, is available online (and ready to download as a PDF). The paper comes from the AILC/ICLA Congress 2016 and will be available in print soon.
13 February, Masterclass at the University of East Anglia 3-5pm
Marina has written the programme notes for Kim Brandstrup‘s double-bill, premiering on 29 January 2014 at the Theatre Bath. More information available here.
Metamorphoses, exploring the story of Cupid and Psyche, and featuring ballet superstars Matthew Ball and Alina Cojocaru, premiered at the Theatre Royal, Bath on January 29, 2024 as part of a double-bill with Brandstrup’s acclaimed work Minotaur, one of the undisputed hits of the 2023 Edinburgh Festival.
Meanwhile, Brandstrup’s mesmerising eight-minute film, Leda and the Swan (2014) is also part of the exhibition at Victoria Miro of the same name (see below), which was on view until January 13, 2024 at Victoria Miro, London and on Vortic.art
18 January, Forever After: Angela Carter, British Library (online only), 7.30pm
Kelly Link, Marina Warner and Terri Windling with Amal El-Mohtar came together to speak about Angela Carter, exploring the nature of the fairy tale tradition and its ongoing power. This event accompanies the British Library exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination, on until 25 February. Tickets from £3.25, available here.
16 January 2024, ‘Review: Joy Williams on Leonora Carrington’, Book Post
Joy Williams wrote about Leonora Carrington, mentioning Marina’s introduction for the NYRB published collection of Carrington’s Down Below (2017). This book by Carrington is an account of the time she suffered in a mental hospital when she was twenty-three. Here’s an excerpt from Williams’ piece, describing Carrington’s long career:
Years of metaphysical inquiry, friendships, motherhood, and art art art. Her work with its vibrant dehumanized animals, its mythic universality, and mysterious lucidity remains a marvel. She was and remains forever rad. For a time she was even American. She lived for two decades in Chicago and New York City writing plays and painting before moving permanently to Mexico. While in the US she became a committed member of the enviro group Earth First! She very much approved of a rewilded earth and a nonconformist, nonmaterialistic citizenry.
In accompanying Leonora Carrington news, there will soon be an update on the short film Inside the Cauldron, which Marina contributed a voice-over of an unpublished essay of Carrington’s. There is more about the film on the Jarman Lab’s blog, back from when they were crowdfunding the production. A piece about the film was recently included in the second issue of motor, a print publication dedicated to dance and writing about dance, available here.
1 December – 13 January 2024, LEDA and the SWAN: a myth of creation and destruction, Exhibition – Collaboration with Conrad Shawcross, Victoria Miro Gallery II, 16 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW, Tuesday–Saturday: 10am–6pm.
Curated by Minna Moore Ede and presented by Vortic Curated and Victoria Miro, an exhibition of primarily new work by sixteen artists across a variety of media – drawing, painting, sculpture, film and dance. Their responses to the myth of Leda and the Swan are diverse; each has found their own meaning in the story, revealing much about our contemporary preoccupations, be they personal or universal. The exhibition is available to view on Vortic.art. A glimpse below:
4 January 2024, ‘Fairy Tales with the historian and mythographer Marina Warner: Charles Perrault and Angela Carter’ On the Road with Penguin Classics, Penguin podcast hosted by writer Henry Eliot
The podcast is available for free on all platforms, including Apple / iPhone Podcasts, Spotify, Audible and Google.
In Dame Marina’s magical home in North London we discuss Perrault’s Tales of Mother Goose and Carter’s Bloody Chamber, as well as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Bluebeard and Little Red Riding Hood. Already out in the new series are episodes with Monica Ali on Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein with the neuroscientist Anil Seth and the poet Fiona Sampson.
