Two historians and writers Selina Todd and Lyndall Gordon discuss how they research and write about their own and other people’s lives. Todd and Gordon are both fellows of St Hilda’s College.  Todd researches and writes on class, inequality, working-class history, feminism and women’s lives in modern Britain, while Gordon is a prize-winning writer of biographies including The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot; Virginia Woolf: A Writer’s Life; Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft; and Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds.

Todd’s latest book is The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class 1910-2010. It charts the history of ordinary workers, housewives, children and pensioners through the 20th century and aims to bust some of the myths of the past. Gordon, meanwhile, has turned to writing about her own story in Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and Daughter. It is a story about expectations of love and duty, loyalty and division, and breakdown and recovery.

This event is part of St Hilda’s Day at the festival.