Penelope Lively Interviewed by Chris Patten

Booker prize-winning novelist Dame Penelope Lively talks about her life and work at the personal invitation of the chancellor of the University of Oxford Lord Chris Patten.

Lively is an award-winning writer of fiction for both children and adults. She has been shortlisted three times for the Booker prize, winning it in 1987 for Moon Tiger, a novel that spans the time before and after World War II. Her ghost story for children, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, won the prestigious Carnegie medal for an outstanding book for children or young adults. She holds the honorary fellowship of Oxford Literary Festival.

Here Lively talks to Patten, a former MP, cabinet minister, chairman of the Conservative Party, governor of Hong Kong and European commissioner, now chancellor of the University of Oxford.

In previous years the Chancellor’s lecture was given by:

Dr Mario Vargas Llosa – 2009
Jung Chang – 2011
Vikram Seth – 2012
Seamus Heaney – 2013
Orhan Pamuk – 2014
Amitav Ghosh – 2015
Professor Frank Dikötter – 2017
Sebastian Barry – 2018
Robert Harris – 2019