Alison Light Introduced by Claire Tomalin

Writer and critic Professor Alison Light talks about her memoir of a passionate marriage to the radical social historian Raphael Samuel, her grief at his loss and of finding inspiration in her friendship with Samuel’s mother.

Samuel was 20 years her senior and driven by his work and a commitment to collective politics when they met in 1986. Theirs was an attraction of opposites and they were married in a year. Light tells of moving into her husband’s unconventional life, the intimacies and estrangements during their life together, and of her grief at his death after only 10 years of marriage. She reflects on the power of mourning and how it shapes a life.

Light is a senior research fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford, a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and author of Mrs Woolf and the Servants and Common People. She will be introduced by Claire Tomalin, author of bestselling biographies including on Jane Austen, Samuel Pepys and Charles Dickens.