 Hello and welcome to today's discussion which explores what's so great about Lewis Carroll, 150 years since the publication of Through the Looking Glass. I'm Molly Rosenberg, I'm director of the Royal Society of Literature, and it's my pleasure to open today's conversation in partnership with the British Library. This is the next installment in our event series on some of the most popular writers of the past, and the last event in our winter season. We're really pleased to greet so many of you virtually tonight and particularly glad to be welcoming Leonie Ross as chair. Those of you who booked some time ago will know that a renaissance acogy was originally billed to chair this evening, but unfortunately a renaissance unable to join us, passing into us instead into the equally wonderful and capable hands of Leonie. Before I hand over to her to introduce our speakers Joyce Carol Oates, Patrice Lawrence and Chris Riddell. I have a few notes of housekeeping which I will try to keep brief I promise. At the end of the discussion tonight Leonie will turn to your questions, you can send these through using the box at the bottom of your screen, and please send them through as we go, and we'll ask as many as we can later on. As you are struck by the inspiration of our speakers, you can buy their books online too through the British Library and I think there's a button at the top right of your screen for that. It is now my very good fortune to properly welcome and introduce the brilliant Leonie Ross. Leonie is a fiction writer her first novel all the blood is red was long listed for the orange prize and her second novel orange laughter was chosen as a BBC Radio for women's hour watershed fiction favorite. Her short fiction has been widely anthologized and her first short story collection, the 2017 come let us sing anyway, was nominated for the Edge Hill short story prize, the Jalak Prize, the Saboteur Awards and the O.C.M. Her most recent novel this one sky day, which is extraordinary, was shortlisted for this year's Goldsmith's Prize which celebrates innovative writing. She's taught creative writing for 20 years and is editor of glimpse, the first black British anthology of speculative fiction due out in 2022 with people tree press. Welcome. Good evening everybody and from me your host Leonie Ross a warm welcome to this evening's panel discussion presented of course by the Royal Society of Literature in partnership with the British Library. The next hour is this wonderful opportunity to explore the cipher and interrogate the incomparable mischief and imagination of the writer Lewis Carroll. And as Molly said we look forward to audience questions at the end. So I'd like to begin by introducing our really fine panel of guests. Laurence's debut novel Orange Boy won the Waterstones Book Prize for older readers and the YA Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Costa Children's Award. Her second novel Indigo Donut won the Crime Fest Best Crime Fiction for Young Adults Award and was shortlisted for the YA Book Prize. She won the inaugural Jalloc Prize for Children and Young People for eight pieces of silver, which also won the Crime Fest Best Crime Fiction for Young Adults Award. Laurence was given an MBE in the Queen's Honour List. She is the first writer and ambassador for the young people's creative writing charity, First Story. She contributed the story Roll of Honor to Macmillan's 2019 collection Return to Wonderland, which tells children's stories reimagining Wonderland without Alice. Chris Riedel OBE Welcome is an illustrator, author and political cartoonist for The Observer. He has enjoyed great acclaim for his books for children, which have won a number of major prizes including the prestigious Sillip Cain Greenaway Medal, an unprecedented three-time showoff and the Costa Book Award. Chris was the 2015-2017 Children's Laureate and in 2019 he was awarded an OBE for services to children's literature. Chris has illustrated new editions of both Alice novels in 2020 and 2021. In the spirit of Carol's, the Red Queen believing in possible things before breakfast, Chris will be simultaneously chatting and sketching this evening, drawing the panel live in the style of John Tenille, who I've mispronounced again and Chris has already told me of once this evening. That illustrates his original Alice. We hope that Chris will give us a sneak peek at the very end of the event. Our final guest almost needs no introduction. Joyce Carol Oates is a novelist, critic, playwright, poet and author of short stories, one of America's most respected literary figures. She's written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including We Were the Mulvaney's, Blonde and the recently released novel, Breathe. She's the Roger S. Berlin Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University and a recipient of the National Book Award and the Penn Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. In the Lost Landscape, her 2015 memoir, Joyce identifies wonderland and through the looking glasses inspiring not only much of her enthusiasm for writing, but also her quote, a sense of the world as an indecipherable, essentially absurd, but fascinating spectacle, about which it's reasonable to exclaim with Alice, curious and curious. So hello, Patrice, Chris and Joyce, let us slip through the looking glass and begin. I was personally about eight when my father bought me Alice's adventures in Wonderland and through the looking glass and it delighted me. And a few months ago, I reignited that delight at the Victoria and Albert's present Alice exhibition in London. I mean, I literally skipped through it, guys, grinning with actually a renaissance of Koje, who I went with. And it brought about all of these wonderful memories and, of course, Wonderland's been with us for what feels like forever and whether it is the first matrix movie referencing it or the ballets and the other books and the paintings that it has inspired. I'd like to start with the broadest of questions for you all suggested of course by the provocative title of the event. So, when and why did you decide that Lewis Carroll was great. Why does the work abide? Patrice, can I start with you as a writer for children? When and why? I think in a sense it never did. I never thought about it because it was always there. I discovered Alice in Wonderland by myself and all the books that I come to love and stick in my head are books that I discover for myself. So they're in a library or a primary school library on a friend's shelf and you take them. And I think with Alice in Wonderland, it obviously just sat in my head and percolated and percolated and percolated. And for me, I think what was so great was it just felt very anarchic compared to a lot of the books that I've read at that time. A lot of the books I read as a child were sort of turn of the century, the late 19th century, early 20th century books, you know, little women and a lot of them had quite sort of a very strong moral compass. It was quite reactionary. They're great fun. This was like something that in a sense you could almost write in primary school because then they did this and then they did this. You know what's going to happen next. And I think actually rereading it as an adult. It feels like it's everything that's in my brain at the same time. So I think that's why it really sticks with me as a book that I can reread because it just goes against all the things that a children's book was supposed to be at that time to some degree still is. And so my feeling is that you would agree, at least with some of this, the sense of mischief, the sense of possibility within within the work. Yes, yes, absolutely that sense of it being like an anarchic world, and so different really in contrast to the adult world, just rereading through looking through the book this morning I'm stuck in many passages in which Alice who's only seven years old, supposedly Alice just stands up against the adults with great certitude chill, like the Red Queen says, off with this head off with her head, and Alice's nonsense. And I think when I first read that as a little girl of about nine. I had never even thought of being skeptical or judging adults in my family or in the world. So this was astonishingly revolutionary. I think that Lewis Carol himself, of course that's not his name Charles Dodgson. I think that in writing this amazing book. He had really unleashed the child anarchist in himself. He's writing at Victorian society from a very marginal and very skeptical and and very maybe the rise of perspective. He's not one of the adults of the Victorian world and he's not an Oxford professor. He's writing as Lewis Carol, he's writing as this revolutionary voice, which attaches itself to so well to the child's perspective. So it unleashes it almost as if it unleashes the sense of child likely within him as well and his sense of pushing against adults. Yes, I think so, rather than proud and terrified by adults who have so much power. I mean literally adults tower over us when we're children they're much larger than we are. Alice is just this amazing voice. So when I was nine years old, growing up on a farm and upstate New York. I had of course never experienced anything like this in my life to me adults were were sacrosanct. You know, one didn't question an adult, let alone have the vocabulary to say nonsense. But since then I think I've just completely absorbed that and it became sort of became my sense of the, the way the world is constituted it is basically absurd and one should be skeptical. Chris, do you relate to this sense of either as Patrice says a connection but that came later and was almost organic. I think that's right. And, but, and Joyce also having quite a clearly strong response to this and then this stays with her for a very long time throughout her life. Yes, you explore and find Lewis Carol's work. Well, I, I first encountered Lewis Carol. I think we should make a sort of a pact between us we're going to either call him Charles Dodson or Lewis Carol I think we should sort of decide I let's say Lewis Carol. I first, I first encountered Lewis Carol as a child. The book was read to me by as a bedtime story, and I was captivated by the illustrations. So as I listened to this extraordinary world unfold and both Patrice and Joyce have talked about that the impression that the the the prose made on them and it made a similar impression on me but I was also drawn to the extraordinary pictures. The illustrations of, of John Tenniel, and particularly the white rabbit, which was the frontispiece at the very beginning of the book, looking at his pocket watch on the banks of the river, being very late for an important day. Do you know why that was the as a kid, the white rabbit. I think because it was so wonderfully realistic and yet stylized Joyce has just shown the beautiful Tenniel illustration isn't that wonderful. This is my rather sort of poor imitation but I obsessively copied that frontispiece. And I drew it over and over again because I wanted to analyze the way that Tenniel managed to characterize the rabbit and yet at the same time imbue this this animal with a sense of a Victorian gentleman I mean it was a fascinating exercise for a young sort of appreciator of drawings and illustration. But I also had this sense of the book as being indivisible that this book was the book there was not Lewis Carroll and John Tenniel there was simply the book. And it was only a little while later when I was old I realized that there was a job called illustrating, and that there was someone brought in to illustrate some of his imagination, and that captivated me I thought, when I grow up that's what I want to do I want to be that person like John Tenniel, who illustrates a writer's work, and I think the way that words and pictures work within the book I think is is is wonderful and was groundbreaking I would argue for its time. I mean we can, I certainly would like to tease out some ideas around around the groundbreaking because I think for me and for a lot of people. I was really reading the work again as an adult I reread it in my twenties and then I reread it of course recently in preparation for this and I was struck again how our collective consciousness. I don't think can separate ourselves from the Tenniel illustrations and our sense of what Alice is and also who is Carol is it's it's almost as if more like than than any book that I can think of and I'm sure you can all think of an equivalent but I can't. There is this you think of it you immediately think of what Alice looks like and you think of what the rabbit looks like and you have Tweedledum and Tweedledee in your head and you have Humpty Dumpty and the Red Queen. So it is this is astonishingly visual experience. I'm curious as to, I mean, you seem to have really suggested this anyway Chris but do you think that the book could have been what it was without the illustration the interplay between the illustration and the words. It was a very hard question to answer because I think what I think we still respond to in in Alice is is the it's Genesis in a sense which which you feel when you read the book. It was a story told to three children on a picnic, and they enjoyed it so much it was made up Charles Dodson I'm breaking my own rules Lewis Carol had sisters, many sisters and he was the storyteller in the family he used to tell his sisters by telling stories. And as a young Don he did the same with the little sisters on a picnic told them this wonderful story. And you get that conversational sense coming through I think Patrice has mentioned this the the the sense of, and then this happened and then that happened and then that happened a very clear relationship with reader, you know we're never bounced out. We are being, we are being entertained. Something is being done for us. Joyce, how do you respond to ideas around illustration and its relationship with the word, particularly, I mean we are talking about Alice we're going to get in perhaps other works a bit later but in the Alice books. It's going to be just really like organic one thinks of these wonderful illustrations as part of the book. But I think that in fact, it wasn't at the case that Lewis Carol did his own own illustrations originally and they just weren't as good. Isn't that right. They were charming. They remind me of possibly Edward Leah which we in his illustrations they were they were lovely but they were by no means as captivating I would argue or as accomplished as as 10 years. It is very interesting. Jabberwocky. Yeah, but it is. It is so interesting because obviously, can you all had a tremendous identification with with the book. These illustrations are literally remarkable. I mean they're astonishing. The animal figures look like people. And Alice doesn't look like a seven year old. It's sort of like the whole cosmology of the book is special, just because of these illustrations. I'm curious because of course you're having as Chris has the experience of, of your words being made into pictures which is not something I've experienced as a adult fiction writer. Can you tell me some can you tell us something about what that feels like for it to, you know, come out of your head through your mouth through your words and then here is a rendition that is visual. Is it satisfying is it frustrating. No, I think you're ever complicating actually for me anyway, because I've got no visual sense of anything. So I couldn't even I find it very hard to imagine things visually. So I'm always really excited that the thought of somebody else doing it, but I just thinking going back to the illustration sort of certain values in Wonderland I think perhaps they embedded themselves in my head at such an early age that nothing has lived up to it so I've never seen the Disney film. I saw the, the horses name Ron who's married to Helen Bonham Carter, very headache me green inducing one with every British actor going, which I thought was quite awful. I'm so delighted you said that because that is my big bug bear. Johnny Depp is not my hat. It's all I can say. That wasn't my only thing. But I think the only ones I mean Chris I haven't seen yours yet the only ones that came near to me were Helen oxenbury's where she did the sort of like the sort of pop up one and that. But for me, I think, going back they are totally of one. I can't imagine the book without images need at the beginning doesn't she she talks about. Why can assist to read a book that's only conversation has got no pictures so the book has to have pictures. It was obligatory. Okay, I'm going to say something. I feel like I'm in a room full of mischief makers so I'll say this now. And this allows us to I think look, expand more into into the overall world. So my question I suppose is was Carol a one hit wonder. So two books about the same girl in 11 years and a bit of a poem. Chris don't kill me. I am being facetious in 1895 then I think 30 years after the publication of the Alice's. He attempted a comeback that he produced a kind of two volume tale of fairy siblings, called Sylvie and Bruno and it was, I think quite successful in its time but I hadn't heard of it admittedly, which makes me feel a bit sad and contemporary critics certainly seem to pan that. Has anyone else here read it has anyone read Sylvie and Bruno. I can't claim to have read it but but I've certainly looked at Henry Holland's extraordinary illustrations to it. And Henry Holland also illustrated. I think Carol's other great masterpiece which is the hunting of the snark. Yes. And I think that's a pretty good hit rate if you've got two children's books archetypal children's books like the Alice books, and you've got hunting of the snark. I think you know that that is great and then for scholars, there's the lesser work. Yeah. I mean, so for scholars, there is a lesser work I find that interesting. Joyce how do you feel about this idea of a man who we know that he was a mathematician and of course he wrote other books and and he was an inventor as well I mean he was a ideas man. And yet this this emphasis on will get to the poetry in a minute but emphasis on the Alice's and then of course the accompanying poetry, and then a not so successful final piece what do you think about that kind of concentration maybe those limits. Is he a one hit wonder should we should be care. Did we want more from him. Well, I think it's sort of an unfair, unfair question because he's not I don't think of Lewis Carol as a writer in the sense that DH Lawrence was a writer or Hemingway or Faulkner I don't think he was embarking upon a literary career. I think he was a person who is immensely inspired and excited by certain, you know, ideas in a limited period of time. And he wrote, I consider hunting of the snark really unique also really a work of genius. And if these three works, you know, would would one not be quite grateful to a written one master fees, let alone expect to have a whole career I, I don't think it's a, you know, really a fair thing to say, and yet another life as a, you know, as an instructor as a professor at Oxford so he was doing other things in his life. Absolutely had a whole life I mean I feel the need to emphasize that I asked the question out of pure mischief rather than genuinely feeling that that you know it wasn't enough. Maybe then like we can perhaps have a conversation that begins to think about Carol's work in the context of his evident love of poetry and song so you know I will never forget being being small and enraptured by those words. It was brilliant and the slithy toadstead guy and gimbal in the way I immediately as a kid understood that. I didn't have a problem with it I thought it was marvelous. You know the Jabba walkie. And of course 1876 is the hunting of the snark which we've mentioned. I'd love to get into the poetry now I'd love to to consider this at a sentence level. You made this so wonderful. Why is Carol so good at this. Can we, can we interrogate his his technique here. Why is he a wonderful poet. I love his his sense of humor and I think that that goes through all the books everything he wrote. And I think it's interesting Joyce you mentioned you know that comparing him to maybe great literary sort of figures. And he's not that easy he is a sort of very much of his time and yet that he's also I think a great humorist. And that sets him apart I think he was the sort of Douglas Adams of his age, rather than a sort of you know, Tolstoy you know he's a very different sort of writer and I think that's why he delights children he delights parents who who read the books to their children. And his humor doesn't date, which which I think is wonderful when it does date it dates delightfully it takes us back I was in Oxford I walked past the shop that features in through the looking glass with the proprietor who was a sheep. I was disappointed not to see the sheep at the counter, but it to every other respect it looked exactly like the tenial illustration it was wonderful and you know that, in a sense he knew this he though. He filled his his work with with wonderful references to two things I love the fact that in hunting the snark all the professions begin with a B. I don't know why but but that's a lovely little word game to delight in and joy showed us that wonderful illustration of the Jabberwocky. And what's thrilling about that in the sense is it sort of comes straight out of the National Gallery comes from you cello it's a sort of it old Italian master sort of take on it on a drag. It's expected in a way and yet you know that that's exactly what Lewis Carol would have would have wanted. But I mean it's more it's more than the poetry is humor of course I'm sorry Joyce go ahead. No at the same time he's a satirist and he's really making fun of 19th century poetry so he's he's a he and the most immediate level for children. It's a story that's very engrossing but if you're an adult you recognize that he's making fun of Wordsworth and other people. And he's very satirical and skeptical about platitudes and piety and you know Victorian hypocrisy. That's a whole other, maybe subterranean level of the book that comes through more to adults. Sorry, Patrice go ahead. That's no sense but there's two things really for me about about Carol and about the poetry one. I think thinking about Alice and Alice was an outsider so she was in all these in Wonderland trying to make sense of the rules. And as somebody who was the first in my family to be born in the UK and growing up in a sort of very white area and in Sussex you're constantly trying to interpret this world and work out where you fit in and who you are. And I think with the poetry, particularly something like Jabberwocky, I grew up with a stepdad who's Italian but speaks English fluently and a Trinidadian mum so obviously languages used differently in our household. And when you go to school you're told this is the way you speak this is the way you write that's very different to have a poem that actually had these invented words and it's actually there in a book and it's a book that you encourage to read it told you that language could be anything. And because he also makes it scan so you've got reading it. So when I was a child I love writing poetry and again I think the sort of anarchy of those poems as well is what inspired me as a child to write metal rhyming couplets with strange words and things that were brought in for my own sort of background. And then Patrice you have that wonderful part in Through the Looking Glass where Humpty Dumpty poses as a literary critic and tells you definitively because you know words mean what they want him what he wants them to mean nothing more nothing less. And he begins to deconstruct this poem very delightfully and you know it's nonsense. Alice listens to him politely but he doesn't know what a slide he told this, you know, even though he claims he does. No idea and that I think is a lovely thing and so you've got Humpty I think is one of the great sort of figures. Who would have thought that Humpty Dumpty would have such resonance that he would actually one day lead the Conservative Party, and in fact have Christmas parties sitting on his extremely sort of tottery wall and be describing, you know, things so to Humpty and to Boris Johnson. The Christmas party means exactly what he wants it to mean neither more nor less, which, you know, again, Carol is just so contemporary. Can I read something here. When I use a word Humpty Dumpty said and rather a scornful tone. It means just what I choose it to me neither more nor less. The question is, and Alice whether you can make words mean so many different things. The question is that Humpty Dumpty, which is to be master. That's all. I was thinking about that today. Yes, it is about he who tells the story and has control of it, how you interpret particular language and what value you bring to it. He has, you know, Carl the language he says it will be what I mean it to be today I am the master today. I just want to sort of interject another sort of scholarly note here and and Joyce, if you can sort of maybe sort of cite this in through the looking glass. There is a sequel to through the looking glass that unfortunately was never written. And it's an Humpty is at the cart of this. Later on in through the looking glass he turns up at the at the White Queen's Palace, and he's demands to see the hippopotamus. The White Queen says there's no, you know, hippopotamus here to Tuesday. And, and Alice says is there usually a hippopotamus there and the White King just, you know, only on Thursdays. So I want to know, you know, who the Thursday hippopotamus is, and what Humpty's business was with the Thursday hippopotamus and besides anything else it would make a great title for a novel patrice I'm just saying if you want to write this book, I'm going to read it. This is Lewis Carol hippo tribute Thursdays hippopotamus. Is this true choice that there was these were the ideas. Do you can you cite the sources as Chris requests. I mean later on in the book. No, I'm leaving through it but I haven't prepared that so no this. The idea that there would be a sequel and that and that it would make Humpty the the protagonist which is what I'm understanding. You're saying Chris. Where have you where have you got this information from just intrigued because of course I think we do we not all imagine what another Alice. Yeah, well, all I can say actually Molly is it comes from the White Queen herself she's very unreliable I mean, apart from anything else her style is such a mess. You know she has really sort of blow away have that that Alice has got to sort of pin up from time to time. So this is all conjecture you see from from the White Queen so it could be utter nonsense but then isn't that what Carol is so good at and I think the Thursday hippopotamus is someone I want to know more about he is has one mention in in through the looking glass right at the end just before the big the climactic. And we don't see him but but I was fortunate went into illustrate through looking glass over 300 pages. So I had lots and lots of room to draw all the things that obviously. Daniel didn't have a chance to so I feel like I sort of had an unfair advantage to sort of maybe delve into some of the lesser sort of imagined parts of the books. I mean patrice one of the things you had a chance to do in the collection that you wrote your story for was to be among people who were imagining, you know wonderland into the future, grabbing those ideas that you would love to extrapolate you know explore yourself, and you wrote a wonderful story in which you were getting concerned with the croquet game is that do do other people here joy saw patrice have feelings about what more you wanted from the work if you were to write more work that was inspired by this or have you done so. For me there was just so many seconds of a character so I can't see I've got my flamingo earrings on today just to celebrate. But it was interesting with that because when when we got asked to write there's quite a few authors contributed to the anthology. And I said you know you need to get your characters in there, you know, make your state for your characters I think people into tweedle d and, and for the caterpillar. And then there's a daughter who obviously knows me so well said to me like mum, you're going to do the flamingos artists well actually know I'm doing hedgehogs how did you know. I think I'm just always really fascinated in secondary characters. So I kind of wanted to you want to know about the old man and all he's like their back stories and he's they are and they're sort of roles in wonderland in the same way. I think it's a super style kind of like was taught from Judas's point of view. And I just think there's just so many perspectives looking into things so for me so is a secondary smaller characters. Oh you always think so why are you doing that so how did you get there. Yeah, did you know, Patrice that that the flamingos originally in the original manuscript were ostriches, which would have been very different and I think it might have been 10 years we just said look I prefer flamingos. Thank you very much. Are you illustrator. Joyce is there anything that you would want to see more of to imagine for yourself to pick up secondary characters or third level characters even and explore and discover them. Well, if I were to write anything about Lewis Carol, I would probably imagine him near the end of his life and a very realistic fashion like where he's living and what thoughts he hasn't. And he re encounters Alice Liddell, who's now you know an adult woman and maybe she's married and so forth. I would take the whole idea of the phantasmagoria that belong to the child. The childhood experience was so wonderful. And I would transpose it to real life like middle age and and real realism psychological realism, and I would find that very poignant. I would have to work it out to see how it would be but I wouldn't revisit the wonderland world. I would go. Joyce, I would love to read that because in 1891. Charles Dawson had tea in his rooms at Christ Church with the Alice Liddell now married. They had a very poignant sort of tea together and I would have loved to know what their conversation was and perhaps you could write this. Well, it sounds fascinating. I mean, that is the sort of thing that would interest me. But, you know, the writing is the execution of an idea. The concept is very easy. But the execution would be very challenging. But I think it would turn out to be rather poignant. I'm not interested in what happens, particularly because the book, for me, and my reading of it, particularly my adult reading of it, is it is so about the body. You know, whether it is that people are writhing, growing, you know, there's an opportunity to have that spatial relationship with adults or adults in quotes because, of course, everyone in the book feels as if they're an adult to Alice's child. Everybody moving and so present in their bodies fighting and stuff at the Duchess's baby and so on. Molly, I agree with that. I'm particularly interested, however, in how Alice's body would have been in her middle age. But I'm sorry, go ahead, Chris. It depends. It depends what cake she was eating at the time. You know, that would have a dramatic effect and what she could just, what in an advised bottle she had picked up with and not read the correct labelling. I think certainly Wonderland is, as you say, a book all about sort of the size of things, proportion, and very much rooted in the body. And then through the looking glass, I think is very much about language and about what words can mean. And I love the counterpart. I would be very interested to know from Patrice and Joyce, which of the Alice books they prefer, if indeed they do prefer one to the other. Great question. Can I just ask, sort of, Leone, what would you, if you could write something inspired by Wonderland or any of Louis Cowell's words, what would that be? What would you take? Well, dare I say, I think I'm about to. And so I don't want to talk about it. But I do think I'm about to. But it is based in the body. Leone, can I, can I just interject at this point? I've been calling you Molly for the wrong reason. You're very kind. I'm going to try and put this right by actually sort of amending the drawing I've done of you. Make it more beautiful, please, to make up. Here we are. This is Leone. Patrice, as you were saying, I'm going to be very boring here and I can't even extrapolate as much as Joyce did because I'm a little worried and it's at that embryonic stage. But yes, it is to do with the body because I do think one of the things I enjoy about Alice, and I must say this is again as an adult, not so much as a child, is the body diversity. It feels to me very little judgment in the book. You have a body, whether you've got a Griffin's body or a Jabba, you know, Jabba walkie's body or a Duchess's body. There are big, small, you know, and Alice, it feels to me like her body changes and responds to the environment around her. And she takes in sustenance and has relationships with people around her, and then her body changes as a result and it's about her body being efficient. You know, that she needs to fit into a small space or she needs to get bigger to do a thing or she wants to have a conversation with the caterpillar and be three inches tall in order to facilitate that. And I love the idea that the body is once again returned to us this efficiency, rather than, you know, what has taken us over I feel in the 21st century was this obsession with bodies only looking a particular way. Well, I think also a way of the child's negotiations with the adults around her, she is constantly, she's small and she's getting larger and smaller, and she constantly has to deal with the series of adventures that she's having. Now, to you, the body and the physical, I guess, are in foreground. But to me, I think that it's a contest of wills, who is an authority. So at the end of Alison wonderland she says why you're just a, you're just a pack of cards. And she throws out cards up in the air. In other words, the adult world, the hierarchy of power is all these institutions, you know, like the monarchy or the church and so forth, really just a pack of cards, and a child or one of us can just say that. And also at the end of the through the looking glass, she's pulls the tablecloth and everything goes flying and she then she wakes up from this nightmare. For me, it's negotiating who is in authority and who will have control over us, and the individual saying, you are just a pack of cards or you just don't exist. Yes, she always returns to her power and she always pushes against irrational behavior, or, you know, lack of kindness as well. This took me, this took me back, you know, when I was asked to illustrate Alison wonderland and the great thing about being asked to illustrate Alison wonderland is that common law demands the publisher lets you do through the looking glass as well, it's just one of those things. So I knew I had a good deal here, you know, and so I went back to the Charles Dodson's photographs of the little sisters, the three of them, and that gives a wonderful sort of insight, I think, into the three girls of the story for the very first time. And Alice is flanked in the photographs by her younger sister and her older sister, who look like the absolute sort of picture of little sort of Victorian girls, you know, with ringlets and, you know, crinolines. And Alice stands out because she has Alice little hands as all of Bob haircut, very different to her two sisters. She's already standing out as someone very idiosyncratic and very sort of, you know, full. And you can imagine in a sense that this is what Charles Dodson put into the story it's in fact why Alice is the heroine rather than one or other of her sisters or in fact all three. And I think coming back to that much as I love the 10 year old Alice, the little blonde girl in my version I wanted to bring back the actual Alice, the original Alice the child who heard the story and in fact that's become an archetype I think for many, many children's authors. The idea of first you tell your story to a child and then maybe you write down that story once you've had the response I'll be interesting for trees dude. Do you read your stories to, did you read your stories to your children did you test your, your, your work out as it were. You know, I've only got one daughter I think actually she met as a teenager who doesn't read my books, which I'm very grateful because she'd probably charge me money for all the bits of her life that I've stolen. I just think I just love, I mean I love children's books anyway, and I used to read a lot to her and she was little. And I just think I still got that head and I was thinking about recently was a short story for an anthology called happy here, which was written by black authors and I think it was definitely been inspired by Alice in Wonderland because whereas in Alice through the looking glass you've got Humpty Dumpty I've got a mixture of the Greek mythical character city first I've got a Nancy, I've got Meghan Markle, and I just think you know you can just bring all these different and magical characters together in a story and that must definitely have come from reading Alice in Wonderland. And I do, but also just think it's, it's, you can't these days as a children's author, get away with that style that Lewis Cowell has that sort of conversational style I think publishers want a very specific structure with a beginning and middle and an end of a specific way of doing of dialogue, a specific way of presenting children you couldn't get away with some of the things that happen and a smoking caterpillar would definitely be out. So thank you. Chris please don't listen to publishers that you know honestly. I have to eat Chris I have to eat so you know. A smoking caterpillar I think you'll find it was a vaping caterpillar. How contemporary you know Lewis Cowell is. Can I go back to the question Chris that you asked Joyce, if you had to make a what's your favorite between the two Alice's. Is that possible to even choose. Well the two books really are investigations into the same thing was sort of going into the unconscious into the world of beyond the ego or beyond language so through the down the rabbit hole is really analogous to through the looking glass. I like the idea of through the looking glass a little more it's it seems more visual, and you said to see the illustration of Alice climbing through the mirror and we all have a sort of fantasy when we're children of the mirror world and some of us as writers are always exploring the alter egos and you know, double gonders and so forth. I'm so pleased Joyce you said that I knew as soon as I saw you that I liked you. Because for me, you know, with you on this, I'm looking glass fan. Why are you looking and I'm looking glass because I absolutely love the poetry of looking glass, so it has the greatest poems in it and not only doesn't have a jabberwocky and the warris and the carpenter. So it has the wonderful sort of old man on a gate, which is a particularly sort of ludicrous one and and of course a lovely sort of Humpty Dumpty even is a poet in looking glass as well. So it has that wonderful sort of playfulness of language I, I did actually say Leonie I wanted to sort of reveal my, my theory on the hunting of the snark. Maybe if I sort of talk about this for me the baker in the crew that goes on this extraordinary hunt for for this the snark this this poor sort of flightless bird in my interpretation. All of the professions barristers and bartenders and all sorts and the baker joins very late and the baker has actually mysteriously lost all his luggage. So there's no labels there's no identifying. So, and he appears, and he appears not to actually know how to bake. So I think there's a question mark as to his his competency in his profession. And my theory is in fact, he is one of these great Victorian characters who, you know, a young lady decided she might want to join the Indian army so puts on men's clothes and joins the Indian army and many years later as a surgeon is revealed to have been a woman all along. I think that's what the baker is. I think she has joined this all male crew, put on a false beard and gone on the snark hunt. And she is the one who actually finds the, the snark who turns out to be the Boojum. And they disappear at that this is a spoiler alert. They disappear at the end of the, the poem, and never to be seen again. And my theory is in fact that this is a love story. And the Boojum fall in love, and they end their days on a tropical island a little bit like the war is in the carpenter sort of living happily ever after. But isn't this one of the most wonderful things about Lewis Carroll and what he does we, the ability for us to extrapolate for us to make up ideas as a result of it for us to, you know, have ideas of what this thing is about generation to generation, you know, I think that is one of the things about his work that I think leaves me genuinely breathless. He lends himself to every generation that we have seen to interpret to say that this is about drugs or this is about body or this is about how we imagine the stories that take place in the background. Can we account for this technically I mean we're all writers. How is he doing this, how is he managing to remain so apt for generation to generation. This is not a mystery we must be able to, or it is must be able to solve it. How is he managing to hold our imagination generation to generation, and lend himself to what is relevant whether it is the politics of the day, or what is relevant about ourselves as a community or as individuals. Long question. How is he making himself remain relevant technically what's he doing. But isn't that typical of any great classic writer that they are contemporary with their own time but also with our time. Yeah, they resonate forever. Yeah, it's because there's just so much in it so much planned in it so you can interpret it as a literally interpreted as analogies, you can interpret it all different ways you can for me. I'm not visual but I can see the stories, I think probably through the illustrations, and I think because it is just so crammed full of so much there will be something that people will take out of it. It's worth remembering that Alice won the land and then sort of a few years later through looking glass, became an industry, and that Charles Dodson was very interested in that side of it merchandising, turning out little sort of Alice memorabilia all sorts of sort of ways in which he could then sort of stoke this phenomenon and in a sense, he was the sort of J.K. Rowling of his day in a sense you know he was monetized an extraordinary extent. It's an excellent point Chris and that continues to today that there's money to be made in between these pages but Joyce I'm sorry you were going to say something in response to this idea of Well one of the things that Lewis Carroll is doing as again a sort of terrain and I don't think was children would be aware of it. He's dealing with the exciting intellectual issues of the day, like Darwinian evolutionary theory, in contrast to you know the didacticism of the church, you know, it seems more like animals. Are we all evolving or in this case maybe some of these characters are devouling but are we sort of on a continuum with the animals, or are we some special creation. It's clear that Lewis Carroll was more sympathetic with the idea of questioning the received ideas of the day he was he was skeptical, and he was, as Patrice said, a kind of an anarchist. And of course he has the wonderful caucus race doesn't he which has got it so Darwinian sort of quality, and he puts himself right at the heart of the caucus race because he is the dodo. Yes, Charles Dodson, named dodo, and he has his friend, Duckworth, who is a duck in the in the caucus race. So you have this lovely lovely thing. You also have I think to go into maybe some Freudian analysis. Alice attempts to enter Wonderland through a tiny doorway she can't get through she's too big she looks through into this lovely garden it looks like the Quad in Christ church. She can't gain entrance to to this lovely place. She actually gets into Wonderland through a lake of own tears, which is a wonderful method of arriving and she arrives on the shore drenched with this mouse, who has she's encountered and meets all these other sort of Darwinian people around the place. And they're dripping wet, they're cold. She is soaked by her own tears, and the mouse decides that they need to get dry. So what he does is he tells them a really, really dry story about Anglo Saxon bishops and to try and drive them out. Now I think that is at the heart of what Carol does so magically he plays with ideas but it's always so wonderfully playful. No question and I don't know that I actually don't know the answer. Did Lewis Carol do much revising when he prepared the the I assume that the story is written very, very quickly it seems to be written in kind of white heat or he made it up and so forth. But you know when when we're moving toward publication we do get galleys and there's a period of time where we can revise and change things so my question is did he revise much before it was published. It's an interesting question Joyce I think I think you know, I'm not a scholar and there will be scholarly people who will be able to tell you, you know what particular passages made it for instance the ostriches didn't make it they were replaced by flamingos. There might have been a few other sort of changes, not least because tenial was the senior of this partnership as when it began he was a rather grand political cartoonist, which is another reason why I rather love and identify with him because my other was a political cartoonist for a newspaper. And the, the idea revision actually tenial, you know, laid down the law with something said he was not going to draw a wasp, which was originally in through to look through to looking glass. He just simply didn't feel like it he didn't want to draw the wasp. So the wasp was a wasp in a wig. Yeah, and tenial didn't draw the net either. I felt it was beholden on me to draw the net just for sort of you know, completism but but it's interesting how that that was a relationship that that sort of started with this obscure Oxford done who is lucky enough to employ a leading political cartoonist and book illustrator, such as John tenial. But the complexity of having a really creative relationship whether it is an editorial relationship or as you say tenial have the seniority here, you know then of course effects that you know, as we know, subsequent drafts because, and I wonder, I don't know a lot of things of course that we don't know about how he felt about his work. I do know I think there was this big rumor that that Queen Victoria had had insisted that he dedicate his next book to her, and then apparently he dedicated his next book of mathematics to her. But again doesn't that sound like him you know he's like sure and then did it, but apparently he insists that you know such a thing never happened. And the dedication. Another, there's another lovely story, and I want to tell this for Joyce's benefit that when the first edition of a Wonderland came out. He just looked at the galleys looked at the way that it was printed they actually printed an edition was quite quite a few of them. And he just said no this isn't good enough. The printing isn't good enough. Yes, I want this done again. You know, and of course they they they had to so bow to to his demand. And so Milan the Wiley's the publisher said okay this obviously isn't good enough for the British public we can't have that. So he sent all the copies to America. So the American inferior. I think one really wonderful thing about our panel here is Chris's presence because I have never discussed Alison Wonderland in the presence of a visual artist. And at the beginning to see it sort of emerges from our discussion that Lewis Carroll and tenure are really like collaborators, and that it was almost like an accident that that Lewis Carroll's manuscript could be attached to this already very famous and established artists so it's almost like we're like the Beatles getting together you know like something that was maybe accidental. And the lesson we should learn from this Joyce and and I hope you're listening Patrice carefully is that what you need for your next books is the the talents of a top notch British illustrator. You know if you should be particular one Chris so well I talked to me later Patrice, you know always available. But no it's it's really interesting isn't the way the words and pictures can work together at that level and how they fuse don't they successfully. I'm keeping an eye on time guys and given that we have a few more minutes in this part of the evening before we move to questions. I'm wanting to invite you all because of course I have my my limits. Many they are, is there something that hasn't come up in the conversation, yet that you think no people listening to a conversation about Lewis Carroll and his work must know this. Patrice anything that you feel that you just want to talk about before we move. Patrice I just wondering about his influence on future children's writers whether they're sort of Anakin role dolls books or even things like the Shrek movie which brings in which again it's got that different layers and slightly in the market world and I just wondering if there are any others to just feel that that really does influence those sort of anarchic writers who make people do cruel things in children's books. I mean I don't I don't know off the off the top of my head but I can't imagine that there are very many writers you haven't at least interrogated Lewis Carroll, even if it's just for fun, you know. So I feel at this point, you know that there is the elephant in the room I'm not going to draw the elephant in the room but there is one and that is of course. Alison's relationship with the little sisters and with Alice little herself. They, they met when Charles Dodson was photographing the Cathedral Christ Church Cathedral with which you good vantage point from the garden of the Dean's garden, and Alison her sisters daughters of the Dean of Christ Church were playing in and Charles Dodson made friends with them he was a standing out with his a photographic equipment and they they struck up a conversation. And they subsequently met up went on picnics with his friend Duckworth along the Thames, there was definitely a sort of you know relationship but they developed as a but it's worth noting that Dodson was one of a large family. The only son he had, I think, correct me if I'm wrong but I think six sisters, and he obviously sort of, you know, had a sort of relationship with with sort of his sisters that was very special he was the storyteller the eldest brother. Very easy I think through the prism of the modern day sort of Maurice to look at this and think well there's something a little bit odd about a sort of grown man and you know with this intense friendship with a little girl but you've had you've you've remarked on this before and certainly when we were talking before you did. What's your in our dying moments feeling about this that the elephant in the room I suppose which is, you know, a different time and yet a complexity that that leaves some uncomfortable. Now that. Were you asking patrice or maybe I didn't either one that who like to chime in Joyce if something comes to you please go ahead we can go about this. Just very quickly since Chris brought this up and Chris probably knows a good deal about this. This is wonderful movie that's just been released in America at least it's called the electrical world of Lewis Wayne. The illustrator and artist Lewis Wayne also was from a family of all girls, and he. He had the kind of popular success I think that that Lewis Carol and do you see any parallels with Lewis Wayne. I don't know Lewis Wayne actually Joyce and I'm now going to research that because it sounds absolutely fascinating. A little coda I think to this was was that there was a schism between the Dean of Christ Church and and Charles Dodson in 1865 about sort of years after the they they had become friends, and Carol was banished from from the sort of inner circle as it were was persona non grata. And the story, you know the rumors were that he had actually proposed to Alice, and Alice was 11 and he was 32. I'm going to slightly sort of you know hot water sort of saying well this wouldn't be unusual in certain parts of rural Tennessee but for which I, you know, shouldn't be facetious about it but I think there was a sort of heart of their relationship and innocence that was entirely Victorian. And I don't think it really went beyond that. And I think we cannot know is the answer to to. We cannot know and I think also in that period, as far as I know, several of his diaries were destroyed at the time. And therefore it was very hard to know from his own notes and his own reflections. Patrice, I want you to have a last word on this matter. It doesn't have to be definitive word by any means but I want to invite you to do that before I move to question from. It's one of those things that I found out very suddenly and unexpectedly in my early twenties and I was just doing some research right and asked about this in Wonderland and I borrowed a book from a library and I read this and it was a complete shock. So I have my doubts about the idea of Victoria innocence because I think, you know, but so we will never know but it does make me feel a little bit uncomfortable. I understand that there's no question that that the abuse of children is a real thing. I think we all understand that linear I think it's it's and Patrice I think you make a very good point. I would say that maybe a last word on this is that in through the looking glass, the White Knight really does stand for Lewis Carroll I think he Charles Dodson sort of identified himself as the White Knight and there's a sort of moment of between Alice and the White Knight and Alice is quite uncomprehending. This is a very strange character who you know just recited a poem and the Lewis Carroll says what a magical evening it was and how it would be remembered forever in the sense of disengagement from Alice from this so I sense you know the real Alice little probably sort of have very little truck with this rather odd eccentric Dom and she went her own way. Indeed she was she was his muse. Okay, I have some questions here that I'd love to put to the panel so let's have a look at what we have. We have Linda asking she says the panel of indicated that they don't feel warmly towards some of the cinematic and postennial illustrated versions of carols Alice books. I'm an amateur collector of Alice books and have around 50 editions wow Linda in many languages with an astonishing range of illustrative styles. I'm filled with delight with every new discovery whether traditional or modern, including spin offs. So do the panel in this context consider themselves to be Alice purists. Joy so we Alice purists. Oh I can't really answer that because I don't I don't have the context I haven't seen all these books. Yeah, obviously there are expressions of different people's interpretations and they would be interesting and it we really just met at the degree of artistry. Kenya was a great artist so if other people are great artists that that's that's fine. Hopefully I don't think I'm a purist I think I'm just expressing passion and love for the for the first editions that I saw but I'm certainly very open to all kinds of reinterpretation again because of my obsession with body diversity and so on I, you know I would be extremely happy to see other takes on this. And Chris you can't be a purist really you've you've already, you've already mixed up the works. You've already interpreted and changed her hairstyle so you know. I would say, a linear that I am an absolute 10 year old purist. For me, he is definitive. So it's very sort of strange in the sense to accept commission to reillustrate Alice, but it's been illustrated so many times. It's become a club, and I like to think of it as a tea party. John Tenniel is is at one end of the extremely long table, and then all the illustrators after Rackham to Janssen, Ralph Steadman, the great illustrators that the contemporary ones who've done this. We're all sitting at this dinner table and the latest place setting as is for me I'm sitting right at the end I'm just about to start on my bread and butter, but I've joined this lovely gang. Right at the head of the table is the great John Tenniel who did it all and I couldn't interpret is mad hatter, because he's one of my favorite characters. And so I decided I would have to invent a character that's completely opposite to the mad hatter and John Tenniel's illustration. So I made the hatter a girl. I make no apologies for it it's not in the text, but I just thought she she adds a sort of an interesting contemporary element to my version. I'm not. No, certainly not. I just think for me perhaps it's more than 3d sort of cinematic versions and I think for me because it's so, there's so much in the book and it's so unlinear and so surreal that actually putting it on a screen seems to flatten it and simplify in a way that doesn't sort of feed into my imagination. I'm not going to put it on a screen where it's actually in a book because so no bring on the versions I'm happy with the versions. I think it's because that was the first because it's over. I'm going to be so conscious I say this now. It's in your versions of the first ones that I ever saw so those are the ones that sort of seared themselves into my brain but bring on the others I'm happy. Oh, fantastic Patrice, except for Tim Burton's movies, I think we agree on that they're beyond the pale. I have been joined by Cheshire Cap, which oddly we never got to talk about. Let me move to another question. She was screaming so I had to pick her up. Paul is asking he says I'm really enjoying this event. Which writers and novelists do we think have been influenced by him so Chris has already mentioned Douglas Adams do we see any any other connections that that seem evident to us. Other work I suppose Paul is asking us that we see out there that's been affected by. I think well dull I think to some degree possibly. I think if you look at his children's work. I would say as well Patrice I would say that, you know, the whole canon of sort of nonsense per tree in a sense is, you know, owes a huge debt. Both, both Carol and, and to Edward Lear the two sort of great Titans of the age, but there are some wonderful sort of Americans are writers, Justin Norton, the phantom toll booth is one I, I would say is a wonderful sort of Lewis Carol sort of thing. But then I think right now I think almost every children's work in a sense is in a way uses the Alice books as an archetype I think it is this notion of how how a story might enchant a reader the way that it's focused on the reader I think Patrice you talked about improving literature, you know that the tradition before Carol which was you know this story is good for you, and then after Carol it's this story, you will enjoy you know it's that sort of great jump and I think we've never looked back since. A question from Janet she says why is it that Alice is a bit Marmite. I adored both books as a child and very much went with the flow with all the weirdness, but my mother who was born in 1922 much nearer to the Victorian era absolutely hated it, and obviously found it very unsettling I think my perhaps there was the point. What is it that some children love, but others really don't I think she means, why is it that some, some children love a thing but others really don't what happens. I think so she could be, you know, the thought that you could read about where child is rude and pushes back against adults was just not a dumb thing so the first child reading it when you can't do that yourself is actually got your avatar can do all the things that you want to do. So I mean I would never imagine talking back to my parents or any of those things, but actually to have a character that can do that was incredibly cathartic. Children. It's the absolutely the joy of the bright child you know who gets to talk back Chris go ahead. No I disagree Leonie children are awkward rather repellent beings. And it's a great sort of you know sadness in a sense and burden that we bear. Patrice and I is that we work in children's books so we've got to put up with them, whereas Joyce is so lucky in a sense to be beyond that and be a proper, sort of, you know, academic and literary right. Joyce you don't have to put up with these impudent and impertinent children in your signing cues. Well I actually have written some children's books and might not all about kittens and cats. Oh that sounds excellent. And one thing didn't Alice Lodale herself say about the Lewis, but the books that they would quote the stupidest story ever. Yes she did actually I found it too. Yes, which is hilarious because she was the great news. And at the same time she she had this very skeptical of very sort of self determined opinion like they stupid even though they're dedicated to her. Well it's a very Alice to say. Yes exactly it's a very Alice thing to say. And as you say, you know, children and their complexities Chris, I'm not going to join you there. Bandit Queen, which is a wonderful name to have is asking us a question. She says given that the story is actually a complex mathematical problem. Do, does the panel or do you know anyone who has ever solved the problem, or have any of the panel solved the equation now in this way bandit queen I'm not quite sure if there's a specific equation you mean or the the entirety of a narrative equation. But she says given that the story is actually a complex mathematical problem. Do you know anyone who's ever solved the problem. But the two stories which book does she mean. Let's perhaps start with the first and I'm calling bandit queen she but I don't know that there she the first the second we could, we could theorize perhaps I mean I don't experience them as thus as a kind of singular mathematical equation but perhaps that's because I do, and in fact I actually, I think my forthcoming book is going to reveal it. It's called the Lewis Carroll code. Yes, you do know this right. Yeah, it's it's it's for I'm hoping Tom Hanks might play the principal character. And it's basically how we discover that Humpty Dumpty is in fact ruling Great Britain as we speak. I can't disagree with this. Patrice any feelings about a kind of I hope that I'm interpreting your question correctly bandit queen that the story is actually a complex mathematical problem do we have an answer to it. I would say it has never occurred to me but my mind wouldn't think that way anyway. Enjoy the looking glasses of chess game. Yes, that's pretty obvious. If it was revealed somehow and of course this is entirely impossible that that the author himself intended it to all to be a singular mathematical equation. Bandit queen if you know this to be true please somehow send the RS so that we know the answer because I suspect that you do. So we might as well. Now I am aware of the time. Gentlemen and ladies you have been fabulous I think we could sit here all night and talk about Lewis Carol and the complexities of his work and the gift that it has really given the world. But I do want to thank you all very much indeed for being here for being so open and generous with your time and to invite Molly Rosenberg back to say goodbye so thank you. Before I do that Chris I know of course that we've been looking at your work all the way through. But I'm told by the techie experts that are behind us all mysteriously that we can now see some so if you can bring up the ones that you are you love let us see them. So moving on to our final question, which I think might have appeared in a pop song. The doormouse I think probably knows the theory and can solve it. He told the wonderful story at the tea party of the three children in in the trickle well. So you know I think the doormouse knows something. So here is the the the white knight who you know some Lewis Carol identifies with but in fact I think in my imagination very much like the great Sir John Tenniel, who had the most fantastic Victorian moustache, and was actually partially cited in one eye which is an extraordinary thing. So this is my version of the the Hatter with with the doormouse and the hair in the background a jabberwocky I was just thrilled to draw because joy shown us the wonderful original. So this is my theory of the, the baker in hunting of the snark, living happily ever after with the bougie. Patrice I hope you're taking notes because I want you to write books about all these things. A choice, forgive me for for drawing you in a slightly sort of Emily Dickinson style I would say. A ballast with the dark hair, which seems to have been going down very well in Italy, I think. I think mainly for the coloring. And of course my my inspiration was the the white rabbit, you know, childhood inspiration. And here we have Boris Humpty Dumpty just just to sort of you know, end on a ridiculous note. Thank you so very much for that they are wonderful Chris, Patrice Lawrence, Joyce Carolotes, Chris Riedel, you are magnificent. And I thank you so much for your time. Molly Rosenberg will have you say goodbye. Thank you so much Leonie. Thank you so much Joyce and Patrice and Chris. And thank you all so much for joining us for the last RSL event of 2021. I want to give my thanks. I'm endlessly thanking people this evening. I want to give my thanks though to to our longtime event partners the British Library, particularly John Fawcett and B Rowlett for all of their work and to tonight's producers unique media, especially John Stethridge and Becky Godley. Well tonight is the last event for this year. You can tune into the RSL social media channels next week for the exciting announcement of our February events. I think there are a few that you wouldn't want to miss. I'll say no more. As a member of the RSL you get free tickets to all our events in person and online, as well as our quarterly newspaper our mutual friend and our annual magazine RSL review. If you just want to join our events online you can register for an RSL digital events pass for free tickets to all of our online events. Membership starts at 40 pounds a year and a digital events pass is yours for 25 pounds. Sign up today through the RSL website, which is RS literature.org. 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