The Artful Dickens: John Mullan & Howard Jacobson

Discover the tricks and ploys of the literary giant with two great writers

At the 2019 festival John Mullan interviewed Howard Jacobson about his novel Live A Little. Now the tables are turned, and Howard will interview John about his new book The Artful Dickens. The year 2020 was the sesquicentenary of Dickens’s death. We had hoped to put on this event then, but are now pretending that 2020 didn’t happen, and that this year is the one that matters. John and Howard will discuss how Dickens’s ‘impudent trickery’ was tried out on the stage before being applied to his wonderful novels.

“Splendid . Mullan’s book is too rich to capture in a review. Each chapter shoots off in a fresh direction and illuminates it . You must, and should, read Mullan’s book. Even if you know a lot about Dickens you will find revelations in it, and if you know nothing about Dickens and want to learn what makes him great it will be the perfect appetiser.”

john carey – the sunday times

John Mullan

John Mullan is a professor in the English department at UCL. He wrote the regular ‘Book Club’ column on fiction in the Guardian and frequently appears on the BBC’s Review Show. He was a judge of the ‘Best of the Booker Prize’ in 2008 and a judge of the Man Booker Prize itself in 2009. He has lectured widely on Jane Austen in the UK and also in the US, and makes regular appearances at the UK literary festivals.

Howard Jacobson

Howard Jacobson has written sixteen novels and five works of non-fiction. He won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award in 2000 for The Mighty Walzer and then again in 2013 for Zoo Time. In 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question; he was also shortlisted for the prize in 2014 for J.

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