EVENTS

21st September 2007

Biographer Brenda Maddox in conversation with psychoanalyst Ken Robinson

At The Institute of Psychoanalysis, 112a Shirland Road, London W9

Click here to read an account of the event

Click to listen to the conversation and question and answer session

Brenda Maddox is an author, biographer, and journalist. Her latest book is "Freud's Wizard", a biography of Dr. Ernest Jones, Freud's rescuer and biographer. Her previous biographies include "Rosalind Franklin: the Dark Lady of DNA", the life story of the DNA scientist Rosalind Franklin, which won the English-Speaking Union's Marsh Biography Prize for 2002-3. Her "George's Ghosts: The Secret Life of W.B. Yeats", published in May 1999, it was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Non-Fiction Prize. Earlier, "D.H. Lawrence: The Married Man", won the 1994 Whitbread Biography Prize for 1994. It was shortlisted also for the New York Critics Circle and the James Tait Black awards. In 1988 her "Nora", the life of Nora Barnacle,the wife of James Joyce, won the LosAngeles Times Biography Prize, the British Silver P.E.N.Award for non-fiction and, later, the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger. "Nora" was also shortlisted for the Whitbread and National Book Awards. Both the Lawrence and Joyce biographies have been published in Germany by Kiepenheuer & Witch. The Joyce book has been translated into nine languages and made into the film, "Nora", starring Ewan McGregor and Susan Lynch.

Maddox's earlier books include "Beyond Babel: New Directions in Communications" (1972) and "The Half-Parent" (1975), a study of step parenthood. She is a regular contributor to the press on both sides of the Atlantic and is a book reviewer for the Observer, the New Statesman, the New York Times and the Washington Post. She also lectures frequently on biography and the subjects of her books. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, past chairman of the Broadcasting Press Guild and also past chairman of the Association of British Science Writers. She is a member of the board of the British Journalism Review and is a vice-president of the Hay-on-Wye Festival of Literature.

Born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, she holds a degree in English literature cum laude from Harvard and is an honorary member of the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Society. She began as a journalist and columnist on the Quincy, Mass. Patriot Ledger. In London she first joined the U.K. desk of Reuters Ltd, then moved to The Economist for many years, becoming Britain editor, Home Affairs editor and leader writer.