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Howard Jacobson on Hamlet and Great Expectations | Touchstones

Art &
Culture

Join the Booker Prize-winning novelist Howard Jacobson as he chooses Hamlet, Great Expectations and Uncle Max’s Magic and Puzzle book as his touchstones

Touchstones is a new podcast series presented by Razia Iqbal in which creative people talk about works of literature, art, places or objects that give them solace or inspiration. In each episode our guest talks us through three touchstones that they return to time and time again. Join the Booker Prize-winning novelist Howard Jacobson as he chooses Hamlet, Great Expectations and Uncle Max’s Magic and Puzzle book as his touchstones. In this live podcast recording we will journey through Jacobson’s life and inspirations, from becoming enthralled with Laurence Olivier’s adaptation of Hamlet as a thirteen year old to discovering Dickens’ deft exploration of guilt and shame in Great Expectations, to reflecting on his own relationship with his father, a children’s magician, through his book of magic tricks and games.

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Event Name

Howard Jacobson on Hamlet and Great Expectations | Touchstones

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Speakers for the motion

  • Howard Jacobson

    Booker Prize-winning novelist and journalist

Chair

  • Razia Iqbal

    Journalist and broadcaster

Speakers are subject to change.

Speakers

SPEAKERS

Howard Jacobson

Booker Prize-winning novelist and journalist

Novelist and journalist, who has been described as the British Philip Roth, although he prefers to think of himself as ‘a Jewish Jane Austen’. He has written 16 novels and five works of nonfiction. 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, and was also shortlisted for the prize in 2014 for J. He is also a columnist for The Independent and has written and presented several television programmes, including the critically-acclaimed Channel 4 series, The Bible: A History
Chair

Razia Iqbal

Journalist and broadcaster

Razia was special correspondent at the BBC for over three decades and from 2011 to 2023 anchored Newshour on the BBC World Service. She is currently teaching at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, where she holds the John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. Visiting Professorship.

 

Speakers are subject to change.