A Waterstones Event – Radiation Diaries: An Evening with Janet Todd and Miriam Margolyes
London – Gower Street
Monday 2nd July 18:30
Join renowned literary scholar Janet Todd for the launch of Radiation Diaries, her deeply personal and darkly humorous account of cancer, memory and a life in words. Janet will be in conversation with Miriam Margolyes.
Janet Todd is one of Britain’s most distinguished literary scholars, known for her pioneering work on Aphra Behn, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, and other women writers.
During her 7-year tenure as President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge she was diagnosed with three forms of cancer, and underwent gruelling treatment. Janet has kept what happened quiet until now
During this time, Janet wrote a diary in which she described pain, humiliation and debilitating side-effects. Exhausted, so much of her time spent ‘under the machine’, she reflected on her unquiet past, on literature, feminism – and her battered female body. Her account is both wryly amusing and deeply moving.
This evening Janet Todd will discuss these deeply personal but highly original diaries with admired actress and television presenter Miriam Margolyes.