Tom Crewe

who will be speaking with Dr Ross Forman about

The New Life

Winner the 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the 2023 Southbank Sky Arts Award for Literature

The New Life

After a lifetime spent navigating his desires, John Addington, married to Catherine, has met Frank, a working-class printer.

Meanwhile Henry Ellis's wife Edith has fallen in love with Angelica - and Angelica wants Edith all to herself.

When in 1894 John and Henry decide to write a revolutionary book together, intended to challenge convention and the law, they are both caught in relationships stalked by guilt and shame. Yet they share a vision of a better world, one that will expand possibilities for men and women everywhere.

Their daring book threatens to throw John and Henry, and all those around them, into danger. How far should they go to win personal freedoms? And how high a price are they willing to pay for a new way of living?

‘Filled with nuance and tenderness... charting the lives of men and women who inspired not only political progress but an entire new way of living and loving’ Colm Tóibín

Co-sponsored by the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies and the Writing Programme