As the culmination of a weekend symposium, A. S. Byatt delivered a fascinating lecture on memory and writing on Sunday 30 October to a public audience at University College, London. Byatt spoke first of her earliest memory, existing outside of language and available to her as an awareness of geometic shapes (a blanket in a pram and the sky). Space, rather than time, seemed to provide the guiding force for her thinking about memory and about her writing practice.

A. S. Byatt

One of the most interesting metaphors Byatt used to consider the conscious mind was of a net or network of points cast over experience, an image surprisingly pertinent to some of the neurological research panelist Hugo Spiers had been sharing with the Memory Network during the symposium. Spiers, alongside literary critic Patricia Waugh, and philosopher and writer Charles Fernyhough, responded to Byatt’s ideas and took questions from the floor in a stimulating exchange.

Find out more about the ‘Future of Memory’ symposium and the Memory Network.