Adam Phillips & Hermione Lee: On Giving Up
Wednesday 31 January 2024, 7 p.m. · 52 minutes![](https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/storage/300_filter/images/2/4/2/9/4159242-1-eng-GB/adam_phillips%20credit%20Toby%20Glanville.jpg 300w, https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/storage/400_filter/images/2/4/2/9/4159242-1-eng-GB/adam_phillips%20credit%20Toby%20Glanville.jpg 400w, https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/storage/800_filter/images/2/4/2/9/4159242-1-eng-GB/adam_phillips%20credit%20Toby%20Glanville.jpg 800w, https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/storage/1200_filter/images/2/4/2/9/4159242-1-eng-GB/adam_phillips%20credit%20Toby%20Glanville.jpg 1200w)
‘Our history of giving up – that is to say, our attitude towards it, our obsession with it, our disavowal of its significance – may be a clue to something we should really call our histories and not our selves’, wrote Adam Phillips in a 2022 LRB piece, ‘On Giving Up’. Now developed and expanded into a book of the same title, Phillips illuminates both the gaps and the connections between the many ways of giving up, and helps us to address the central question: what must we give up in order to feel more alive?
Phillips was joined in conversation by Dame Hermione Lee.
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