Love’s Work: James Butler, Rebekah Howes & Rowan Williams

When Gillian Rose’s Love’s Work was published shortly before the author’s death in 1995, Marina Warner wrote in the LRB: ‘This small book contains multitudes. It fits to the hand like one of those knobbed hoops that do concise duty for the rosary, each knob giving the mind pause to open up to vistas of meditation on mysteries and passion.’

To mark the publication of a new edition (Penguin Modern Classics) with an introduction by Madeleine Pulman-Jones, we hosted a discussion of Rose’s ‘masterpiece of the autobiographer’s art’ (Edward Said) and its legacy. Participants were be LRB contributing editor James Butler, Rebekah Howes of the University of Winchester and the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.