Day Jobs and the Twilight World

17:15 – 18:45 Wolfson Theatre

 Although the cliché of the novelist as a typically bohemian, solitary, garret-inhabiting individual persists, in reality today, as in the past, the majority of novelists writing lead double-lives, holding down at least a part-time and very often a full-time job as well. Trollope did a full-time job as a director of the General Post office while simultaneously turning out some of the major novels of the nineteenth century. Kafka worked in an insurance office. Author of the bestseller The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame worked at the Bank of England for thirty years. Alan Judd represents a case in point, having published nine novels, most recently Uncommon Enemy (2012), while simultaneously working in the army, in the Foreign Office and in other Whitehall departments. He has also written, while pursuing these day jobs, The Quest For C , the biography of Mansfield Cumming, founder of MI5. Together with Lord Hennessy, the author of The Secret State and a preeminent Cold War historian, and Professor Christopher Andrew, the author of Defence of The Realm, the official history of MI5, he discusses the question of combining official work with the writing of fiction in the context of the Cold War and after.

Free Event – 25 February, 19:00, Old Theatre

Tonight LSE students present an adaptation of the satirical novella Heart of a Dog which lampoons the emerging totalitarian system with its exposé of medical science gone mad.

Mikhail Bulgakov was like his great Russian precursor Anton Chekhov, a full time doctor as well as a writer. In the 1920s and 1930s he was dogged simultaneously by disease and the constant threat of reprisals by Stalin as the Soviet Union headed toward the Great Purge. His 1925 work The Heart of A Dog anticipates both the unreal and sinister atmosphere of this period and the proto -magic realism of his classic Master and Margarita.

Languages: The State of the Nation. Demand and supply of language skills in the UK

Some of the key findings of the report:

•  There is strong evidence that the UK is suffering from a growing deficit in foreign language skills at a time when globally, the demand for language skills is expanding
• The range and nature of languages being taught is insufficient to meet current and future demand
• Language skills are needed at all levels in the workforce, and not simply by an internationally-mobile elite
• A weak supply of language skills is pushing down demand and creating a vicious circle of monolingualism
• Languages spoken by British school children, in addition to English, represent a valuable future source of supply – if these skills can be developed appropriately.

There is clearly room for improvement and also scope for reform.

The full report can be accessed here

The exhibition Facts, Fiction and Philosophy is devoted to the link between literature and philosophy from the ancient world through to the great writers of the twentieth century Sartre and Camus, and the contemporary writers Kundera and Stoppard.

There will be an evening celebration 19th February at 18:00, which will include a short student dramatised performance of classic comedy featuring no less a figure than Socrates himself, as well as audiovisual footage relating to the exhibition. This will be followed by a drinks reception.

Date: Monday 21st January – Saturday 2nd March 2013
Time: Monday-Friday, 10am-8pm
Venue:  Atrium Gallery, Old Building

Presented by the LSE Language Centre with a key contribution from the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method and supported by the LSE Annual Fund.

Additional information available on the LSE Public Events webpages 

Tuesday: Red Race  (in Mandarin); Wednesday: Nueve reinas (in Spanish); Thursday: Le Placard (in French); Friday: Al-massir (in Arabic)

Pop in! we are on the 7th floor of Clare Market Building

Start or improve a language at the LSE Language Centre!

Reduced fees for LSE current students, staff and alumni.
Register on our Modern Foreign Language certificate courses (MFL).

Several levels, from beginners to advanced, offered in: German, French, Mandarin, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Japanese and Russian

Only for beginners in:

Portuguese and Catalan (new addition this year)

If your programme allows a language as an outside option, you can take a degree option in Russian, Spanish, German, French or Mandarin

Check the Language Centre website for more information, send us an email or just pop in!  We are on the 7th floor of Clare Market Building

Just a quick reminder for all students with an interest in language studies, we will be running a series of events and courses for undergraduates. We will be offering courses in 10 different languages. Each course is designed to give you a FREE taster! You will get two hours of fun and enjoyable lessons each day for a week.

The sessions will run in week 9 and 10 of the Summer Term. Below are the courses that will be available this year:

A presentation by Michael Nedo

Ludwig Wittgenstein

To coincide with the Wittgenstein exhibition at the London School of Economics, Dr Michael Nedo (Wittgenstein Archive Cambridge) will give a presentation on Wittgenstein’s philosophy in the context of science.

An argument based on quotes by Lessing, Brecht and Wittgenstein, followed by a discussion exploring the importance of Wittgenstein’s philosophy for today’s sciences and mathematics, supplementing the Wittgenstein exhibition currently shown at the LSE Atrium Gallery.

The event is open to the public, no tickets required.

Date: 29th June, 2012
Time: Friday, 7pm
Venue: Old Building Restaurant area, 4th Floor