On Tuesday 10th September 2024 family, friends and colleagues of Dame A.S.Byatt gathered at St James’s Church, Piccadilly for her memorial service. It was, as she had been in her life and writing, joyous.
A decade before she had explained,to a gathering of Word Factory writers and readers further down the road on Piccadilly, just how she had first come to write short stories after years working as a novelist. Equally joyous, insightful and humorous, I wanted to share that particular moment with you in this Word Factory film from 2014.
A.S.Byatt was a tremendous supporter of emerging writers and had generously supported me in founding the Sunday Times EFG Award and the Word Factory, becoming a patron in our very earliest days. An organisation founded for writers by writers, I have never been ambitious to create a conventional arts organisation but wanted to maintain a serious focus on the work itself, which she understood. Quite how significant her own work is may still not be fully recognised.
Her imagination was attracted to spiders, her mind weaving, her hands often moving an object (I remember a roll of sellotape) through her fingers. She loved the word, the underdog, hated anything fashionable or cynical. She seemed to persuade angels to stop and talk for a while.
Tributes at the memorial were from her daughter Antonia; her editor Jenny Uglow; the writer Lawrence Norfolk; the neuroscientist and expert on pleasure, Morten Kringelbach and the artist Edmund de Waal - all beautifully representing the fine web of her wisdom, intellect and rebellious playfulness.
We are lucky in this video to hear her reading one of her own stories, The Stone Woman. Take your time and enjoy this precious moment.
Cathy Galvin
Share this post