What’s American about America? Delivered at a conference on American identity delivered at the University of Toulouse on June 11, 2010. The lecture explores those aspects of the United States which are taken to be definitional, in a country in which national identity is loudly proclaimed but always problematic.
Personal reflections on different aspects of the life, work and influence of WG Sebald by those who knew him, ten years after his death. WG "Max" Sebald's literary career was at its height when he died in a car crash in December 2001, shortly after the publication of his masterpiece Austerlitz. From the dual perspective of friend and colleague, Christopher Bigsby remembers WG Sebald in his adopted home of Norwich and reflects on how 'exile' there allowed him to write about the hidden history of his German homeland. 5th December, 2011.