Flying blind

When I told my London-based son I was flying home to write a speech (the homework of Damocles), he immediately labelled it my “Merrie England” lecture.

- By Charlotte Grimshaw

It was a reference to Kingsley Amis’s comic novel Lucky Jim. During a disastrous talk on Merrie England, Jim first derisively imitates his senior colleagues, then ridicules the subject, then begins to sound “like an unusually fanatical Nazi trooper in charge of a book-burning”. Eventually, he blacks out.

“Yes, it’ll be just like that,” I said.

While we were laughing, someone added, “The civil servants who would have come have all been laid off. They’re working over here now.”

In January, I was appointed President of Honour of the NZ Society of Authors. In Wellington on October 14, it’s my duty to deliver the 2025 Janet Frame Memorial Lecture. The event is framed as a state of the nation speech for New Zealand literature.

I will attempt to make my presentation merrie, despite the prevailing mood of wintry discontent. I will discuss adventures in fiction and memoir, and the serious issues facing our writers today.