Author Jennifer Higgie reflects on the re-release of 'Bedlam: A Novel', 20 years after its first publication.
Bedlam: A Novel presents an imagined year in the life of Victorian-era artist Richard Dadd, a resident of what was once England’s most notorious sanitoria, London’s Bethlem Hospital – better known as Bedlam.
Rendering Dadd’s voice with empathy and acuity, Higgie presents a poetic and considered portrait of an artist whose elaborate fairy worlds continue to capture the imagination. The novel also reflects on the mystery of Dadd’s illness, and its effect on the mind of a young British artist at the height of his powers.
You will hear Higgie read an extract from the book, followed by a discussion with Margarita Gluzberg that will consider Dadd’s artistic career and legacy, the intricacies of human nature, and the complexity of writing biographical fiction.
Bedlam: A Novel is released by Verso in July 2026 and will be for sale in the RA Shop.
Jennifer Higgie is an Australian writer who lives in London. Previously the editor of frieze magazine, and the presenter of Bow Down, a podcast about women in art history, she is the author and illustrator of the children’s book there’s Not One; the editor of The Artist’s Joke and the author of The Mirror & The Palette: Rebellion, Revolution & Resistance, 500 Years of Women’s Self-Portraits, and The Other Side: Women, Art and the Spirit World.
Margarita Gluzberg was born in Moscow in 1968, and has lived in London since 1979. She studied at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, and the Royal College of Art in London. Her multidisciplinary practice has a great emphasis on drawing but also encompasses photography, sound installation and performance. Gluzberg weaves historical, semi-autobiographical, and cultural elements into her work, often exploring the tensions and reciprocal interplay between the past and the present, memory recall alongside recurring fiction, and the politics of desire. She is currently Senior Lecturer at the Royal Academy Schools. In 2025, she was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts and her work is held in the institution's permanent collection.
£20/£12, includes tea or coffee
