The English Departments of RGS Guildford and Tormead School jointly hosted an evening lecture with Professor John Mullan, the Lord Northcliffe Chair of Modern English Literature and the Head of the Department of English Language and Literature at University College London.
Professor Mullan obtained his undergraduate degree in English from King’s College, Cambridge and went on to work in Pentonville Prison for one year. Returning to Cambridge, he earned his doctorate in 1984 on the cult of sentimentalism in eighteenth-century writing. Professor Mullan then became a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, which was followed by a seven-year lectureship from 1987 at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. Professor Mullan moved to UCL in 1994, where he has remained ever since.
Professor Mullan’s scholarship is characterised by a keen interest in the interplay between historical and contemporary literary forms. His first book, Sentiment and Sociability, delves into the language of feeling in the eighteenth century. Subsequent works such as How Novels Work and Anonymity explore the evolution and mechanisms of fiction. He has made significant contributions to Jane Austen studies, evidenced by What Matters in Jane Austen?, and he continues to engage with the public through lectures and journalism, notably for The Guardian and The London Review of Books, as well as presenting various shows for the BBC and judging the Booker Prize. His latest book, The Artful Dickens: The Tricks and Ploys of the Great Novelist, highlights Charles Dickens’ literary innovations. Additionally, Professor Mullan has edited several seminal works, including editions of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, combining academic rigor with accessibility for broader audiences. His career reflects a dedication to exploring literature’s artistic, cultural, and emotional dimensions.
Professor Mullan’s lecture championed the skills that studying English at post-16 level and beyond can develop in young people. This was achieved through discussing the many literary afterlives of William Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy, Hamlet. Professor Mullan demonstrated how Hamlet’s literary descendants include Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals, James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, Dickens’ Great Expectations, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and The Waste Land, Philip Larkin’s The Less Deceived, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Ian McEwan’s Nutshell and, most recently, Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet.
The lecture was followed by a panel of Upper Sixth students from both RGS Guildford and Tormead School posing questions to Professor Mullan on their set A Level Shakespeare plays, Antony and Cleopatra and Hamlet, so that future Sixth Form students of English Literature were given a taste of what to expect.
With well over 100 people in attendance from RGS Guildford and other local independent and state schools, it was a wonderful evening of literary exploration and discussion for all involved.