On this week’s Talking History, Patrick looks at the life and legacy of Katherine Mansfield, the New Zealand-born modernist writer, whose haunting and powerful works helped redefine the modern short story. Joining Patrick to discuss is: Sir Vincent Gerard O'Sullivan, Professor Emeritus, at Victoria University of Wellington, one of the world’s foremost Mansfield scholars and President of the Katherine Mansfield Society. He has edited, with Margaret Scott, the five-volume edition of Katherine Mansfield’s Collected Letters, published by Oxford University Press. He is also widely published as a poet, fiction writer, playwright, and biographer; Dr. Adrian Paterson who lectures in English at the University of Galway and has published widely on eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth-century literature with a particular interest in the artistic interactions of modernism and Irish literature; and Dr. Gerri Kimber, Visiting Professor in the Department of English at the University of Northampton and co-editor of Katherine Mansfield Studies, the peer-reviewed annual yearbook of the Katherine Mansfield Society. Her books include: ‘Katherine Mansfield: The Early Years’ (2016), ‘Katherine Mansfield and the Art of the Short Story’ (2015), and ‘Katherine Mansfield: The View from France’ (2008). And she is the Series Editor of the 4-volume Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield and for ten years she was President of the Katherine Mansfield Society.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.