Dickens vs Tolstoy

I heard via a friend that there was an event in London, a debate between Simon Schama and John Mullan about the merits of Tolstoy and Dickens, respectively, with support from a stella cast. So I went.

In walking to the venue from the tube station, I came across this rather nice piece of sculpture, celebrating those who fought for Women's suffrage, which was a pleasant surprise.

The event itself had been arranged by an organisation called Intelligence Squared , which apparently hosts regular debates and other events, and was held in the Emmanuel Centre, which is a church and conference centre, and has an impressive circular auditorium, where the event was held.   

John Mullan, Bonnie Greer OBE, Simon Schama

John Mullan (Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at UCL) advocated for Charles Dickens, and Simon Schama (Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University, NY), for Leo Tolstoy, with Bonnie Greer moderating, although it quickly became clear that this was a friendly debate, with both speakers, although championing their own writer, being  enthusiastic about the other as well.

L-R Kit Kingsley, Zawe Ashton, Timothy West, Julia Sawalha, Tom Hiddleston

They were supported by dramatic readings from Timothy West, Zawe Ashton, Julia Sawalha, Tom Hiddleston, and (making his professional debut`), a young boy named Kit Kingsley, who gave a very effective Pip, to Timothy West's Magwitch, as they read the opening scene of Great Expectations. Kit did an excellent job as a terrified young Pip, and Timothy West as a terrifying Magwitch!

We also got to hear further scenes from Great Expectations (Julia Sawalha and Zawe Ashton as Miss Havisham and Estella), and from David Copperfield,and a reading from Tom Hiddleston from the opening chapter of Bleak House.(with much fog, and a note from Prof. Mullan that the line "As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill" contains the first dinosaur in English Literature.)

Then Simon Schama got his chance to champion Tolstoy. He talked about how much Tolstoy admired Dickens, and that he even saw Dickens perform A Christmas Carol once, but that he himself did not write to be performed, or read his own work publicly. He argued that Dickens wrote characters, but the Tolstoy wrote people, (he also admitted that 'Tolstoy's joke book is a bit thin')

He also spoke about how Tolstoy's own experiences of war influenced him, and we heard Tom Hiddleston read from Hadji Murat, which depicts the aftermath of war in Chechnya.

We then got to see Julia Sawalha and Zawe Ashton as the sisters Shcherbatsky (Anna Karenina),  Tom Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton as Kitty and Levin, as Levin panics about childbirth..  with Hiddleston reading the text)


There was also a scene between Pierre (Hiddleston) and Natasha (Ashton), and another with Hiddleston as Vronsky, and Sawalha as Anna.

We were all polled on our way into the debate, at which time Dickens took 44% of the vote, with Tolstoy on 40% and the remaining 8% undecided. At the end, Tolstoy had taken the lead, scoring 53%. I suspect that this may well be attributable to Simon Schama's  tactical use of Tom Hiddleston, given the make up of the audience, but perhaps I am mistaken and there were just a lot of fans of classic Russian literature!  

The whole evening was recorded and apparently video will be available here soon.