How I Write: Conversation with Peter Stansky on Writing History and Biography

Hilton Obenzinger, a prolific fiction and nonfiction writer and lecturer in the Department of English and in Continuing Studies, will engage Peter Stansky in conversation, focusing on the techniques, quirks, and joys of writing history and biography.

Stansky, an extraordinarily productive author of British history and biography, is a vibrant intellectual presence on the Stanford campus.   He has produced studies of some of the seminal figures in British political and cultural history from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th: Gladstone, William Morris, George Orwell, Henry Moore, and Benjamin Britten. He is the author of Sassoon: The Worlds of Philip and Sybil; Gladstone: A Progress in Politics; Redesigning the World: William Morris, the 1880s, and the Arts and Crafts; and On or About December 1910: Early Bloomsbury and Its Intimate World. He has also edited and co-authored many books, including Journey to the Frontier: Two Roads to the Spanish Civil War. His most recent book, The First Day of the Blitz: September 7, 1940, was published in 2008.