Thursday April 3rd
4.30 pm
Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival
Christ Church College, Oxford
www.SundayTimes-OxfordLiteraryFestival.co.uk
Event with Ellis Avery (author of The Teahouse Fire, published by Vintage)

Thursday April 24th
6 pm
Kinokuniya bookstore, 1071 Avenue of the Americas, New York, USA
tel +1 212-869-1700
Illustrated talk on Madame Sadayakko/Madamu Sadayakko

Saturday June 7th
Ekota Campus, Nihon Daigaku,
Tokyo, Japan
Illustrated talk on Madame Sadayakko

week of June 9th (to be confirmed)
Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan,
Yurakucho Denki Building, 20th floor,
Tokyo, Japan
Illustrated lecture on The Last Concubine: Secrets of the Women’s Palace

late June/early July - date and time to be confirmed
Chichester Festivities
www.chifest.org.uk
Illustrated lecture on The Last Concubine: Secrets of the Women’s Palace

Wednesday 16th July
11.30am
Dartington Ways with Words Festival, Devon
www.WayswithWords.co.uk
Illustrated lecture on The Last Concubine: Secrets of the Women’s Palace

Watch this space!

Thursday March 27th
7.30 pm
Japan Society Southern Counties
Physic Garden Hall,
Petersfield, Hampshire
For further details please visit: www.jssc.org.uk
Illustrated lecture on The Last Concubine: Secrets of the Women’s Palace

Wednesday March 19th
6.45 pm
Asia House
63 New Cavendish Street, London
www.AsiaHouse.org
Illustrated lecture on The Last Concubine: Secrets of the Women’s Palace
This is a joint lecture with the Japan Society and Asia House. See also http://www.japansociety.org.uk/events/080319_combined_lecture.html
Asia House members and concessions £5, Non-members £8

Lesley met readers and signed books at the book launch for The Last Concubine on March 5th at the Royal Over-Seas League. She also gave a lecture and there was a sword fighting display with samurai swords.

Some photos of the event:

The word geisha means ‘arts person’ - gei is ‘art or arts’, sha is ‘person’. Geisha are performers who spend five years - as long as a university course - learning to sing, dance, play musical instruments, act and make charming conversation. They are as strictly trained as ballerinas in the west. But they are parlour performers - they perform not before huge audiences but at teahouse parties, in small intimate settings. It’s a tradition that we don’t have in the west. They are, if you like, celebrities - and like celebrities they may also have a love life. Yet for some reason westerners find the concept of geisha endlessly titillating. Whenever I give lectures on geisha and describe the rigours of their daily lives there’s always someone in the audience who gets up and asks if they’re prostitutes. Yet our celebrities can have a wild love life without being tarred with that brush. Another case of cultural misunderstanding?