about this event
Looking for a talk on H.G. Wells in Cranleigh, Surrey? Discover the life and legacy of the visionary author who imagined time travel and Martian invasion, and his links to the local area.
H.G. Wells (1866-1946) is best known today as the classic science-fiction author who invented the idea of time travel and who imagined the Martian invasion of south-east England. But there is much more to his long life, from his early struggles as a shop assistant to his later career as political propagandist, educator, and advocate of human rights. This talk will cover both his visions of ‘the shape of things to come’ and some key moments from his own past, including his birth in Bromley, his teenage years in and around Midhurst, and the cycling trips through Surrey recalled in his novel The Wheels of Chance. Above all, it will portray the writer whom his friend the Cranleigh resident Frank Swinnerton called ‘the merry, affectionate genius whom we knew and loved.’
Patrick Parrinder is the author of many books on Wells and modern literature, and general editor of the Penguin Classics editions of Wells. He is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Reading, and President of the H.G. Wells Society.