Swindon Festival Of Literature: Helen Lewis

The Genius Myth – with HELEN LEWIS, in conversation with Matt Holland, and with you

Do you know a genius? Are you one?

The tortured writer; the rebellious scientist; the monstrous artist; the tech disruptor: who’s a genius? Can we tell what society values by who it labels a genius? Can we also tell who it excludes, who it enables, and what it is prepared to tolerate, in the name of a particular kind of cleverness?

In her latest book, The Genius Myth, best-selling author, staff writer at The Atlantic and former deputy editor at the New Statesman, Helen Lewis unpicks a word – genius - that we all use and asks if the modern idea of genius is distorting our view of the world.