Talks / Ideas / Philosophy

Izabella Scott in conversation with Lucy Scholes

83 Marylebone High Street

Thu 15 Oct · 19:00 · £7

Talk

About this event

Join us to hear Izabella Scott discuss her book The Bed Trick: Sex and Deception on Trial . Tickets are £7 including a glass of wine or soft drink and can be booked online or in the shop. ‘ This is probably the weirdest story I’ve ever heard, but Izabella Scott lays it out with her clear intelligence, warm empathy and gentle grace ‘ – Helen Garner ‘ A brilliant analysis of the trial of Gayle Newland… Scott is a supremely good guide to this complex terrain, thoughtful, nuanced and agile ‘ – Olivia Laing About the book: Two former best friends face each other in court at a sex offence trial. Miss X, making the accusation, claims she was tricked into queer sex, many times, by a best friend pretending to be her boyfriend. But that friend, Gayle Newland, tells a different story. They were secret lesbians, she says, lovers in the closet. The boyfriend was imaginary, and part of a role play that had been going on for years. This astonishing case reached UK courtrooms twice in 2015 and 2017, capturing national attention. At both trials, Newland was convicted of a rare and controversial crime known as ‘rape by deception’. In literature, the plot has been named ‘the bed trick’. Shakespeare made it famous in plays with lovers switching places in the dark, but in real life, a consummated bed trick is rare. As The Bed Trick unfolds the riveting story of Newland’s trials – a case where reality was stranger than fiction – it also reveals the malleability of courtroom narratives, and the many myths, archetypes and stories embedded in the law. About Izabella Scott : Izabella Scott is a writer from London. She has been published by the London Review of Books, the Financial Times, Granta, The New Enquiry and others. She is the co-author, with Skye Arundhati Thomas, of Pleasure Gardens. She was formerly co-editor of The White Review. About Lucy Scholes: Lucy Scholes is a critic & McNally Editions senior editor, who has written for the the Times Literary Supplement , Financial Times , and New York Times Book Review, and used to write the Paris Review’s ‘Re-Covered’ column , about out-of-print and forgotten books that shouldn’t be . Scholes edited an anthology of short stories by mid-century women writers, A Different Sound .