In the first of a season of events exploring ideas of nation, identity and belonging, Professor Catherine Hall, Professor Marina Warner and Jan Marsh will look at the Victorian historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, one of the founding Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery.

Macaulay was one of the great intellectual figures of the age. He was an MP from 1830 and served on the Supreme Council of India, 1834-8, and as Secretary at War, 1839-41. His famous History of England was published in 1848.

Professor Hall’s research focuses on re-thinking the relation between Britain and its empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is particularly interested in the ways in which empire impacted upon metropolitan life, how the empire was lived 'at home', and how English identities, both masculine and feminine, were constituted in relation to the 'others' of the empire.  Her new book, Macaulay and Son: Writing Home, Nation and Empire focuses on the significance of the Macaulays, father and son, in defining the parameters of nation and empire in the early nineteenth century. Professor Hall is the Principal Investigator of the ESRC-funded project Legacies of British Slave Ownership.

Marina Warner is a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery. She is a professor in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex and a visiting professor at NYU Abu Dhabi. She was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2005, and was made a CBE for services to literature in 2008.

Jan Marsh is a Researcher working on the Later Victorian Catalogue at the National Portrait Gallery and a biographer specialising in artists and writers. She has written extensively on the Pre-Raphaelite circle, including a major biography of Christina Rosetti, and also been guest curator for exhibitions of Victorian art.

Part of a series of Making a British Nation events curated by Professor Catherine Hall.