The Robert Graves Society is pleased to announce that the Fourteenth International Robert Graves Conference will be held at La Caixa, Palma, Mallorca, from 10 July to 14 July 2018. The theme of the conference will be ‘Robert Graves and Europe: Good-bye to All That / But It Still Goes On’.
‘If Europe ever became sufficiently civilized to dispense with customs officers and police, which are the external manifestations of international mistrust and dislike…’ This brief aside on what a civilized Europe might look like in future is from a translation by Robert Graves published in 1956. The text Graves translates – George Sand’s Un Hiver à Majorque (Winter in Majorca) – is itself a complex demonstration of cultural misunderstanding across borders, cultures and languages through which Graves as translator proves an entertainingly mischievous travel guide. The conference will explore any aspect of Graves and Europe, from his own life and work in Mallorca, to the relevance of his writing for our European present and future.