Next week I’ll be giving a talk at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. The talk is called ‘What the Victorians Made of Romanticism’ and will outline some of the main arguments that underpin my new book.  I’m looking forward to sharing these arguments and getting to discuss them with people before the book appears.  While I’m in Sweden I’ll also be leading the ‘final seminar’ for a doctoral candidate at the University of Uppsala.  Unlike in the UK and the US, where there’s a ‘viva voce exam’ or a ‘dissertation defence’ after the thesis is complete, in Sweden they send a draft of the thesis to an external examiner about eight months before it’s finished.  That way the candidate gets to incorporate the examiner’s feedback in the final version of the thesis before it’s submitted.