A UNIQUE talk from an award winning broadcaster and writer explores the story of Frankenstein.

The event will see Professor Sir Christopher Frayling speak with an audience at "It's Alive!" - the first two hundred years of 'Frankenstein' from 7pm on Tuesday February 20 at St Peter's Church.

In 1851, Mary Shelley was buried at Bournemouth town centre church, near the new Shelley home in Boscombe.

However, there was no mention of 'Frankenstein' on her head-stone. By then, her unmentionable novel had left the world of literature altogether and entered the world of popular myth: it was treated by most literary critics - as it was by the local vicar - as a disreputable piece of juvenilia by the wife of the better-known Percy Shelley.

'Frankenstein' was first published two hundred years ago, on New Year's Day 1818, in an expensive three-volume edition of just 500 copies. By 1826, no less than fifteen different versions had been performed on stages in England and France, and the F-word had entered the language as shorthand for assorted public anxieties about 'progress'.

The lecture, which has been organised by the Centre for Media History at Bournemouth University and the Shelley Frankenstein Festival, will see Sir Christopher explore the creation of 'Frankenstein', its adaptations, and its afterlife as myth.

Fittingly, his latest book is 'Frankenstein -the first two hundred years' published by Reel Art Press. He will be signing copies after the lecture.

The talk is a forerunner event to the Shelley Frankenstein Festival 2018, to be held in November 2018, to celebrate 200 years since the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Sir Christopher's lecture is free to attend and suitable for everyone aged 11 and over. More information and tickets are available at www.200yearsfrankenstein.eventbrite.co.uk