The inimitable Will Self showcases his formidable talent in his darkly comic new novel Walking to Hollywood. A remarkable triptych that explores the very make-up of the human psyche, it is a psychedelic tour-de-force from one of the most impressive writers of his generation.
Monthly Archives: September 2010
Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
Tuesday 14th September 2010 – 6.30pm
David Mitchell’s debut novel ranges impressively across geographical and psychological space as it deftly interweaves the lives of nine remarkable individuals; Mitchell draws their stories together highlighting their unlikely interdependence and the human predicament they share.
Howard Jacobson
Monday 13th September 2010 – 8.00pm
Please note the new date for this event. Shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize, The Finkler Question, is funny, furious and unflinching new novel from one of our greatest writers. “He should have seen it coming. His life had been one mishap after another. So he should have been prepared for this one”. Julian [...]
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Monday 13th September 2010 – 7.30pm
Of all the great Victorian novelists, Gaskell remains the most inexplicably neglected. Why is hard to fathom, given the range, vividness and urgent social concern of her best fiction. Help to celebrate her bi-centenary by meeting to discuss her most famous novel, praised by Charles Dickens as “an admirable story…full of character and power”.
Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Thursday 9th September 2010 – 8.00pm
Tim Mackintosh-Smith concludes his travels in the footsteps of Moroccan traveller Ibn Battutah across the ‘worlds beyond the winds’. Seven centuries on, his pursuit of this 14th Century traveller takes him to landfalls in remote tropical islands, torrid Indian Ocean ports and dusty towns on the shores of the Saharan sand-sea. His zigzag itinerary across [...]
Tim Butcher
Thursday 9th September 2010 – 7.30pm
In the gripping and highly praised Blood River, journalist Tim Butcher traced the journeys of Henry Morton Stanley. Recently the intrepid Mr. Butcher returned to Africa to follow in the footsteps of Graham Greene. The resulting book, Chasing the Devil, stands as a fascinating modern counterpart to Greene’s 1930s classic, Journey Without Maps, giving a [...]
Adam Sisman
Friday 3rd September 2010 – 8.00pm
Adam Sisman gives us a compelling new biography of Hugh Trevor-Roper, the controversial historian who had it all but failed to produce the masterpiece that everybody expected of him. Sisman incisively explores the circumstances which led Trevor-Roper to make his infamous blunder of authenticating the forged ‘Hitler Diaries’. Sisman also intelligently considers Trevor-Roper’s feud with [...]
Ben Kane
Wednesday 1st September 2010 – 8.00pm
The third and final instalment in The Forgotten Legion trilogy, The Road to Rome, closes the saga of Romulus and Tarquinius. From the battlefields of North Africa to the beauty of Alexandria and the dark heart of Rome itself, the novel builds to the assassination of Julius Caesar when the twins must reunite to determine [...]
Nick Carr
Wednesday 1st September 2010 – 7.30pm
We are delighted to welcome Nick Carr over from America to talk about the book that has convinced Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. The Shallows asks how the Internet has changed the way we live, communicate, remember and socialise. This will be a fascinating evening, and a great opportunity to discuss and think about this [...]