Allan Ahlberg

Please note the change of venue for this event – if you’ve already booked places, we’ll be in touch to confirm the change.

No child’s bookshelf is complete without the playful and tender books of Allan Ahlberg: the likes of Peepo!, The Jolly Postman and Each Peach Pear Plum aren’t easily forgotten.

Now, this most beloved of children’s writers is giving us a window into his own childhood, in a new memoir – The Bucket. Adopted as a baby, he was moved from London to the Black Country and grew up in deprived circumstances, with “no books and not much conversation”. Yet he writes evocatively of his fiercely protective parents, and his powerful imagination provided an escape from material poverty (teachers labelled him “most dreamy and inattentive”). In this beautiful book, Ahlberg captures the feelings and rhythms of childhood, its enchantments and its fears.

This evening will give us an exclusive peek into a life that inspired some of the masterworks of children’s literature.