Martin Bell
Tuesday 27th June, 7.30pm
Former MP and war correspondent Martin Bell has travelled through war zones as both a soldier and a journalist. From Vietnam to Bosnia to Iraq, he has witnessed first-hand the dramatic changes in how conflicts are fought and how they are reported. In an age of international terror, where journalists themselves have become targets, more […] See more »
Lachlan Mackinnon
Monday 3rd July, 7.30pm
Ely based poet Lachlan Mackinnon has produced his most candid and affecting collection of poems to date. Doves is approachable and inclusive and above all courageously moral, a set of poems which, while acknowledging moments of despair, is ultimately thoughtful, inspiriting and uplifting. To hear Lachan read his poems and to talk about them will […] See more »
An Evening with Sir Tony Robinson
Wednesday 5th July, 7.30pm
Sir Tony Robinson is a much-loved actor, presenter and author with a stellar career spanning over fifty years. Now, in his long-awaited autobiography, No Cunning Plan, he reveals how the boy from South Woodford went from child stardom in the first stage production of Oliver!, a pint-sized pickpocket desperately bleaching his incipient moustache, to comedy icon […] See more »
Reading Group: A Handful of Dust
Monday 10th July, 7.30pm
Evelyn Waugh – A Handful of Dust The bitter break-up of an aristocratic marriage comes to stand for the passing of an entire way of life, as Evelyn Waugh, at the height of his powers, expertly blends comedy and cruelty in what is widely regarded as one of his very finest novels. See more »
Reading Group: The Power
Monday 10th July, 7.30pm
Naomi Alderman – The Power. All over the word women are discovering they have the power; with a flick of their fingers they can inflict terrible pain, even death. The day of the girls has arrived – but where will it end? An instant classic which will make you think twice about everything! See more »
Natasha Pulley
Wednesday 12th July, 7.30pm
We are so excited to welcome back Natasha Pulley to celebrate her second novel, Bedlam Stacks, an astonishing historical novel set in the shadowy, magical forests of South America. Drawing on the captivating world of the international bestseller and Toppings favourite The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Bedlam Stacks tells of strange happenings in the holy town of […] See more »
Peter Robinson
Saturday 15th July, 3pm
Amazingly it is thirty years since Peter Robinson introduced us to his Yorkshire based detective DCI Alan Banks. In that time Banks has featured in over twenty books and been successfully adapted for television, solving the many and various crimes that take place in the Yorkshire Dales. Sleeping in the Ground tells of a shocking mass murder […] See more »
Susie Steiner
Wednesday 19th July, 7.30pm
From the best-selling author of Missing Presumed comes Persons Unknown, and the welcome return of DI Manon Bradshaw. When a young man is stabbed to death just a few yards from the police station where she works, DI Bradshaw can’t resist taking an interest, even though these days she only handles cold cases. To her […] See more »
Reading Group – Pronto by Elmore Leonard
Monday 14th August, 7.30pm
Pronto by Elmore Leonard Ageing mobster Harry Arno flees to Italy with implacable U. S. Marshall Raylan Givens and assorted Miami lowlifes in hot pursuit. The great Elmore Leonard combines laughes and thrills, unforgettable characters and blistering, slangy dialogue in a masterly, sophisticated, morally bracing entertainment. See more »
Reading Group – Exposure by Helen Dunmore
Monday 14th August, 7.30pm
Exposure by Helen Dunmore A deceptively simple and haunting masterpiece, Exposure was the last novel by the much-loved author and poet Helen Dunmore. The Cold War is at its height, and a spy may be a friend or neighbour, colleague or lover. At the end of a suburban garden, in the pouring rain, a woman […] See more »
An Evening with Robert Webb
Wednesday 13th September, 7.30pm
Part-memoir, part call-to-arms from the award-winning and hilariously funny Robert Webb, How Not to be a Boy promises to be an exceptional and even game-changing book. Looking back over his life, from schoolboy crushes (on girls and boys) to discovering the power of making people laugh (in the Cambridge Footlights with David Mitchell), and from […] See more »