Critics sometimes remark on the humour in novelists such as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens as if it’s a quality of the writing the reader needs permission to enjoy. Meanwhile many other books that are hailed as comic masterpieces barely raise a smile. What makes humour the poor relation of so much literature? And is it time to take comedy rather more seriously? This is part of the Highgate & Hampstead Literary Festival. More information/book tickets
Find out more »Deborah Moggach’s new book, Heartbreak Hotel (all reviews here) is a warm, wise and funny romp in the Welsh countryside, which will appeal to the legions of fans who enjoyed the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Lottie Moggach’s Kiss Me First (all reviews here) is a moving coming of age story hidden within a harrowing mystery. While Lottie explores a lot of dark territory – suicide, alienation, innocence betrayed – she has also written an unexpectedly warm-hearted novel. This is part of the Highgate & Hampstead&hellip
Find out more »Charlotte Mendelson has just been long listed for the Man Booker Prize for Almost English (all reviews here). She will be talking to Guardian Books and News Editor, Claire Armitstead. Charlotte Mendelson’s last novel, When We Were Bad, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and was chosen as a book of the year in the Observer, Guardian, Sunday Times, New Statesman and Spectator. She is also the author of Love in Idleness and Daughters of Jerusalem, which won both the Somerset Maugham Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Almost&hellip
Find out more »For many men, middle age arrives too fast and without due warning. One day you are young, free and single; the next you are bald, fat and washed-up, with weird tendrils of hair growing out of your ears. With age should come dignity and respect, but instead comes tired jokes about buying a motorbike. Marcus Berkmann isn’t having it. Having marked his fiftieth birthday by hiding under the duvet for six weeks, he is determined to find some light in&hellip
Find out more »After his death, a young woman returns to her grandfather’s farm in Yorkshire. At his desk she finds the book he left unfinished when he died. Read all the reviews for Hunters in the Snow. Part story, part scholarship, his eccentric history of England moves from the founding of the printing press into virtual reality, linking four journeys, separated by the centuries, of four great men, the exiled Edward IV, Tsar Peter the Great, the former African slave Olaudah Equiano and&hellip
Find out more »Fifty Shades of Feminism is the antidote to the idea that being a woman is all about submitting to desire. Co- editors Susie Orbach and Lisa Appignanesi discuss their selection of fifty women for this inspiring new volume; young and old, writers, politicians, actors, scientists and mothers – their reflections on the shades that inspired them and what being women means to them today. This is part of the Highgate & Hampstead Literary Festival. More information/book tickets
Find out more »Fifty years after her death, Andrew Wilson explores the life of Sylvia Plath before her marriage to Ted Hughes, in an intimate portrait of the brilliant and tragic literary enigma based on her early poems, letters and diaries. Drawing on exclusive interviews with friends and lovers and using previously unavailable archives and papers, this is the first book to focus on the early life of the twentieth century’s most popular and enduring female poet. Andrew Wilson is a journalist who has&hellip
Find out more »It’s July 1976. In London, it hasn’t rained for months, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he’s going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn’t come back. Read all reviews for Instructions For a Heatwave Maggie O`Farrell is the author of five previous novels: After You`d Gone; My Lover`s Lover; The Distance Between Us, which won a Somerset Maugham Award; The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox; and The Hand That First Held Mine,which won the 2010 Costa&hellip
Find out more »Salley Vickers is the author of the word-of-mouth bestseller Miss Garnet’s Angel and several other bestselling novels including Mr Golightly’s Holiday, The Other Side of You and Dancing Backwards as well as a collection of short stories Aphrodite’s Hat. She has worked as a cleaner, a dancer, a university teacher of literature and a psychoanalyst. She is currently a RLF fellow at Newnham College Cambridge and she divides her time between Cambridge and London. Melissa Katsoulis is the author of Telling Tales: A&hellip
Find out more »Three of our best contemporary thriller writers discuss their craft with crime fiction critic Peter Guttridge. The Carrier is a compulsive puzzle of a novel from Sophie Hannah that has you hooked from the very first page, Sabine Durrant’s Under Your Skin is an unpredictable, exquisitely twisty story, which proves that you should assume nothing, believe no one and check everything, while Christopher Fowler’s latest novel, Bryant & May and The Invisible Code won the eDUNNIT Crimefest Award and is shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the&hellip
Find out more »Unscripted true stories of passion, obsession and adventure with Louis de Bernières, Olivier James, Cerys Matthews, Mark Cocker and Sara Rankin. More information/book tickets
Find out more »The Story features two centuries of women’s short fiction, ranging from established Queens of the short story like Alice Munro and Angela Carter, to contemporary rising stars like Miranda July, Chimanda Ngozi Adichie and Helen Simpson. Handpicked by one of the nation’s favourite novelists, Victoria Hislop – herself a great writer of, and champion for, short stories – and divided thematically into collections on love, loss and the lives of women, there’s a story for every mood, mind-set and moment in&hellip
Find out more »Hilary Boyd’s first ‘gran lit’ novel, Thursdays In The Park, was published last year and has since sold over 400,000 copies in ebook and print. She has worked as a nurse, a marriage guidance counsellor and a health journalist and published six non-fiction books on health-related subjects such as step-parenting, depression and pregnancy. Gill Hornby is a writer and journalist. She lives with her husband, Robert Harris, and their four children in Kintbury, Berkshire. The Hive is her first novel. Lisa Jewell had always planned to write&hellip
Find out more »Bestselling novelist Daisy Waugh discusses her new novel, Melting the Snow on Hester Street, with fellow novelist Rachel Hore. Bestselling writer Daisy Waugh discusses her new book with fellow novelist Rachel Hore. Set in Hollywood in 1929, Waugh’s Melting the Snow on Hester Street follows a high-society couple, an actor and actress, on the brink of bankruptcy and divorce. Hore’s The Silent Tide connects the different worlds of two young women, who through their individual quests become inextricably linked. Bestselling writer Daisy Waugh discusses her new book with&hellip
Find out more »Members of the Crime Writers’ Association, celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, talk about their love of short crime fiction – is the short story’s resurgence really such a mystery? This is part of the Highgate & Hampstead Literary Festival. More information/book tickets
Find out more »Tracy Chevalier is the author of six previous novels, including the international bestseller Girl with a Pearl Earring. Born in Washington, DC, she moved to London in 1984, where she continued her education with a post graduate degree in Creative Writing. She was a reference book editor for several years before turning to writing full-time. Renowned for her rich evocations of periods past, Girl With a Pearl Earring was Tracy’s second novel and in 2004 was made into a film starring Colin Firth and Scarlett&hellip
Find out more »ZSL conservation scientists and keepers team up with leading writers to talk about the animals in ZSL London Zoo. Alongside the animals, the writers speak imaginatively about their responses to them and ZSL’s experts talk about their ecology and conservation. The audience will be able to ask questions of author, scientist and keeper and have books signed over a glass of wine. These unique evenings will be held within the animal houses of London Zoo. ANDREW O’HAGAN Andrew O’Hagan is&hellip
Find out more »The celebrated historian David Kynaston talks to James Runcie about the birth of modern Britain. The late 1950s was an action-packed, often dramatic time in which the contours of modern Britain began to take shape. These were the ‘never had it so good’ years, when the Carry Onfilm series and the TV soap Emergency Ward 10 got going, and films like Room at the Top and plays like A Taste of Honey brought the working class to the centre of the national frame; when the urban skyline&hellip
Find out more »Book launch for Laetitia Rutherford’s memoir, Our Hearts Hang From the Lemon Trees, published by Short Books. More information/book tickets  
Find out more »Join Prospect for an evening of conversation with Simon Schama and Bettany Hughes to celebrate the publication of Schama’s long-awaited The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 100 BCE – 1492. The Story of the Jews is an epic of endurance against destruction, creativity in oppression, joy admist grief. Don’t miss the chance to hear two of our most distinguished and electrifying historians in conversation. Followed by questions from the audience. More information/book tickets
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