Award-winning Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, in conversation with Stephen Grosz, psychoanalyst and author of The Examined Life. Funny, acute, fierce and celebratory, Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal tells how the painful past she thought she had left behind returned to haunt her, and sent her on a journey into madness and out again in search of her real mother. Stephen Grosz has spent the last twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour.&hellip
Find out more »The White Review, an arts and literature quarterly, launches its ninth issue featuring new fiction, essays, reportage, poetry, artwork and interviews. Tonight’s guests include the winner of the Eric Gregory award 2010, poet Matthew Gregory and the author of The Story of My Purity, Italian novelist Francesco Pacifico. Book tickets/more information
Find out more »Will Self will be at the shop to discuss the work of Guy Debord, and in particular The Society of the Spectacle, for the new Notting Hill edition of which he has written an introduction. ‘Never before’, he writes, ‘has Debord’s work seemed quite as relevant as it does now, in the permanent present that he so accurately foretold. Open it, read it, be amazed …’ Will Self will be in discussion with film-maker and author of The View from&hellip
Find out more »There is much talk about social mobility, but little evidence of it in Britain today. Private school students are fifty-five times more likely to win a place at Oxbridge than students at state schools who qualify for Free School Meals. Seven per cent of children attend private schools, but they account for 54% of FTSE 100 CEOs, and 70% of High Court judges and 61% of Booker Prize winning novelists. In an evening jointly hosted by the RSL and First Story, Jonathan&hellip
Find out more »In Her Brilliant Career, award-winning journalist Rachel Cooke looks at ten astonishing women of the 1950s, whose pioneering professional lives paved the way for future generations. Among a host of stellar reviews, the Telegraph described it as ‘vastly entertaining, cannily researched and sharply perceptive.’ Wondering whether she’d rather be Cathy Earnshaw or Jane Eyre prompted Samantha Ellis to write How to be a Heroine. In her engaging memoir of reading, she reconsiders her fictional heroines, assessing everyone from the Little Mermaid to Lucy Honeychurch,&hellip
Find out more »Matthew Green, Simon Munnery, Deborah Levy, Anna Whitelock and Steve Jones at 5×15 at Tate Britain. More information/book tickets
Find out more »Sunday, 26th of January at 11.30am at our shop on South End Road Join other book-lovers for a walk on Hampstead Heath to discuss a lost Russian masterpiece, The Spectre of Alexander Wolf. A man is haunted by the memory of a soldier he killed, until he reads a story that describes it in perfect detail. Obsessed with the quality of the writing as much as the possibility that the man he shot is alive, the narrator sets off in search of&hellip
Find out more »Dr Frank Furedi is a social commentator and author and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent in Canterbury. His latest book argues that the battle of ideas which crystallized during the course of the Great War continues to the present, and claims that the Culture Wars of today are the latest expressions of a century long conflict. So, is this a contemporary analysis; crass comparison or simply First World War anniversary porn? Book tickets/more information
Find out more »The author of The Female Eunuch tells us how she embraced the fight to bring back a forest in her native Australia. Expect Germaine Greer to bring the same passion with which she defended feminist issues to the essential challenge faced by our planet’s biodiversity. Book tickets/more information
Find out more »Jonathan Lethem’s latest book Dissident Gardens (Cape) tells, in a ‘torrent of potent voices, searing ironies, popculture allusions, and tragicomic complexities’ the story of three generations of a radical New York family, at the same time painting a vivid portrait of the American Century. Book tickets/more information
Find out more »January sees us attack the new year head-on with an event as bracing as a stiff breeze, sweeping as a new broom and challenging as Anneka … we welcome two of the most creative thinkers we know (albeit of very different thoughts and very different talents) in, dare we say, an unusual masterstroke of programming. JONATHAN LETHEM is one of the most original, entertaining and important writers of contemporary American fiction. The author of ‘Motherless Brooklyn‘ and ‘The Fortress Of Solitude‘ introduces&hellip
Find out more »In the new issue of Granta, writers remember, or invent, scenes from their own lives and the lives of others, exploring the textures of memory and loss, recovery and invention. to celebrate the launch of Granta 126: Do You Remembercontributors Olivia Laing and Jonny Steinberg discuss their work in the issue, with Daily Telegraph Literary Editor Gaby Wood. In ‘The Magic Box’, Olivia Laing searches for traces of David Wojnarowicz in the artist’s native New York as she delves into Wojnarowicz&hellip
Find out more »Provocative, flirtatious, frequently filthy and downright aggravating (if your name’s Mitt Romney), Rob Delaney is the funniest man on Twitter (not our words, but those of Comedy Central). When he’s not entertaining millions by publicly teasing celebrities and big corporations, he’s also a passionately vocal supporter of women’s rights, gun control and universal healthcare, writing powerfully on his views for Viceand the Guardian (and lampooning his political adversaries to devastating effect in 140 characters). His memoir (‘A book as funny, sincere, weird, wet,&hellip
Find out more »With over 1 million followers, he has been named one of the funniest people on Twitter and is known as one of America’s most brilliant stand-ups, a regular at the top US comedy venues, and for appearances on shows such as Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Conan. Rob will be performing a stand-up gig. He will also read short excerpts from his memoir Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage. Book tickets/more information
Find out more »James Wood explores the estrangement of voluntary emigration: the puzzling sense of losing the country you leave and failing to find another. Homelessness, in a word. James Wood is Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard. His books include four collections of critical essays, of which the latest is The Fun Stuff, and a novel, The Book against God. Book tickets/more information
Find out more »A. L. Kennedy is the author of six novels, five short story collections and three works of non-fiction. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a regular contributor to the Guardian Online Blog. She has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won several prizes for her work, including the Costa Book of the Year. Hidden Prologues, the new monthly&hellip
Find out more »Essie Fox, Samantha Ellis, Ben Johncock, Anna Whitwham will be reading from their upcoming books at Drink, Shop, Do in Kings Cross. Essie Fox is the author of gothic Victorian novels The Goddess And The Thief, Elijah’s Mermaid, and The Somnambulist, all published by Orion. Samantha Ellis is the author of How To Be A Heroine - read the review roundup here. Ben Johncock is the author of Burning, Blue. Anna Whitwham is the author of Boxer Handsome. Drink, Shop, Do are a&hellip
Find out more »To mark the paperback publication of Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author Philip ‘Leviathan’ Hoare’s acclaimed new book The Sea Inside, we present an evening exploring the wondrous world of whales. One of our best non-fiction writers and a fine broadcaster, Hoare wrote and presented the BBC Arena film The Hunt for Moby-Dick and directed three films for BBC’s ‘Whale Night’. He was also co-curator, with Angela Cockayne, of the Moby-Dick Big Read . Artist film-maker Jessica Sarah Rinland focuses on whales&hellip
Find out more »‘I am drawn to people who seem to have been born defeated,’ Penelope Fitzgerald once wrote. She considered herself one of these, and despite great early promise lived much of her life in drudgery and near destitution. Then, in her late 50s, she began to write. Over the next two decades, she not only published three biographies, but nine brief and brilliant novels, four of which were shortlisted for the Booker, Offshore winning it. At 80, Fitzgerald found fame both&hellip
Find out more »Bestselling author of books on love, art, travel, religion, architecture, current affairs and literature, Alain de Botton will discuss his ‘philosophy of everyday life’ with Martine Croxall (BBC). Join us for this thought-provoking conversation.Bestselling author of books on love, art, travel, religion, architecture, current affairs and literature, Alain de Botton will discuss his ‘philosophy of everyday life’ with Martine Croxall (BBC). Join us for this thought-provoking conversation. Book tickets/more information
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