The Brook Green Festival of Books is a celebration of lively writing for lively minds. Now in its fifth year, its aims are to engage, provoke and amuse, bringing together authors and appreciative west London audiences.
Michael Morpurgo: the truth and the stories
October 29, 7.30 pm
Bush Theatre, £12
Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse and Private Peaceful, will be talking to his biographer, Maggie Fergusson, about his life and work.
An evening of classic poetry, performed by Julian Glover and Isla Blair
October 30, 7.30 pm
Bush Theatre, £12
Sometimes only the right poem, read in the right voice, will do. Actress Allie Esiri and writer Rachel Kelly recently launched the iF poems app to introduce the iPod generation to great poetry: from Keats to Wendy Cope, by way of Edward Lear, T S Eliot and John Betjeman. Actors Julian Glover, Isla Blair and others perform some of the nation’s favourites.
Kate Summerscale: Love, Vengeance and the Victorians
November 5, 7.30 pm
Bush Theatre, £12
Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace reconstructs a sensational 1840s divorce case starring a wife who makes two errors: falling in love with another man, and leaving her diary unlocked. Its author Kate Summerscale, whose books include the best-selling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, will talk of high passion, dry evidence, vengeance, jealousy and scandal.
Andrew Miller: bringing the past alive
November 6, 7.30 pm
Bush Theatre, £12
Andrew Miller won critical acclaim and the Costa Book of the Year award for Pure, a historical novel set in pre-revolution Paris. He talks to John Preston
Artemis Cooper: the life and adventures of Patrick Leigh Fermor
November 7, 7.30 pm
Holy Trinity parish hall, Brook Green, £10
Undercover agent, footloose romantic, travel writer extraordinaire: Patrick Leigh Fermor was the ultimate Boy’s Own hero. His biographer and friend Artemis Cooper speaks of his adventures to historian Patrick Bishop.
Harriet Sergeant and Ferdinand Mount: Hoodies and Oligarchs
November 8, 7.30 pm
Upstairs at Holy Trinity parish hall, Brook Green, £10
Society’s extremes – the underclass and the overlords – are easy to caricature, but dangerous to investigate. Harriet Sergeant, who spent years with a London gang, and Ferdinand Mount, an expert on the nation’s power elite, offer a startling new take on Britain’s big broken society.
