Events

Our events provide an opportunity to listen to some great authors.

During these relaxed evenings you will have the chance to pose questions to the guest and purchase signed first editions at reduced price.

Forthcoming events include talks from Anthony Bourdain, Will Self, Steven Berkoff, Dom Joly, Chris Mullin, Will Hutton, Iain M Banks, Audrey Niffenegger and Grayson Perry.

Anthony Bourdain

Anthony will be discussing his new book, Medium Raw.

A lot has changed since Kitchen Confidential – for the subculture of chefs and cooks, for the restaurant business, and for Anthony Bourdain. Medium Raw explores these changes, moving back and forth from the author's bad old days to the present. Tracking his own strange and unexpected voyage from journeyman cook to globe-travelling professional eater and drinker, Bourdain compares and contrasts what he's seen and what he's seeing, pausing along the way for a series of confessions, rants, investigations, and interrogations of some of the most controversial figures in food. And always he returns to the question: 'Why cook?' Or the harder one to answer: 'Why cook well?'. Beginning with a secret and highly illegal after-hours gathering of powerful chefs he compares to a Mafia summit, Bourdain, in his distinctive, no-holds-barred style, cuts to the bone on every subject he tackles.

Anthony Bourdain's books include the bestseller Kitchen Confidential, A Cook's Tour, and Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook.

Tickets are available from City Books. Please note that the venue for this event has changed to the Hilton Brighton Metropole Hotel. Tickets already purchased with The Old Market as the venue are valid at Metropole.

Hilton Brighton Metropole Hotel   6.30pm   Wednesday 1 September   £6.00

Will Self

Will will be talking about his new book, Walking to Hollywood.

Walking to Hollywood. is an extraordinary triptych in which Will Self burrows down through the intersections of time, place and psyche to explore some of our deepest fears and anxieties with his characteristic fearlessness and edgy humour.

Will Self is the author of many novels and books of non-fiction, including How the Dead Live, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year 2002 and The Butt, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2008. He lives in South London.

Tickets are available from the Ropetackle Arts Centre and City Books.
Ropetackle Arts Centre   7.00pm   Tuesday 7 September   £8.00

Steven Berkoff

Actor Steven Berkoff's Diary of Juvenile Delinquent is compelling from the very first page, painting a startling portrait of his early life and the beginning of his theatrical career.

Born in the East End two years before the outbreak of World War II, life for the Berkoff family was tough, and their home was destroyed in the Blitz. Relief came when his mother took him to New York to live for a while in the Bronx. However, upon returning to London he began to misbehave at school, became involved with violent gangs, and eventually ended up in a horrific remand home for stealing a bicycle.

After several years of drifting from short term job to another, and with no qualifications, he auditioned for drama school, and was granted a scholarship. As he movingly ends this powerfully honest book, "I had arrived. This is what I should be. An Actor. The door closed and the lesson began."

Steven Berkoff is an acclaimed actor, writer and director, who has starred in films as diverse as A Clockwork Orange, Octopussy and Beverley Hills Cop. He has written several books and his plays have been published extensively.

Tickets are available from the Ropetackle Arts Centre and City Books.
Ropetackle Arts Centre   7.00pm   Monday 13 September   £8.00

Dom Joly

In The Dark Tourist Dom sets out on a quest to visit six destinations from which the average tourist would, and should, run a mile.

We follow him as he skis in Iran, meets a man selling Pol Pot's shoes in Cambodia, tours the assassination sites of America, spends a weekend in Chernobyl and becomes one of the few Westerners to be granted entry into North Korea. Eventually Dom journeys back to his roots in Beirut only to discover he was at school with Osama Bin Laden.

Funny, frightening and life affirming in equal measures, this is a uniquely bizarre and compelling travelogue from one of the most fearless and innovative comedians around.

Dom Joly is a multi-award winning British television comedian and journalist. He was the creator and star of Trigger Happy TV and other TV shows have included World Shut Your Mouth for BBC1 and Dom Joly's Happy Hour. Dom is a weekly columnist for both the Independent and the Independent on Sunday as well as an award-winning travel writer for the Sunday Times.

Tickets are available from the Ropetackle Arts Centre and City Books.
Ropetackle Arts Centre   7.00pm  
Wednesday 15 September   £8.00

Chris Mullin

Details to follow...

The Boundary Rooms, Sussex County Cricket Ground, Eaton Road, Hove   6.30pm   Wednesday 6 October   £6.00

Will Hutton

Will Hutton reads from and presents his new book: Them and Us – Politics, Greed and Inequality – Why We Need A Fair Society.

The suddenness and depth of the recession has raised questions about the workability of capitalism not seen since the 1930s. One of the constraints on recovery is the growing belief that if the old model did not work there is no new one on offer. This book sets out to provide one, arguing that reconstructing a bust financial system is not just a technical question. It cannot be done without a wholescale revision of the wider system and values on which it is based. And fairness must be placed at the heart of the new capitalism for society's future wellbeing. Will Hutton's new book musters brilliant, convincing arguments which will lend favour on both right and left. It is set to be a book which captures the mood of the moment in the same way that The State We're In did.

Will Hutton is executive vice chair of the Work Foundation and columnist for the Observer, where he was editor, then editor-in-chief for four years.

Tickets are available from City Books.
The Boundary Rooms, Sussex County Cricket Ground, Eaton Road, Hove   Thursday 7 October   6.30pm

Iain M Banks

Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984. He has since gained enormous popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science fiction novels.

Iain will be talking about his new book, Surface Detail.

It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. It begins with a murder. And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself. Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture. Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful - and arguably deranged - warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war - brutal, far-reaching - is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it's about to erupt into reality. It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the centre of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether.

Tickets are available from The De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea,
Tel: 01424 229111
De La Warr Pavilion   6.30pm   Thursday 21 October   £6.00

Audrey Niffenegger

Audrey Niffenegger is an exceptionally creative writer and visual artist who has achieved enormous success in both worlds. Her debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, has sold nearly five million copies worldwide and has been translated into thirty-three languages to date. A Richard & Judy book club choice in the UK, it has been a huge bestseller all round the world. In the Daily Telegraph's readers' poll of the 'Top 50 Books of All Time' it appeared at no. 11.

Her two novels, The Time Traveler's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry, have made her one of the most popular writers in the world. She is also the author of two extraordinary novels-in-pictures, The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress. Now, with The Night Bookmobile, she has written her first graphic novel.

First serialised in the Guardian, The Night Bookmobile tells the story of a young woman who one night encounters a mysterious disappearing mobile library that happens to stock every book she has ever read. Seeing her history and her most intimate self in this library, she embarks on a search for the bookmobile. Over time, her search turns into an obsession as she longs to be reunited with her own collection and her memories.

Tickets are available from City Books.
The Boundary Rooms, Sussex County Cricket Ground, Eaton Road, Hove   6.30pm   Thursday 7 October   Tuesday 19 October  

Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry, famous for his ceramic vases decorated with shocking and unconventional imagery, is one of a generation of contemporary British artists to have emerged on the international stage in the last two decades.

Grason will be talking about his work and signing the new book, Grayson Perry by Jacky Klein.

In this lavishly illustrated monograph, Jacky Klein explores Perry's work through a discussion of his major themes and subjects, such as class or conflict. Her text is complemented by a series of intimate, insightful commentaries on individual pieces by the artist himself. The book features about 150 of Perry's works as well as a rich selection of the visual material that has inspired him, from Afghan war rugs, medieval altarpieces and satirical prints to the paintings of Pieter Brueghel, Anselm Kiefer and the American Outsider artist Henry Darger. With an up-to-date biography, bibliography and exhibition history, this definitive book is the first to explore fully the achievements of Perry's twenty-five-year career.

Tickets are available from the Ropetackle Arts Centre and City Books.
Ropetackle Arts Centre   7.30pm   Thursday 28 October   £8.00