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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, purchase signed first editions at reduced price, and enjoy a complimentary welcome drink on arrival or at the interval. All readings are held at The Old Market.
Forthcoming events include talks from John Simpson, Peter Owen Jones, Jim Crace, Mick Jackson and Rupert Thomson, A.C. Grayling, Tristram Hunt and Peter James.
Tickets are available from City Books.
John Simpson
One of the greatest reporters of his day writes a brilliant and typically opinionated account of how the British press has reported key moments in our history.
Through many decades of groundbreaking journalism, John Simpson has become not only one of the most recognisable and trusted British personalities, but has transferred his skill to books with multiple bestselling success. With his new book he turns his eye to how Great Britain has been transformed by its free press down the years. He shows how, while the press likes to pretend it's independent, they have enjoyed the power they have over the events they report and have at times exercised it irresponsibly. He examines how it changed the world and changed itself over the course of the last hundred years, from the creation of the Daily Mail and the first stokings of anti-German sentiment in the years leading up to the First World War, to the Sun's propping up of the Thatcher government, and beyond. In this self-analysis from one of the pillars of modern journalism some searching questions are asked, including whether the press can ever be truly free and whether we would desire it to be so.
Always incisive, brilliantly readable and never shy of controversy, Unreliable Sources sees John Simpson at the height of his game as one of Britain's foremost commentators.
6.30pm Wednesday 24 March £6.00
Peter Owen Jones
Peter Owen Jones will be talking about his new book, Letters from an Extreme Pilgrim: Reflections on Life, Love and the Soul.
On a journey that would take him deep into the wilderness, award-winning television presenter, author and parish priest Peter Owen Jones set out in the footsteps of St Anthony, the founder of monasticism. In a hermit's cell in the heart of the Egyptian Sinai Desert, he lived alone, spending his days in contemplation and prayer, and pushing himself to the limits of physical, mental and spiritual endurance.
Letters from an Extreme Pilgrim is based on the extraordinary letters that he wrote during this time. The lyrical letters are addressed to a thought-provoking array of figures – parents, children and past loves, prime ministers, singers, saints and sinners. Each letter is a powerful meditation and an honest exploration of the ways in which we are formed by others; by those who nurture us, those who horrify us and those who dare to love us. Revealing and heartfelt, the letters combine personal memoir with broader issues of faith, morality and relationship, and they invite all of us to consider our lives anew.
'Who's the bravest vicar in Britain? My money's on Peter Owen Jones ... a man living with his soul' The Times
Rev. Peter Owen Jones is an award-winning broadcaster, writer and non-stipendiary priest. He ran a mobile disco and worked in farming and advertising before discovering his true vocation. In 1996 he came to public attention when he conducted a service for the Newbury by-pass protestors. He is the vicar of three parishes in Sussex and the founder of the Arbory Trust, the first Christian woodlands burial site.
6.30pm Monday 29 March £6.00
Jim Crace
Jim Crace's new book All That Follows blazes into new territory with a near-future tale of politics and love. A gunman seizes hostages a short drive from Leonard Lessing's house. His face leaps out of the evening news – and out of Leonard's own past...
Lennie Lessing is a jazzman taking a break. His glory days seem to be behind him, his body is letting him down, and rather than continue to take on the world, he relives old gigs and feeds his media addiction during solitary days at home. Increasingly estranged from his busy wife Francine, who is herself mourning the sudden absence of her only daughter, Leonard has found his own groove: suburban and safe from surprises. He could continue like this for years. Then comes the news bulletin that threatens to change everything. Leonard has a choice to make.
Set in England, 2024, and George Bush's Texas, 2006, this hypnotic novel wonders whether a life full of sound and fury signifies more than a life lived quietly, and asks what it truly means to love, to believe, and to be courageous.
Jim Crace has enjoyed great success in both Britain and United States and his work is widely translated. He is the prize-winning author of nine previous books, including Continent (winner of the 1986 Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize), Quarantine (winner of the 1998 Whitbread Novel of the Year and shortlisted for the Booker Prize) and Being Dead (winner of the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award). He lives in Birmingham. All That Follows has been optioned for film, due to start shooting late 2010
6.30pm Monday 12 April £6.00
Mick Jackson and Rupert Thomson
Mick Jackson's first book The Underground Man was shortlisted for The Booker Prize in 1998. His second, Five Boys was a wonderfully nostalgic and vibrant read. He is also the author of two eccentric delights: Ten Sorry Tales and Bears of England. His moving and comical new novel The Widow's Tale conjures up the most defiantly unapologetic of narrators as she begins to pick over the wreckage of her life.
Praise for Mick Jackson:
'Quite simply, astonishing.' – Observer
'Vibrant, happily eccentric and a joy to read.' – Sunday Times
Rupert Thomson is the author of eight highly acclaimed novels including Air & Fire, Soft, The Book of Revelation, Divided Kingdom and most recently Death of a Murderer. His new book This Party's Got to Stop is a moving and disarmingly funny memoir. It is an honest account of mismanaged goodbyes, of time lost and time wasted. It reveals the complexities of family life in graphic and often heartbreaking detail.
'When someone writes as well as Thomson does, it makes you wonder why other people bother.' – New Statesman
6.30pm Tuesday 13 April £6.00
A.C. Grayling
A.C. Grayling is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College. He has written and edited over twenty books on philosophy and other subjects. Among his most recent are Ideas That Matter and Liberty in the Age of Terror.
His new book is Thinking of Answers: Questions in the Philosophy of Everyday Life. Rather than presenting a set of categorical answers he offers instead suggestions for how to think about every aspect of a question, and arrive at one's own conclusions. As a result Thinking of Answers is both an enjoyable and inspirational collection.
He is a frequent contributor to the Literary Review, Observer, Independent on Sunday, Times Literary Supplement and New Statesman, and is an equally frequent broadcaster on BBC Radios 4, 3 and the World Service. He is a Trustee of the London Library, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2003 he was a Booker Prize judge, and in 2010 is a judge of the Art Fund prize.
6.30pm Wednesday 14 April £6.00
Tristram Hunt
Tristram will be talking about his new biogaraphy of Friedrich Engels: The Frock-coated Communist – The Life and Times of the Original Champagne Socialist.
Friedrich Engels is one of the most attractive and contradictory figures of the nineteenth century. Born to a prosperous mercantile family in west Germany, he spent his career working in the Manchester cotton industry, riding to the Cheshire hounds, and enjoying the comfortable, middle-class life of a Victorian gentleman.
Yet Engels was also the co-founder of international communism – the philosophy which in the 20th century came to control one third of the human race. He was the co-author of The Communist Manifesto, a ruthless party tactician, and the man who sacrificed his best years so Karl Marx could write Das Kapital. Tristram Hunt relishes the diversity and exuberance of Engels's era: how one of the great bon viveurs of Victorian Britain reconciled his raucous personal life with this uncompromising political philosophy. Set against the backdrop of revolutionary Europe and industrializing England – of Manchester mills, Paris barricades, and East End strikes – it is a story of devoted friendship, class compromise, ideological struggle, and family betrayal.
Dr Tristram Hunt is one of Britain's best known young historians. Educated at Cambridge and Chicago Universities, he is lecturer in British history at Queen Mary, University of London and author of Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City. A leading historical broadcaster, he has authored numerous series for BBC Radio and Television and Channel 4. A regular contributor to The Times, The Guardian and The Observer, he is a Trustee of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
2.00pm Saturday 1 May £6.00
Peter James
James has written over 20 books, the most recent of which feature Brighton-based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. This series has quickly become a hugely popular, due to the combination of well thought-out plots and the interaction between recurring characters – such as the continuing attempts to update and stylise Roy Grace by his more streetwise and fashionable partner, Glen Branson.
James has written supernatural thrillers, spy fiction, and a children's novel, as well as the introductions for Graham Masterton's collection Manitou Man and Joe Rattigan's collection Ghosts Far From Subtle.
He also wrote, as 'a labour of love' the children's novelisation for the 1986 movie Biggles, which he also produced. James is a lifelong fan of the Biggles franchise, at one time owning the rights to the books, and having translated some foreign editions.
His interests include criminology, science and the paranormal. He also enjoys motoring, having owned many cars over the years, most notably Jaguars and Aston Martins. Once a year he races, holding a racing driver's licence.
Peter will be talking about his new book: Dead Like You.
6.30pm Tuesday 8 June £6.00