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.

Forthcoming events include readings from Martin Rowson, Laurence Rees, Joan Bakewell and Alain de Botton. Tickets are available from City Books. All readings are held at The Old Market.

Martin Rowson: Doing Damage from a Distance

Controversial cartoonist Martin Rowson, talks about his career as a 'visual journalist' and traces the intriguing history of the political cartoon in this illustrated talk.

Rowson sees himself following in the tradition of eighteenth-century satirists and cartoonists, such as Gillray – his style is visceral and deliberately provocative. 'Cartoonist Laureate' for London he contributes regularly to the Observer, Guardian, Independent on Sunday, Express and Mirror.

His new book, F***, tells the story of the Earth in sixty-seven beautiful, savage, splendidly satirical images, all with only one word in the speech bubbles.

6.30pm   Wednesday 26 November   £6.00

Laurence Rees

Award-winning writer and filmmaker Laurence Rees has spent nearly 20 years meeting people who were tested to the extreme during World War II. He has come face-to-face with rapists, mass murderers, even cannibals, but he has also met courageous individuals who are an inspiration to us all. His quest has taken him from the Baltic States to Japan, from Poland to America, and from Germany to China.

His latest book World War II - Behind Closed Doors examines the key decisions made by Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt during the Second World War. The book features testimony from nearly 100 witnesses from the period. It offers a narrative that is a mix of high politics and the dramatic personal experiences of those who bore the consequences of their decisions.

Some of his other bestselling books include:
Nazis - A Warning from History
Auschwitz - The Nazis and the Final Solution
Their Darkest Hour

6.30pm   Thrusday 27 November   £6.00

Joan Bakewell

A prominent figure in TV and the arts in Britain, Joan Bakewell has been a broadcaster for over forty years, and a print journalist for over twenty years. Joan will be discussing her is her first novel, All the Nice Girls.

All the Nice Girls captures the danger and excitement of wartime Britain with a sweeping story of heroic deeds and painful separations, illicit love and battles at sea, and above all, of the poignancy of longing and loss.

It is a big, wonderful, romantic wartime novel. 1942, and the war is not going well. As part of the war effort the Ashworth Grammar School for Girls signs up for the Merchant Navy's Ship Adoption Scheme. The headmistress, who lost her lover in the First World War, believes the project will broaden the horizons of her girls, especially Polly and Jen, bright sixth formers eager to live and love despite it all. Then Josh Percival, captain of the adopted ship, the SS Treverran, comes with his men to visit Ashworth. The choices that follow will disrupt all their lives, reverberating even to the next generation, when, decades later, life and love are on the line again.

6.30pm   Tuesday 17 March 2009   £6.00

Alain de Botton

Alain will be discussing his new book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.

6.30pm   Wednesday 15 April 2009   £6.00