The 2020 Festival has been cancelled, but we’ll be back in 2021!
Clapham’s distinctive Book Festival was inaugurated in 2016 and took place on 5th October 2019. The 2019 Programme may be viewed below.
2.00 – 3.00pm Rival Queens
Award-winning TV historian and New York Times bestselling novelist Kate Williams vividly explores the rivalry between Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I and shares her experience of writing historical fiction.
3.30 – 4.30pm Beyond The Thirty Nine Steps
Drawing on new family archive material, award-winning journalist Ursula Buchan discusses the ‘magnificent biography’ of her grandfather John Buchan with Clapham novelist Elizabeth Buchan, revealing the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps in a completely new light.
5.00 – 5.30pm Our Man in New York
New York Times best-selling local writer Henry Hemming introduces and reads from his latest work Our Man in New York. The extraordinary story of how a covert British operation used fake news to manipulate US public opinion and bring America into WWII.
6.00 – 7.00pm An Extraordinary Life
Guardian journalist and Ondaatje prize-winner Aida Edemariam talks to novelist Michèle Roberts about The Wife’s Tale, her “outstanding and highly unusual memoir” of her Ethiopian grandmother, sharing how she came to write this lyrical biography.
7.30 – 8.30pm In Conversation with Frank Gardner
Drawing on his exciting broadcasting career, BBC journalist and author Frank Gardner delves into the tense mix of fact and fiction in his novels Crisis and Ultimatum with fellow thriller writer Simon Berthon.