Posts tagged events
Will Self: Walking To Hollywood
1 year ago
Thursday 13th October
7.30pm – 8.45pm/ £8 (£6)
Birmingham Cathedral, Colmore Row,
Birmingham, B3 2QB
In 2007 a locksmith crazed on junk food exited the McDonald’s on the Wandsworth Road in London and drove his truck straight into Will Self’s car, writing it off. He walked away from that wreck and has never looked back – he was a committed driver for over twenty years, clocking up thousands of miles every year, but what has astonished him since is how little he has missed owning a car.
In this address from the pulpit he aims to convince his audience of the truth of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s observation : that we think at walking pace. Driving, by contrast, is an intrinsically thoughtless undertaking – it is possible to ‘come to’ having driven right across Birmingham quite unconscious, but to do this as a pedestrian would be impossible, such would be the quantity of sights, impressions – thoughts, that we would’ve assimilated. He is not asking everyone to walk away from this evening and abandon their wheels for ever – but he will be asking them to at least consider it.
Join us as Will Self presents his latest novel, Walking To Hollywood this book will be on sale and the event is followed by a book signing. You can also buy your book in advance of this event at the Festival Bookshop which will be located in the Library Foyer for the duration of the Birmingham Book Festival 2011.
Tickets: £8/ £6 concessionary price
Book online or call the Box Office (via MAC)
on 0121 446 3232
Indian novelist Rahul Bhattacharya at Ikon Gallery, 31 May 2011
2 years ago
Rahul Bhattacharya presents The Sly Company Of People Who Care.
- Bhattacharya Rahul (c) Sonali Bhattacharya
Tuesday 31st May, 7pm Ikon Gallery
Oozells Square, Brindleyplace
Birmingham B1 2HS
Oozells Square, Brindleyplace
Birmingham B1 2HS
FREE-book a place via Ikon: 0121 248 0708
A truly remarkable and original novel of self-discovery, set in a country of great contrasts.
A twenty-six-year-old Indian journalist decides to give up his job and travel to a country where he can ‘escape the deadness of his life’.So he arrives in Guyana, a forgotten colonial society of raw, mesmerising beauty. From the beautiful, decaying wooden houses of Georgetown, through coastal sugarcane plantations, to the dark rainforest interior scavenged by diamond-hunters, he is absorbed by the fantastic possibilities of this place where the descendants of the enslaved and the indentured have made a new world.
Rahul Bhattacharya has created a story that follows the shape and rhythms of life, not art. Part picaresque, in part a meditation, The Sly Company of People Who Care captures the heady adventures of travel, the overheated restlessness of youth, and the paradoxes of searching for life’s meaning in the escape from home.
Rahul is the author of Pundits from Pakistan, a work of reportage on the cricket competition between India and Pakistan. He lives in New Delhi, India.
Join Rahul Bhattacharya at the Ikon Gallery, The Sly Company of People Who Care will be available to buy and drinks will be served.
Supported by Picador
Supported by Picador
John Hegley: The Adventures of Monsieur Robinet
2 years ago
Sunday April 10th 2011
John Hegley: The Adventures of Monsieur Robinet
£8.50/£6 / 8pm / Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire, Paradise Place, Birmingham B3 3HG
A brilliant evening of performance poetry and comedy to mark the end of the Spring Thing – join us, and John Hegley, to end the weekend in style..
Tales about a Frenchman with some unusual [but clean] habits, which include burying his dog’s kennel and his own luggage pieces.
The stories appear alongside other new works, which include an address to aliens on the subject of transport, a poem about a non-talking parrot, and some animal impersonations with the aid of a handkerchief.
Suitable for most people over seven.
The audience are invited to sing along. But not to dance. Much.
Hegley is known as a poet and singer with a common and comedic touch, hence the quotation from The Observer, ‘Awesomely mundane’
‘Typically brilliant songs and stories about a Gallic small-town hero with a dog called Chirac’
The Guardian
The poet Adrian Mitchell said of him:
’Just because he is one of the funniest men alive, do not
underestimate his dedicated gentleness.’
And The Luton News said that his lyrics,
‘…quite often make little sense’
BOOK ONLINE or call 0844 870 0000
Panel: Turning History Into Story – Guy Saville, Saul David and Gaynor Arnold
2 years ago
The Festival regrets that this event has been cancelled.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused. If you have a ticket to this event, you can obtain a refund by contacting The Ticketsellers on 0844 870 0000 or you can exchange this ticket at the Spring Thing for another ticket to another event of the same value (subject to availability).
Books by these authors will still be available in the Festival Bookshop.
Saturday 9th April 2011
Panel: Turning History Into Story – Guy Saville, Saul David and Gaynor Arnold
£6.50/£5 / 12pm / Recital Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire, Paradise Place, Birmingham B3 3HG
Historian and broadcaster Saul David and historical novelists Guy Saville and Gaynor Arnold come together to talk about the process of turning dates and facts into creative narrative.
Saul David is the author of several critically-acclaimed history books, including The Indian Mutiny: 1857 (shortlisted for the Westminster Medal for Military Literature), Zulu: the Heroism and Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879 (a Waterstone’s Military History Book of the Year) and, most recently, Victoria’s Wars: The Rise of Empire. His latest work of history – Soldiers: The British Redcoat from the Glorious Revolution to Waterloo – will be published by Penguin in February 2012.
Saul has also written two historical novels, set during the wars of the late Victorian period and featuring the Anglo-African soldier George Hart. The first, Zulu Hart, was published l
ast year. Praised by Bernard Cornwell and Conn Iggulden, it was chosen as a Waterstone’s New Talent in Fiction title and reached No. 4 in the Daily Telegraph hardback fiction bestsellers (see Books for reviews). The follow up, Hart of Empire, was published on 5 August.
An experienced broadcaster, Saul has presented and appeared in history programmes for all the major TV channels and is a regular on Radio 4. He is Professor of War Studies at the University of Buckingham, and Programme Director for Buckingham’s London-based MA in Military History.
Guy Saville was born in 1973. He has lived in South America and North Africa. The Afrika Reich is his first novel – a high-octane thriller of alternate history that combines meticulous research with edge of the seat suspense. Others have imagined a Europe ruled by Hitler but never before have we seen his empire stretch beyond the equator. Written with a cinematic sense of action, the book takes the conventions of the men-on-a-mission story and turns them on their head. It delivers more than just a page-turning plot. A rich cast of characters gives the narrative real emotional depth. This is a human story of love, revenge and the battle for Africa.
The research for the book has taken Guy Saville to the Nazis’ actual plans for Africa, the weaponry they were developing and declassified British intelligence documents. Real life historical figures appear with fictional characters to build a thoroughly convincing account of how the world might have been.
Please note that this event previously listed Robyn Young as a participant. Unfortunately Robyn is no longer able to take part. We are delighted that Tindal Street’s Gaynor Arnold is able to join this panel.
Gaynor Arnold was born and brought up in Cardiff, and was an au pair in Paris before reading English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She is married, with two grown-up children and currently works for Birmingham’s Adoption & Fostering Service. She is a member of a writer’s group and has had several short stories published in magazines and anthologies. Girl in a Blue Dress is her first novel. It was longlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2008, the Orange Broadband Prize 2009, and the Desmond Elliott Prize 2009, and was shortlisted for the McKitterick Prize 2009. Her short story collection, Lying Together, was published by Tindal Street Press in February 2011.
More information about Gaynor and her writing here
With thanks to Hodder and Stoughton and Tindal Street Press.
Book Online or call 0844 870 0000
2011 – New Year, New Website, New Programme (almost!)
2 years ago
by Birmingham Book Festival
in News
Happy New Year to you all from the Book Festival team. We haven’t had a lot of rest over Christmas and January – we are busy planning for 2011 and beyond.
We have given the website a bit of an overhaul. We hope you find it easier to use. We will be adding more to it over the next few months as we move towards the big ‘moments’ in the Birmingham Book Festival calendar.
Following in the footsteps of our first ever Spring Festival (The Spring Thing) last year, we have another mini-festival to offer you in 2011.
The Spring Thing 2011 : Saturday 9th & Sunday 10th April.
This will be a fantastic weekend of literary events and workshops in Birmingham – the kind of thing you’ve come to expect from us and maybe some new things, too!
So far we can tell you we will be featuring some great literature, including crime/psychological thriller writer Sophie Hannah (if you haven’t read a Sophie Hannah novel yet, this should be your year – there are six of them now and Point of Rescue will be hitting your screens as an ITV drama in March..), a Book Festival Debate , a readers group, an evening of poetry in performance, workshops on many aspects of creative writing, and an intriguing non-fiction event that we think will surprise and delight.. Oh, and there will definitely be cake. More details as soon as we can release them, and a full programme and tickets will be available in February.
The Festival Bookshop, well loved in October, will be back. This is the place to hang out , listen to music, talk, drink tea, buy books and bump into writers and other readers.
We’ve also got a very exciting event planned for later in April that, for now, is under wraps – but we’ll tell you as soon as we can.
You might want to follow us on twitter, for all the latest and to let us know what you would like to see at this Festival and the next (October 4-20th 2011), which we are also starting to put together.
In the meantime there are other things to look forward to. Forthcoming open mic nights with guest writers in partnership with the Hippodrome, for one…. Watch this space.
Hoping you’re all having a good 2011 so far – our feet have hardly touched the floor!