Strong Showing for Ealing Authors at Chiswick Book Festival | ||||||
This year's event includes sessions at ActOne and the University of West London
Ealing Borough writers and events are to feature heavily in this month’s Chiswick Book Festival. The 14th year of what started life as the Ealing Literary Festival will involve a number of authors who live or have lived in the Borough, and special events that are to take place in Ealing and Acton. Ealing authors appearing include Alex Gerlis (Agent in Peril): Caroline Frost (Carry On Regardless); Catherine Pepinster (Defenders of the Faith); Chris Patten (Hong Kong Diaries); Emma Curtis (Invite Me In); Nicola Rayner (You and Me); Susie Lynes (The Baby Shower). Local award-winning playwright Lisa Evans will chair a panel discussion on criminal fiction by three female writers. On Tuesday, 13 September at the University of West London William Barry Theatre, Ralph Brookfield and Robert Hokum two of the authors of Rock’s Diamond Year will talk to filmmaker and publisher Cheryl Robson about their new anthology published to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the opening on 17 March 1962 of the Ealing Club. The book recounts Ealing’s role in the creation of the R&B style and the development of the amplified sound of guitar-based rock music that spread through clubs like the Crawdaddy, Eel Pie Island, and the Marquee to become familiar all around the world.
The following day, Wednesday, 14 September, the ActOne Cinema & Café, will be Celebrating Michael Flanders (& Swann) with Michael Flanders' daughters, journalists Stephanie Flanders and Laura Flanders. They will be discussing his impact on comedy and the world of disability with Comedy Chronicles writer Graham McCann. Michael Flanders was a writer and performer of comic songs, as well as an actor, broadcaster, and disability campaigner. His partnership with pianist Donald Swann has been called ‘the most influential comedy double act’ in British culture, ahead of Morecambe & Wise, Peter Cook & Dudley Moore and the Two Ronnies, but are less widely remembered. Flanders lived with his family in Bedford Park W4 till his death in 1975, and the Michael Flanders Centre in Acton was opened in his memory. Ealing Civic Society will unveil a plaque in his honour that afternoon. Other speakers at the 2022 Chiswick Book Festival include Dame Eileen Atkins, Pam Ayres, Rob Biddulph, Vince Cable, Rev Richard Coles, Cressida Cowell, Jane Garvey, Dame Sheila Hancock and Justin Webb. Brochures for the festival are available now at Waterstones Ealing, The Pitshanger Bookshop, Ealing Central Library and Gunnersbury Park Museum. Roger Green
September 1, 2022
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