Rory Cellan-Jones became a much-loved household name as the BBC Technology Correspondent. Since being diagnosed with Parkinson in 2019, he has pioneered a greater understanding of the disease among all of us with his articles and the illuminating and moving podcast Movers and Shakers. Fellow Parkinson colleagues such as Jeremy Paxman, Mark Mardell and Sir Nicholas Mostyn show how different personalities face up to setbacks. Rory is the best-selling author of Always On – Hope and Fear in the Smartphone Era and his new book, Ruskin Park; Sylvia, Me and the BBC, tells his own tender and troubling story. …
Calling all fans of Jane Austen. On 13 October, Lucinda will be interviewing Ruth Leigh, author of A Great Deal of Ingenuity: A Collection of Pride and Prejudice Stories. The pages of Pride and Prejudice sparkle with household names: proud Darcy and prejudiced Elizabeth, book-loving Mr Bennet, the snobbish Bingley sisters, predatory Mr Wickham and oily Mr Collins. But what about all the other people busy cooking, mending, flirting, walking and socialising in the background? …
Adrian Magson is the author of hundreds of short stories and 29 books and an acclaimed expert in creating fictional characters. He is so prolific that he has not one, but two most recently published books, Death at the Old Asylum in which Inspector Rocco becomes enveloped in a case of cold-blooded execution and Killing Waters, a stand-alone murder investigation set on the Oxford Canal in the Midlands. …
Talking about Dickens and Travel with fellow author Victoria Panton-Bacon. Tickets are on sale now. …
This year marks 175 years of The Haunted Man – Dickens’s final Christmas book. Come and discover the stories that inspired his festive writing. The walking tour will be led by Dickens’s great great great granddaughter, Lucinda Hawksley, author of Dickens and Christmas and Dickens and Travel. …
Recent Events
Lizzie Siddal, Kate Perugini (née Dickens) and Princess Louise were all talented artists and celebrities of the 19th-century artistic world. Their lives and careers reveal a very fascinatingly different story from our usual preconceptions about Victorian women. Lucinda Hawksley has written biographies of all of these remarkable women, and in this talk she will share their stories, revealing their secrets, their ambitions, and the scandals that surrounded them.
Come along on 28 September to discover the lives of unconventional people living in a very conventional time. …
On 22 September, join Lucinda Hawksley as she speaks to a man who isn’t there… JD Kirk is the author of the multi-million bestselling DCI Jack Logan crime fiction series, set in the Highlands of Scotland. He also does not exist. Instead, JD is the pen name of former children’s author and screenwriter, Barry Hutchison, who was born and raised in Fort William. …
From childhood, Charles Dickens was fascinated by tales from other countries and other cultures, and he longed to see the world. Lucinda Hawksley talks about her latest book, Dickens and Travel, which looks at the journeys made by the author, and how they influenced his writing and enriched his life.
There will be the opportunity to buy Lucinda’s book and have it signed during the event. …
Julie Summers is a bestselling writer, researcher and historian. Her books include Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine; a biography of her grandfather, the man who built the ‘real’ bridge over the River Kwai, The Colonel of Tamarkan, Stranger in the House and When the Children Came Home, a social history of servicemen returning to their families from the Second World War. On 3 February, Julie returns to Goldster to talk about Jambusters, the story of the Women’s Institute in WW2. …
Author of One-Armed Jack: Uncovering the real Jack the Ripper.
Dr Nicholas Cambridge is an honorary research fellow in humanities and medical history at the University of Buckingham. Previously he worked as a GP for 25 years. He is a member of the Dickens Fellowship and has published several papers and given many lectures on Charles Dickens in relation to medicine. …
Jarod Chapman is a breath work and meditation teacher, a fitness coach, sports masseur, and co author of The power of Yoga For Men. He was Tina Turner’s Personal Wellness Coach on her final world tour in 2008-09. …
Our lives are intrinsically linked to those of animals – whether that’s the animals we farm for food, those living in the wild, those we use for sport or the ones we choose to keep as pets. We all have a responsibility to consider our impact, and even small changes in our own lives could significantly improve the quality of theirs. …