Hester Musson’s novel The Beholders is a thrilling, gothic, historical novel, perfect for fans of Kate Foster’s The Maiden, Margret Atwood’s Alias Grace, and Jesse Burton’s The Miniaturist.
June, 1878. The body of a boy is pulled from the depths of the River Thames, suspected to be the beloved missing child of the widely admired Liberal MP Ralph Gethin.
Four months earlier. Harriet is a young maid newly employed at Finton Hall. Fleeing the drudgery of an unwanted engagement in the small village where she grew up, Harriet is entranced by the grand country hall; she is entranced too by her glamorous mistress Clara Gethin, whose unearthly singing voice floats through the house. But Clara, though captivating, is erratic. The master of the house is a much-lauded politician, but he is strangely absent. And some of their beautiful belongings seem to tell terrible stories.
Unable to ignore her growing unease, Harriet sets out to discover their secrets. When she uncovers a shocking truth, a chain of events is set in motion that could cost Harriet everything, even her freedom…
Hester will be in Conversation with writer and creative writing lecturer Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone.
Our Ocean’s Broken Heart is a personal pilgrimage to the frontline of climate change, based on Doina Cornell’s sailing voyages to the Arctic and the Pacific.
Accompanied by her teenage children, Nera and Dan, and her father Jimmy, Doina explores what it means to be a sailor and our relationship with the ocean. Tracing the legacy of colonialism and the pain of climate injustice she confronts head on how the world has changed since her 1970s childhood sailing the world.
Doina brings to life the crucial threats our ocean faces, such as rising temperatures and sea levels, through the testimony of the people in the places she visits, and through citizen science projects carried out by sailing yachts in partnership with scientists. Challenging the powerful vested interests that impede progress towards halting climate breakdown, she asks how we can find the path back to hope.
Tickets £8.50
What if walls could talk? For historian Madeleine Pelling, they can – if you know where to look.
A brilliant new cultural history of the long eighteenth century, Writing on the Wall is told through the marks its citizens left behind, bringing into focus lost voices from the highest to the lowest in society. From the centre of London to the islands of the Caribbean, Pelling goes in search of graffiti, evidence of how ordinary people experienced the world-changing events that defined their lives – from political prisoners to sex workers, homesick sailors, Romantic poets and factory workers.
Here are the lives, loves, triumphs and failures, scratched into the walls of prisons and latrines, chalked up on doors and etched into windows. The names of their creators may be lost to history, but together they tell the real story of Britain’s most rebellious and transformative century.
Madeleine Pelling is an art historian specialising in the material and visual culture of eighteenth-century Britain. She completed her PhD at the University of York in 2018, and has held research fellowships at the universities of Yale, Edinburgh, Manchester and Queen Mary University London as well as the Royal Archives. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Independent, BBC History Magazine and History Today, among other places. She is an appointed member of the Royal Historical Society and sits on the editorial board for History: Journal of the Historical Association.
Tickets – £8.50
In a small corner of a field in Wales, Tiffany Murray is hiding with Boggle the dog, dreaming of her mum’s moussaka, blackberry and apple crumble, and, if she’s lucky, ice-cold lemonade. A sheep bleats. The smell of hay tickles her nose. The twang of a guitar and crack of a snare carry on the breeze.
It’s the late 1970s and Tiff lives with her mum, Joan, at Rockfield, the iconic recording studios. This place of legend, where some of the most famous rock albums of all time were recorded, is the background to a freewheeling, ever-changing whirlwind of a childhood. Tiff’s days are spent running around the farm, making friends with local wildlife and helping out with the endless array of dishes her mum creates to keep the bands fed. She’s looking for a dog, she’s looking for a father; but the one constant throughout is her and Joan, building an unconventional family in the most unlikely of locations.
My Family and Other Rock Stars is a remarkable, truly unique story of growing up in a rural idyll, of Cordon Bleu cookery and of a childhood where the chances of bumping into Freddie Mercury playing piano, or a group of Hell’s Angels turning up to record for Lemmy, or even the hope of David Bowie appearing, were as normal as hopscotch and homework.
Tiffany will be in conversation about her brilliant new book.
Three Storeys, Nailsworth – £8.50
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