James O'Brien To Take Part In This Year's Chiswick Book Festival
More top authors announced for festival line up
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Best-selling Chiswick author and LBC radio presenter James O’Brien will sign copies of his Sunday Times bestseller How To Be Right from 6.30pm on Wednesday 10 September at Waterstones on the eve of the Chiswick Book Festival.
He will then speak at the Festival’s annual Local
Authors Party, a fast-moving event in which 20 authors have just two minutes to ‘sell’ their books against the clock.
This year’s party is being sponsored by Chiswick distillery Sipsmith, which launches its own book this
month - SIP: 100 gin cocktails with only 3 ingredients. Francesca Torlot, its head of brand partnerships, will introduce the book at the start of the presentations.
The event will also see the launch of the ‘Read Well’ Book Club, which aims to bring local people together to read and reflect on books being published on mental wellbeing. It’s an initiative from ‘Better Mental Health in Chiswick’ – a volunteer group established in Autumn 2018 to improve mental health locally.
Local authors speaking at the Waterstones event this year include Maggie Pigott, vice-chair of Open Age, a charity which champions an active life for older people. Her new book How to Age Joyfully: Eight Steps to a Fuller, Happier Life, has a foreword by Dame Judi Dench.
To prove her book’s point, she will be followed by 95-year-old Patricia Davies, who recently received the Legion D’Honneur, France’s highest order of merit, for her work during the Second World War. Pat Davies was one of the ‘Bletchley Girls’, eavesdropping on German naval radio transmissions and relaying the content to the code breakers at Bletchley Park. With
her sister, she has published the memoir of her father Colonel Cary Owtram, 1000 Days on The River Kwai, the Secret Diary of a British Camp Commandant.
Another wartime memoir to be featured at the event – 80 years after the outbreak of World War
in September 1939 - is by Robin Knight, former foreign correspondent for US News and World Report and contributing editor to Time magazine. He has written The Extraordinary Life of Mike Cumberlege SOE, about Lt. Cdr. Mike Cumberlege DSO & Bar, who served in undercover roles in the Royal Navy in Marseilles and Cape Verde, was on the staff of General de Gaulle in London, took part in fighting in Greece, attacked the Corinth Canal, escaped from Crete and was captured and murdered in a
concentration camp.
Other topics to be covered in the two-minute presentations range from fiction and children’s books to self-help and business. You can see the full list of writers who will speak on the Festival website.
Local Authors Party at Waterstones, book-signing by James O’Brien and ‘Read Well’ Book Club
launch – Wednesday 11 September
Admission to the event is free, but people are asked to register via the ticket website to keep track
of numbers.
- The Local Authors Party begins at 7pm upstairs in Waterstones, with the presentations starting at 7.15pm.
- James O’Brien’s book signing will take place downstairs from 6.30pm.
- From 6.30pm, people can also learn about the ‘Read Well’ Book Club, a friendly and welcoming
monthly Book Club bringing local people together to read and reflect on books being published on
mental wellbeing. It’s an initiative from ‘Better Mental Health in Chiswick’ – a volunteer group
established last year to improve mental health locally, working in partnership with other
organisations to raise the profile of mental health and challenging stigma.
Sally Malin from the group says: ``It’s good news that so many books are now being published on the important topic of mental health. ‘Read Well’ Book Club hopes to create a welcoming space to explore together what’s helpful - and what isn’t! We are delighted to be launching as part of our local Chiswick Book Festival.’’
Find out more by email: bettermentalhealthinchiswick@gmail.com.
September 1, 2019
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September 1, 2019
