An evening with Chris Tutton and Lucy Nolan -
Imaginary Landscapes Poetry and Harp
Warwick Books, Warwick Books, CV34 4SL
Thursday 27th March 2025, 6.30pm
Imaginary Landscapes is a chance to experience both Poetry and Harp with Chris Tutton and Lucy Nolan on Thursday 27 March 6.30pm in Warwick Books. This is a special event featuring the hugely popular collaboration of leading poet, author and raconteur, Chris Tutton with award-winning harpist, Lucy Nolan.
“Magical and mesmerising... An exquisite fusion of words and music”
“An absolute gem” Martin Denny, Windsor Arts Festival
“This should be at the heart of every festival” Andy Stuart, Rye Arts Festival
Chris Tutton is the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of eight collections of poetry, the most recent being ‘Short Chapters From Sunset’. Coined by Ned Sherrin as “the master of the short poem” his work has also been described as “absolutely beautiful” by Alexander Waugh with Iain Anderson of BBC Scotland noting that it was “philosophy in poetry form” and the Sunday Times commenting on its “dramatic passion and dignity”
‘The Failing of Angels’ his extraordinary debut novel was published in 2020 - “I have never read such beautiful writing. I was stunned”
“One of the most strikingly written books I’ve read all year” David Hebblethwaite, David ‘s Book World. Reading across the globe.
Lucy Nolan is an award-winning International Harpist, passionate about challenging and evolving new styles of harp playing through collaboration, composition and performance. Featured on Radio 3 and 4 she has also played on Hollyoaks and ITV’s drama, ‘Victoria’ She plays for the UK’s leading orchestras, including the BBC Concert Orchestra, The Hallé and the Royal Northern Sinfonia and has enjoyed performing worldwide, including at the Royal Albert Hall, Lambeth Palace, Thessaloniki Concert Hall, Jaipur Literature Festival and at the World Harp Congress in Hong Kong.
Light refreshments will be available.
You can book tickets in the shop or online at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/warwick-books
An evening with Kathy Slack -
How a kitchen garden brought one woman back to life
Warwick Books, CV34 4SL
Tuesday 1st April 2025, 6.30pm
Join us to listen to Kathy in conversation talking about her book Rough Patch.
When Kathy was forced to quit her high-flying career in London, she was a wreck – burnt out, anxious, consumed by depression. But she found solace in an unlikely place – the veg patch. She put her hands in the soil and found a way to grow, to sow some small seeds of hope.
In ROUGH PATCH, Kathy draws us into the world of the kitchen garden to reflect on the lessons she learnt from the soil, along with sharing recipes inspired by the land. Weaving together her own story of recovery with the year she spent growing and cooking her harvests, Kathy realises that the two are tightly bound together and that reconnecting with the earth could restore her hope and renew her life.
Along the way there are tales of marauding pigs, transformative insights from planting leeks, recipes for an unchecked courgette glut and the discovery of why a radish seed is worth staying alive for. The result is a candid, hopeful and sometimes funny story about the healing powers of nature; a quiet manifesto for a more connected life…
General admission - includes a copy of the book £18.99
General admission for 2 people - includes one copy of the book £25.00
You can book tickets in the shop or online at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/warwick-books
An evening with Keith Kahn-Harris -
Everyday Jews
Warwick Books, Warwick, CV34 4SL
Tuesday 8th April 2025, 6.30pm
Join us for an evening with Keith Kahn-Harris a sociologist and writer, based in London. He is a senior lecturer at Leo Baeck College and a senior research fellow at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. Keith will talk about his latest book and be willing to answer questions and sign books.
Can Jews be allowed to become boring? With Israel and antisemitism constantly in thenews, it seems as though the Jewish people – a fraction of a percentage of the world’s population- have become synonymous with controversy, drama and anxiety. But what if there was another side to this persistently interesting people; one that non-Jews often don’t know about and Jews rarely talk about? This is the stuff of ‘everyday’ Jewishness; the capacity to be ordinary, mundane and sometimes just plain dull. Keith Kahn-Harris lifts the lid on this surprising world in a book for Jews and non-Jews alike. Arguing that his people’s extraordinary public visibility today is harming their ability to live everyday Jewish lives, he celebrates themundanity and mediocrity of a people before it vanishes completely. DR KEITH KAHN-HARRIS is a sociologist and author, based in London. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and a Senior Lecturer at Leo Baeck College. He also makes time for pursuing other interests outside the community, including extreme metal music and the warning messages in Kinder Surprise Eggs. The author of nine books, his most recent publications are Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and the Limits of Diversity, The Babel Message: A Love Letter to Language (Icon) and (co-authored with Rob Stothard) What Does A Jew Look Like? Find out more at kahn-harris.org
Light refreshments will be provided.
You can book tickets in the shop or online at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/warwick-books
If you are unable to join us, but would like a signed, dedicated copy of any of the books from our events - we are happy to help! Just click here
An evening with Elizabeth O'Connor -
Whale Fall
Warwick Books, CV34 4SL
Tuesday 15th April 2025, 6.30pm
Join us for an evening with Elizabeth talking about her much celebrated debut Whale Fall.
It is 1938 and for a young woman, Manod, just turned eighteen, living on a remote island off the coast of Wales, the world looks ready to end just as she is trying to imagine a future for herself. Rumours of submarines circling beneath the waves have villagers steeling themselves for what’s to come. The empty houses remind them of men the last Great War took and now they see bad omens everywhere. When two strangers from the mainland arrive on a white boat, keen to study the island’s people, Manod sees in them a rare moment of opportunity to leave the island and discover a life for herself. But, as she guides them across the island’s wild landscape and becomes entangled in their relationship, the outside world begins to look terrifyingly out of reach. Elizabeth O'Connor's beautiful, devastating debut, tells a story of longing and betrayal set against the backdrop of a world in great tumult.
An Observer's Best Debut of the Year 2024
‘Whale Fall is an astonishingly assured debut that straddles many polarities: love and loss, the familiar and the strange, trust and betrayal, land and sea, life and death. O’Connor has created a beguiling and beguiled narrator in Manod’ - Maggie O'Farrell
‘a powerful novel, written with a calm, luminous precision, each feeling rendered with chiselled care, the drama of island life unfolding with piercing emotional accuracy’ – Colm Tóibín
‘The quiet cadences of Whale Fall contain a deep melody of loss held and let go. It is a gentle, tough story about profound change’ - Anne Enright
'An excellent debut . . . Brief but complete, the book is an example of precisely observed writing that makes a character’s specific existence glimmer with verisimilitude' Maggie Shipstead, New York Times
General admission - includes a copy of the book £10.00
General admission for 2 people - includes one copy of the book £15.00
You can book tickets in the shop or online at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/warwick-books
An evening with Fran Hill -
Home Bird
Warwick Books, Warwick Books,, CV34 4SL
Tuesday 29th April 2025, 630pm
Join us for an evening with Fran Hill talking about her latest book Home Bird. There will be an opportunity to ask questions and get your books signed. Light refreshments will be provided.
1979. Jackie Chadwick is 17 and living in a supported bedsit. She's still close to her foster parents and friends with (aka unofficial minder for) Amanda, their irresponsible daughter, but she's enjoying her independence - until a fire leaves her temporarily homeless. Jackie's dad, widower and recovering alcoholic Dave, has just been released from prison and sees this as his chance to make amends. He offers her his spare room - but can their relationship survive him going back on the booze and the arrival of his gin-loving lady friend and her errant son? As things go from bad to worse, Jackie has to decide how many chances you give someone who keeps letting you down.
Bittersweet and funny, Home Bird draws on Fran Hill's own experiences as a teenager in foster care.
'This has all of Fran's trademark quick wit and black humour' Gráinne Murphy
You can book tickets in the shop or online at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/warwick-books
If you are unable to join us, but would like a signed, dedicated copy of any of the books from our events - we are happy to help! Just click here
An evening with Maiwand Banayee -
Delusions of Paradise : Escaping the Life of a Taliban Fighter
Warwick Books, Warwick Books,, CV34 4SL
Tuesday 6th May 2025, 6.30pm
An in-converation format talk with Maiwand Banayee, with a chance to ask questions as well as a book signing.
When Maiwand Banayee was 16, he wanted to become a suicide bomber for the Taliban. In this inspiring tale of survival and self-discovery, the reader will follow Maiwand’s journey down a dark path and his ultimate redemption. Growing up in Kabul amid the Afghan wars, he witnessed atrocities that no child should ever see - rotting corpses, starving families, a neighbourhood torn apart. He escaped to a refugee camp in Pakistan, where religious militants began the gradual grooming of Maiwand and other Afghan boys. These confused and traumatised children were indoctrinated, radicalised and prepared to die in the name of a religious war. But Maiwand escaped this life. Fleeing Afghanistan, he had a life-altering crisis of faith, confidence and meaning, finding new purpose and rebuilding himself. Maiwand taught himself how to read and write in English, and here tells his astonishing story in crystalline prose. Delusions of Paradise offers a powerful warning about the dangers of radical religion, and is a stunning celebration of self-determination and redemption from an important new voice. Maiwand Banayee was born in in Kabul at the onset of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. By the time he was twelve the country was engulfed in civil war and he fled to a refugee camp, where he enrolled in a madrassa and joined the Taliban. At 22 he rejected Islamic extremism and sought asylum in the UK, eventually living in Ireland before returning to England. He has been published in Stinging Fly and War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities. This is his first book.
You can book tickets in the shop or online at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/warwick-books
If you are unable to join us, but would like a signed, dedicated copy of any of the books from our events - we are happy to help! Just click here
Songs for Bibliophiles
Warwick Books, Warwick Books, CV34 4SL
Thursday 8th May 2025, 6.30pm
Having spent the past 30 years balancing a career in bookselling with his sideline as a singer songwriter, Paul Armfield has finally reconciled the two worlds in an album of songs about books and reading. With his intimate baritone and warm stage presence, his renditions of these literate, witty songs, accompanied only by his guitar and musical saw will leave you completely charmed.
About the album ‘Between The Covers - 9 Songs For Bibliophiles’
When veteran bookseller Paul sat down in early 2024 to start writing songs for what would be his 9th release, the first two songs that stumbled out were both about books, something he had not intended, but he went with the flow and wrote three more on the same subject. He said ‘It was surprisingly cathartic, having spent nearly 30 years balancing a career in bookselling with a double life in music, it felt like finally my two worlds were being reconciled.’ Invited by his friend and producer Max Braun to spend 4 days recording with a small ensemble of accomplished jazzmen at the same studio in Stuttgart that produced 2020’s ‘Domestic’, Paul set off to record the five songs along with a selection of other people’s songs about books, the result is an album of 9 very individual songs, Paul’s originals being sandwiched between 4 cover versions, hence the punny title, ‘Between The Covers’.
Join us at Warwick Books for an intimate gig to celebrate the release of Between The Covers - 9 Songs For Bibliophiles.
You can book tickets in the shop or online at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/warwick-books
An evening with Bernie Collins -
How To Win A Grand Prix
Warwick Books, 24 Market Place, CV34 4SL
Tuesday 13th May 2025, 6.30pm
Join us to listen to Bernie talk about her book How To Win A Grand Prix, have the opportunity to ask questions and get your books signed. Light refreshments will be provided.
'Bernie is not only a great strategist, but also a great team player and competitor' Sebastian Vettel. Race-winning team strategist shows how F1 really works. Welcome to Bernie Collins' world. Formula 1 drivers are the public face of Grand Prix racing but behind every driver is a team of several hundred people sharing the same passionate desire to win.
On race day it's the Team Strategist who calls the shots, working under immense pressure to make split second and crucial decisions. Through her eyes and experience as a Performance Engineer and Head of Race Strategy, Bernie takes you behind the scenes of a Formula 1 team - both in the factory and at the races - to uncover what it takes to put two Formula 1 cars on the grid and go racing. How to Win a Grand Prix gives incredible insight of the entire process from design and construction, through pre-season testing, and how a team prepares for each Grand Prix.
For race weekend itself, Bernie recreates it hour-by-hour to plunge the reader behind the pit wall and see what it's actually like to get from grid to podium.
You can book tickets in the shop or online at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/warwick-books
If you are unable to join us, but would like a signed, dedicated copy of any of the books from our events - we are happy to help! Just click here
“A venue fit for a king! It was a fantastic evening, they had arranged it all perfectly. I am gobsmacked and over the moon all at once!”
We’re delighted to host a rich series of literary events in and around Warwick. These include our popular 'Meet the author' events. The talks usually last about an hour, followed by questions, and then there is an opportunity to meet the speaker and have a book signed. Previous authors Melvyn Bragg, Jodi Picoult, Kate Williams, Professor Edith Hall and Dr Elizabeth Goldring. These events take place across Warwick including the beautiful Lord Leycester Hospital. We also support Warwick Words Festival.
Refreshments provided by local independent businesses are served at all of our events!
“Huge thanks for a fab event yesterday!”