Thursday 13 October 2016

The Knives out at Durham Book Festival 2016


The Durham Book Festival is very dear to me, just as Durham is, and I have nothing but happy memories of appearances at the Festival in 2011 (with both The Possessions of Doctor Forrest and my pamphlet What's Left for the North East?) and 2014 (for my study of social housing, Our House, Your Home.) Coming up to the Town Hall this year to present The Knives was just as much of a pleasure; and I had the good fortune of sharing the bill with the poet Sean O'Brien, who was there with his recently published novel Once Assembled Here Again.

James Smith from Durham University was our considerate emcee. Sean read with great verve, and I did my best to follow him. There is, as it happens, some interesting thematic congruence between our two books.  A young writer named Eloise Pearson was at the session and wrote it up graciously afterward for the Cuckoo Review site, which you can read here

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