Our Literary London Blog page

I should be writing here more often, but to be honest, running the London Literary Pub Crawl takes a chunk of time.  We've done incredibly well over our first year or so, but I've decided we could do much better, so we're looking to raise £30k for marketing.  It'll make us a real attraction in London and my Chinese actors stand poised, ready to go.

But we're writers, not accountants.  Fortunately I've found a brilliant accountant who is able to frame my terms of reference in accounting speak and if the banks don't want to play ball our financials look strong enough to attract private investors.  I have to keep reminding myself.  "Spreadsheets are my friends. Spreadsheets are my friends..." Repeat often.

That aside, if you are in London at the moment, you picked a good time.  Head over to The South Bank for their Literary Festival.  This year’s festival will include a four-day live reading of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1-4 Oct). The first ever live reading of the novel in the UK, the reading is presented by The Special Relationship and Southbank Centre specially for this year’s festival. The event will feature 160 ten minute readings by actors, writers, comedians and special guests including Melville’s great, great, great granddaughter and novelist Liza Klaussmann, Chibundu Onuzo and A L Kennedy.

Another exclusive event will include the world premiere of The Hollow of the Hand, the début collaborative book by the Grammy Award and Mercury Prize winning PJ Harvey and celebrated photographer Seamus Murphy. Featuring words and images collected during a series of journeys to Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Washington D.C. between 2011 and 2014, the event will present poetry readings and new songs performed by PJ Harvey alongside images and a short film by Seamus Murphy (9 & 10 October).

The event I'm most excited about though, is Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam in conversation with a special guest (to be announced) (7 Oct). Discussing Terry’s life, career, art and the broader question of creativity, the event will focus on Terry’s latest memoir, Gilliamesque: A Pre-Posthumous Memoir, which is due to be published this October. Terry’s only book appearance in the UK this year, the event will track his vivid and unorthodox career from Monty Python to his role directing English National Opera’s Faust in 2011.  I grew up watching Monty Python.  I'm going to see if I can get Terry on my radio show Literary London every Friday on Resonance 104.4FM and Podcast on this site.  But he's a bit of a hero and you know what they say about meeting heroes.  I did once nearly tread on Terry Jones' foot at a party though, so maybe I'm qualified.

Never mind heroes.  Spreadsheets are my friend.