New Ealing Book Festival To Be Launched
Inaugural event will be held in partnership with Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery
Rory Cellan Jones at a recent booksigning for 'Ruskin Park'. Picture:Rory Cellan Jones
November 2, 2023
Ealing is to see the launch of a new local book festival later this month with the organisers having ambitious plans for the event in future years.
An event has been set up in partnership with Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery and will take place on Thursday 16 November.
The intention is to make The Ealing Book Festival, a fixture in the cultural calendar of the borough with a fuller programme of events, workshops and activities for all ages planned for 2024.
For the launch, writer and ex-BBC journalist Rory Cellan-Jones speaks to former BBC journalist Rebecca Jones about his newly published book Ruskin Park. The book is the story of a love affair between his parents, both BBC employees, that he knew little about until his mother recently passed away and left him with a file labelled ‘For Rory’. The book shines a light on their relationship and the restrictive forces of post-war respectability and prejudice that ended it, as well as Rory’s peculiarly isolated childhood as his mother raised him and his brother, single handedly while working full time.
Earlier in the afternoon, author Judith Eagle and illustrator Kim Geyer require the help of all young detectives and artists immediately after school - to solve the mystery of a dangerous art heist set in the 1950s. After the event, young participants will solve clues to find the hidden painting in the Manor, just like Caro Monday - heroine of their latest book, The Stolen Songbird.
The inaugural annual Ealing Book Festival will take place in spring next year and promises many more events including talks with nationally-renowned authors and well-known local writers; panel discussions and book signings.
Festival events will be centred in and around Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, the restored house of architect Sir John Soane which sits in the Regency grounds of Walpole Park in central Ealing.
To book tickets for the talk or children’s event visit www.pitzhanger.org.uk and to find out more about plans for the Ealing Book Festival and other activities visit ealingbookfestival.com.
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