Poetry Reading with Caroline Smith and Neil Elder

The moving poems in Caroline Smith’s The Immigration Handbook are the fruit of the author’s career as an Immigration Caseworker for one of the most diverse inner-city areas in London. Her characters are careful composites of people she’s observed. We also hear from the judges, social workers, immigration officers and caseworkers who must enforce, often with brutal detachment, but just as often with reluctance and empathy, the laws of the state.

Neil Elder is another local poet who has won the Cinnamon Press Poetry Competition with Codes of Conduct, a collection of poetry that explores the gap between what we think we know about each other and what we actually know. Neil’s poetry has been described as funny but with an edge.

The Junction Christ Church, Chorleywood, Saturday, October 15, 12pm.

An Afternoon with D J Kelly

Local author D J Kelly has put a huge amount of research into this book which explores Buckinghamshire’s 600-year history of subversion, sedition and espionage. The county has been home to radical plotters, heretic hunters, agents provocateurs and informers. It covers local spies and rebels from the English Reformation up to the present day. Home grown intelligence gathered by local people is the fuel for some of the astonishing stories gathered together in this fascinating account. You will be amazed by the number of events, secret and not so secret that happened on our doorstep.

The Junction Christ Church, Chorleywood, Saturday, October 15, 2pm.

An Afternoon with Tim Moore

Scaling a new peak of rash over-ambition, Tim Moore tackles the 9,000km route of the old Iron Curtain on a tiny-wheeled, two-geared East German shopping bike. Sleeping in bank vaults, imperial palaces and unreconstructed Soviet youth hostels, battling vodka-breathed Russian hostility, Romanian landslides and a diet of dumplings, Moore and his bicycle are sustained by the kindness of reindeer farmers and Serbian rock gods, plus a shameful addiction to Magic Man energy drink. After three months, 20 countries and a 58-degree jaunt up the centigrade scale, man and bike finally wobble up to a Black Sea beach in Bulgaria, older and wiser, but mainly older. Join Chorleywood Bookshop for an evening with a brilliantly funny man and his incredible, crazy journey along the Iron Curtain.

The Junction Christ Church, Chorleywood, Saturday, October 15, 4pm.

An Evening with John Simpson

In corners of the globe where fault-lines seethe into bloodshed and civil war, foreign correspondents have, since the early nineteenth century, been engaged in uncovering the latest news and – despite obstacles bureaucratic, political, violent – reporting it by whatever means available. It’s a working life that is difficult, exciting and glamorous. How to Be a Foreign Correspondent brings us the pivotal moments in our history – from the Crimean War to Tiananmen Square and Sarajevo – through the eyes of those who witnessed them, and the astonishing tales of what it took to report them. And weaving the history of the greats who went before him, such as Alan Moorhead, Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway and Charles Wheeler, with extraordinary accounts from his own lifetime on the frontlines, this is also a deeply personal book from a master of the profession.

The Junction Christ Church, Chorleywood, Saturday, October 15, 7.30pm.

An Afternoon with James MacManus

MacManus’s novel is set in the spring of 1939 just before the outbreak of the Second World War. The British government under Chamberlain is adhering to its appeasement policy when a young military attache lands in Berlin from the UK. Realising that further diplomacy will not work, Colonel Noel McRae contemplates the unthinkable – that if Hitler were assassinated war might be averted. Based on true events and real characters, James MacManus has created a page-turning, breath-holding thriller. The author has worked in the newspaper industry for 50 years and is currently the Managing Director of The Times Literary Supplement. So this is a rare chance to have a conversation about both journalism and fiction writing.

Memorial Hall, Chorleywood, Sunday, October 16, 2pm.

An Evening with Siân Evans

Written with wit, verve and heart, Queen Bees is the story of a social revolution, and the extraordinary women who helped it happen. Lady Nancy Astor, the first female MP to take her seat, who rode pillion on Lawrence of Arabia’s motorbike. Lady Sybil Colefax, an interior designer and loyal friend to Edward Vlll and Wallis Simpson. Laura Corrigan, who sold jewellery to Hermann Goering to fund the French Resistance. Lady Emerald Cunard, the scapegoat for the Abdication, who transformed the Arts scene. Mrs Ronnie Greville, who holed up on the top floor of a London hotel as the Luftwaffe dropped bombs around her. Lady Edith Londonderry, the founder of the Women’s Legion, with a snake tattoo on her ankle. In the aftermath of the First World War, the previously strict hierarchies of the British class system were weakened. For a number of ambitious, spirited women, this was the chance they needed to slip through the cracks and take their place at the top of society as the great hostesses of the time.

Memorial Hall, Chorleywood, Sunday, October 16, 4pm.

An Afternoon with Paul Barker

Surely everyone has discovered the paradise that is Cinnamon Square in Rickmansworth. Now Paul Barker, artisan baker and cake maker beyond compare, shares his secrets in his first book of recipes. He will demonstrate his methods and secrets (well, maybe not all of them) by cooking in the Memorial Hall. Paul will be introduced by that other well-known baker (and actress) Wendi Peters who will help guide us through this mouth-watering session. Samples will be available to taste. 

Read our interview with him here. 

Chorleywood Memorial Hall, WD3 5LN on Sunday, October 16 at noon.

An Evening with Alan Johnson

From the condemned slums of Southam Street in West London to the corridors of power in Westminster, Alan Johnson’s multi-award-winning autobiography charts an extraordinary journey, almost unimaginable in today’s Britain. This third volume tells of Alan’s early political skirmishes as a trades union leader, where his negotiating skills and charismatic style soon came to the notice of Tony Blair and other senior members of the Labour Party.

Read our interview with him here.

Chorleywood Memorial Hall, Chorleywood, WD3 5LN, Sunday, October 16, 6pm.

Details: 01923 283566, chilternbookshops.co.uk