Wanstead Book Festival

Parents have plenty of worries to occupy their minds... how to deal deal with anxiety, peer pressure, phones, stress. And that's just the parents - children face a whole load more problems. Local author Martha Deiros Collado has become a sage voice on social media for parents wanting a bit of guidance about how to… Continue reading How to be the Grown-Up: Wanstead Book Festival presents Martha Deiros Collado

NB. THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED.  Ticket-holders will be contacted by email. Death of a Bookseller has become a hit novel in the past year but unlike many popular crime novels this is dark. Written by Walthamstow-based author Alice Slater, a former bookseller herself, the book is about a true crime fanatic who has all… Continue reading Death of a Bookseller: Wanstead Book Festival presents Alice Slater

In the first Wanstead Book Festival Family Book Day, staged jointly as part of Redbridge Libraries' Fabula festival, a day of fun, stories and books for children.     Join author Tola Okugwu for a moving and magical storytelling event based on her new picture book Bekah and the Moon. Bekah loves the moon, and… Continue reading Family Book Day featuring Tola Okogwu, Supertato and Joseph Elliott

From Captain Scott to JFK, from Mother Teresa to Che Guevara, Otto English's Fake Heroes debunks conventional wisdom about some of history's biggest names, bringint to light some of the darker truths they would rather have kept buried, while also celebrating unsung heroes. Otto English, aka journalist Andrew Scott, has become one of the country's… Continue reading Fake Heroes: Wanstead Book Festival presents Otto English

Paul Sinha is an award-winning comedian, a quizzing mastermind and a happily-married husband. But for much of his life none of these seemed remotely imaginable. As a boy, Paul struggled to find his place in a world where he didn't quite fit. Who was he? An over-achieving schoolkid with the world's knowledge at his fingertips?… Continue reading One Sinha Lifetime: Wanstead Book Festival presents Paul Sinha

A free talk by a local writer David Fulton on the disappearance of Yugoslavia, looking at the country's diversity (ethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural). After dealing lightly with these issues it will move on to the four years running up to the death of Tito (1980) when he was an English-language lector in Prizren, Pristina… Continue reading Whatever Happened to Yugoslavia?

Since 2017, the UK has seen 15 terrible terrorist attacks. But the atrocities we see on our BBC news alerts are the tip of an iceberg – at least twice as many plots have been foiled. Some were thwarted by nerve-wracking undercover operations; others were narrowly averted by heroic citizens, or ruined by the absurd… Continue reading Plotters: Wanstead Book Festival presents Lizzie Dearden

One of East London's most celebrated literary figures, Iain Sinclair has observed and chronicled the changing nature of London, as well as the people who live here. In conversation with John Rogers, Sinclair will discuss his new book Pariah Genius in which he followed in the footsteps of photographer John Deakin who himself charted the… Continue reading Pariah Genius: Wanstead Book Festival presents Iain Sinclair

Last year, Patrick Marlowe told three ghost stories to an audience of the living and the dead in St Mary's churchyard. This year, he's back, and his thoughts have turned to crime. Is there such a thing as the perfect crime? And if there is, how we would know? Patrick's family moved to Wanstead 50… Continue reading Crime Stories with Patrick Marlowe