It’s only a week until this year’s Henley Literary Festival kicks off with a combination of in person and livestreamed events between Friday 3rd and Sunday 12th October. Authors appearing at this year’s Festival include Ben Okri, Michael Palin, Mary Beard, the Reverend Richard Coles, Andrew Lownie and Vaseem Khan. There’s also a varied programme of children’s events. All in the beautiful setting of Henley-on-Thames.
I’m going to eight events this year, seven in person and one via livestream. Links from the author names will take you to the event details on the Henley Literary Festival website where you can purchase tickets (subject to availability). Please note, I have no commercial relationship with Henley Literary Festival and buy my own tickets except where stated.
Historical Fiction Today with Carolyn Kirby, author of Ravenglass, and Vanessa Beaumont, author of The Other Side of Paradise [Free ticket as Friend of the Festival]
Headline Proof Party with Ellie Levenson, author of Room 706 (publishing January 2026) and Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, author of Female, Nude (publishing February 2026) [Event sold out]
Jay Rayner, food critic and author of Nights Out At Home
Alan Johnson, former politician and author of HaroldWilson[Event sold out]
Why not join in too? Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!
What I’m Currently Reading
I’m reading Dominion of Dust and Our London Livesfrom my NetGalley shelf, and I’m still listening to the audiobook of Tombland(only just over 50% of the way through).
AD 797, Cyprus. Warrior-monk Hunlaf and his crew are on a voyage to acquire an important Christian relic before it falls into the hands of Byzantium’s scheming Empress Eirene.
Hunlaf’s crew receive unexpected help as they seek their treasure, but soon find themselves betrayed. About to leave for home empty-handed, the adventurers instead sail further east: to Jerusalem, the Holy Land, abundant in relics. And dangerous intrigues.
Hunlaf and his friends will face a deadly race against time as they attempt to secure a holy treasure, outwit Byzantium’s zealous agents, and avoid grisly deaths at the hands of the local rulers.
Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey (Atlantic via NetGalley)
1979. In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away.
Over the decades their lives follow different paths, interweaving from time to time, often in one another’s sight, always on one another’s mind, yet rarely together.
Forty years on, Milly is clinging onto the only home she’s ever really known while Pip, haunted by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, traipses the streets of London and wrestles with the life of the recovering alcoholic. And between them, perhaps uncrossable, lies the unspoken span of their lives.
Spring, 1549. Two years after the death of Henry VIII, England is sliding into chaos.
The nominal king, Edward VI, is 11 years old. His uncle, Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford, rules as Edward’s regent and Protector. In the kingdom, radical Protestants are driving the old religion into extinction, while the Protector’s prolonged war with Scotland has led to hyperinflation and economic collapse. Rebellion is stirring among the peasantry.
Matthew Shardlake has been working as a lawyer in the service of Henry’s younger daughter, the lady Elizabeth. The gruesome murder of one of Elizabeth’s distant relations, rumored to be politically murdered, draws Shardlake and his companion Nicholas to the lady’s summer estate, where a second murder is committed.
As the kingdom explodes into rebellion, Nicholas is imprisoned for his loyalty, and Shardlake must decide where his loyalties lie – with his kingdom, or with his lady?
Moscow, 1958. At the height of the Cold War, secretary Lois Vale is on a deep-cover MI6 mission to identify a diplomatic traitor. She can trust only one man: Johann, a German journalist also working covertly for the British secret service.
As the trail leads to Vienna and the Black Sea, Lois and Johann begin an affair but as love grows, so does the danger to Lois.
What Cathy Read Next... 