Proms 2024 LitFest

Comedian, screenwriter, presenter, author and podcaster, David Baddiel has written a searingly honest, funny and moving family memoir which exposes his mother’s idiosyncratic sex life and his father’s dementia to the same affectionate scrutiny.

Having escaped extermination by fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, David’s mother was desperate to make her life count; this took the form of a passionate, decades-long affair with a golfing memorabilia salesman. David’s detailing of the affair – including golf memorabilia and eye-popping erotic writings - leads to the inescapable conclusion that Sarah Baddiel was a cross between Jack Niklaus and Erica Jong.

As Baddiel investigates his family’s past, his father’s memories are fading; dementia is making him moodier and more disinhibited, with a penchant for obscenity. Throughout the book comedy, poignancy and laughter transform the darkest of experiences into something redemptive.

My Family: The Memoir is David Baddiel’s candid examination of his childhood, family and memory offering a twisted love letter to his parents.

Devorah Baum is the author of three books, most recently On Marriage, and with Josh Appignanesi she is co-director of the films The New Man and Husband. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, the Financial Times. She is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Southampton.

With unrivalled access to the Royal Family, close friends and staff and to previously unseen papers in the Royal Archives, bestselling biographer, royal commentator and broadcaster Robert Hardman presents Charles III - the man as well as the monarch.

Charles III, New King. New Court describes the first year of the Carolean era - the role played by Queen Camilla, relationships with Princes William and Harry and the King’s plans for reforming the monarchy. From the emotional days following the death of Elizabeth II to the first coronation in seventy years, Robert Hardman has witnessed it all.

‘A superb, fascinating account of the new King, his court and the first year of his reign. Elegantly written by the most authoritative of royal historians writing today, it is deeply researched, impeccably sourced and filled with scoops and new details. This is the definitive book’ Simon Sebag Montefiore

‘Full of surprises and glorious detail’ Andrew Roberts

Simon Lewis OBE, was Director of Communications during Gordon Brown’s time as Prime Minister and was also Communications Secretary to the late Queen in in the 1990’s. He currently co-hosts the popular BBC Sounds When it Hits the Fan podcast.

Award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop has travelled around China, researching and cooking Chinese food, for some 30 years.

Chinese food has the curious distinction of being one of the world's best-loved yet least understood culinary traditions. The overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners have experienced anything of its richness and variety - but that is beginning to change. Invitation to a Banquet tells the story of the world's most ancient and sophisticated cuisine through a feast of thirty Chinese dishes. Each chapter examines a classic dish to reveal a singular aspect of Chinese gastronomy. Meeting local food producers, chefs, gourmets and home cooks, Fuchsia invites readers to join her on an unforgettable journey into Chinese food as it is made, cooked, eaten and considered in its homeland.

“love letter to several millennia of Chinese gastronomy.” Isabel Hilton, Financial Times

Frances Wood was curator of the Chinese collections in the British Library. She has written extensively on Chinese history and culture - and grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb.

Erin Kelly's  first novel, The Poison Tree, was a Richard and Judy bestseller and a major ITV drama. Her bestseller He Said/She Said followed a young couple who witness a rape and, after the trial, begin to wonder if they believed the right person. Her latest book, The House of Mirrors, has been described as “a bold, beautiful, sexy, full-throttle thriller”.

Amy McCulloch, chair of the panel, is the internationally bestselling of Breathless and Midnight.  In September 2019, she became the youngest Canadian woman to climb Mt. Manaslu in Nepal -- the world's eighth highest mountain - it was this that inspired Breathless, her debut thriller. She had also summited the highest mountain in the Americas, Aconcagua, in -45C and 90kmph winds, and has visited all seven continents. Her own experiences of visiting Antarctica inspired her second chilling thriller, MIidnight.

She has also written eight novels for children and young adults, including the #1 bestselling YA novel The Magpie Society: One for Sorrow. She is currently working on her next adult thriller, continuing to draw inspiration from her adventures.

A third mystery writer to join the panel will be announced shortly.

Award-winning journalist and author Sathnam Sanghera follows up his best-selling book Empireland with Empireworld, an exploration of the immense impact the British empire has exerted across the globe. Its influence on the quarter of the planet it occupied - and its gravitational pull on the world outside it - has been profound, from the spread of Christianity by missionaries to shaping the origins of international law. Sanghera demonstrates just how deeply British imperialism is baked into our world; yet Britain's idea of its imperial history and the world's experience of it are two very different things. ­­

“An absolute masterpiece.” James O’Brien, LBC

“A remarkable and important work - one that is finely judged, beautifully written and not just a welcome corrective but a book for our times. This is essential reading.” - Peter Frankopan, Professor of Global History, Worcester College, Oxford, author of The Silk Roads

Claire Berliner is a literature curator, writer, editor and Head of Programmes at The London Library.

Named a Book of the Year 2023 by The Times, Telegraph, New Statesman and Spectator, historian and author David Kynaston’s ‘A Northern Wind’ brings the Swinging Sixties vividly to life. Drawing on an unparalleled array of diaries, newspapers and first-hand recollections, Kynaston’s masterful storytelling recalls familiar events between October 1962 and February 1965 such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of JFK, the Big Freeze, the funeral of Winston Churchill and the Profumo Affair - while revealing, in all their fascinating variety, the experiences of people living through this period of great social change in the UK.

David Kynaston’s acclaimed ‘Tales of a New Jerusalem’ series has transformed how we see and understand post-war Britain; ’A Northern Wind’ continues the journey.

‘Addictively readable….Kynaston’s tireless research turns up plenty of gems’ Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times;

'the most entertaining historian alive' The Spectator;

David Aaronovitch is a writer, journalist and presents BBC Radio 4’s The Briefing Room. He is author of the digital newsletter Notes from the Underground on Substack.

In 2019, award winning journalist and Managing Editor of the Financial Times, Tobias Buck, covered one of the last Nazi war crime trials in Germany - former SS Guard Bruno Dey stood accused of murdering at least 5,230 prisoners at the Stutthof concentration camp in present-day Poland. The trial took place at a pivotal moment, with fewer survivors of the horrors of the Holocaust and questions increasingly being raised about memory, justice and collective guilt. On a personal level, Buck reflects on the silence surrounding his own family’s war time experiences and the role of his German grandfather.

“a thrilling read. It is a book that raises a myriad of fascinating questions and human dramas, beautifully constructed and enticingly written.” Philippe Sands

“raises vital questions about how we remember the Holocaust. [A] gripping and fascinating book.” James Holland, The Daily Telegraph 5* review

Georgina Godwin, Books Editor for Monocle Radio, host of the flagship literary show Meet the Writers and current affairs programme The Globalist. She chairs events worldwide and hosts a number of commercial podcasts. She is on the boards of the charities English PEN and Developing Artists.

Detective story, memoir, cultural history and devastating work of non-fiction, Clair Wills’s book is a history of unmarried motherhood told through three generations of an Irish family. Clair unearths the story of the cousin she never knew she had, at the same time uncovering the story of Ireland's unwanted children. She asks how could a family - a whole country - abandon unmarried mothers and their children, erasing them from history?

Clair’s journey takes her from the 1890s to the 1980s, from West Cork to rural Suffolk and Massachusetts, from absent fathers to the grief of a lost child. The result is a moving, exquisitely told story of the secrets families keep, and the violence carried out in their name.

Clair Wills is a critic, cultural historian and Regius Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge.

“an expertly crafted work, at once vigorous and subtle which manages its effects and conserves its revelations with all the skill of a master novelist’,” John Banville, The Guardian