August 2023

18
Wanstead Village Directory
READY TO READ
The second Wanstead Book Festival – part of next month’s Wanstead
Fringe – is fast approaching. It’s time to get your summer reading
ready, says Festival chair Giles Wilson
The idea of long, languorous summer
afternoons with only a novel to
occupy the attention is a holiday
dream for many people, myself included.
But what to read? Pick up something new
at the airport or catch up with that pile of
half-finished books? Well, here’s another
option. The second Wanstead Book Festival
is taking place during this September’s
Wanstead Fringe, so why not use your
summer break for some pre-reading?
Headlining the Festival is one of the UK’s
greatest living authors, Jonathan Coe, who
has been chronicling the changing nature
of family and national life since he rose to
prominence with What a Carve Up in 1994, and
then most famously with The Rotters Club in
2001, which was adapted for TV. His new novel,
Bournville, takes a sweep of post-war British
history and gives a few well-aimed jabs. It’s
a fantastically vivid portrait of how we see
ourselves, which makes him just the person to
headline the Festival (and an ideal candidate
for holiday reading).
The question of how we see ourselves is also
raised by Paterson Joseph’s The Secret Diaries
of Charles Ignatius Sancho. It’s a novelised
version of diaries written in the 1700s by
Sancho who escaped as an infant from a
slaving ship, becoming a musician, actor, antislavery
campaigner and the first black person
to vote in a British election.
Tim Burrows’ book The Invention of Essex
asks where the idea of political and fashion
stereotypes about Essex came from. White
stilettos and go-faster stripes led to Essex Girls
and Essex Man – popular culture definitely
still has its views about the county which is
so close to Wanstead (and of which, until the
1960s, Wanstead was actually a part).
Helen Day will be discussing her work
championing Ladybird Book artists. They
captured another view on our recent past – a
combination of neatly observed street scenes
for hundreds of books which became many
children’s gateways into reading.
Artists have a particular gift of seeing the
world about them, and this is the subject of
the new book See What You’re Missing by the
BBC’s former arts editor Will Gompertz, now
artistic director at the Barbican, who will be
jumping on the Central Line to come and
speak to us.
This is just a sample of the authors who will
be taking part this year. The full programme
– and tickets – will be available online.
Details will also appear in the Wanstead
Village Directory next month. And if you’re
still looking for that summer read, you can
see books from all the Festival authors in the
online Wanstead Bookshop.
Wanstead Fringe and the Wanstead
Book Festival will take place from 9 to
30 September. Visit wansteadfringe.org
For more information on Wanstead
Bookshop, visit wansteadbookshop.com
To advertise, call 020 8819 6645 or visit wnstd.com