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Trouble-Maker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford
Date and Time: March 25th 2026, 6.30pm Venue: Hatchards, 187 Piccadilly, London W1J 9LETickets: https://carlakaplanathatchards.eventbrite.co.uk/Carla Kaplan will be in conversation with Helena Kennedy about her vivid and amusing biography of Jessica Mitford, the remarkable sister who ran away to the Spanish Civil War and settled as a Communist in America, becoming ‘Queen of the Muckrakers’ in the course…
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Authors’ Club: Sara Wheeler
Date and time: Wednesday 22 April, 7pmVenue: National Liberal ClubTickets: Apply here The club is delighted to join forces for the first time with the Authors’ Club to welcome the travel writer and biographer Sara Wheeler to discuss her authorised biography of fellow travel writer Jan Morris. Publication coincides with the centenary of Jan Morris’ birth. When…
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Frances Wilson at Maggs
Frances Wilson (right), with Rachel Holmes chairing, gave a compelling talk at Maggs Bros about her biography Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark (Bloomsbury). The audience heard about, among other things, Spark’s ‘spookiness’ – ‘Everything that happened to her, she’d written about’; about the recurrence in her life and work of people with the…
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Save the date – Hatchards Best First Biography prize
Prize-giving on Thursday 5 March Hatchards Piccadilly.
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Jane Dismore shortlisted
Congratulations club member Jane Dismore’s book No Country for a Woman: The Adventurous Life of Lady Dorothy Mills, Explorer & Writer (The History Press, 2025) has been shortlisted in the Biography/Memoir category for the East Anglian Book Awards 2025. https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/writing-hub/eaba-shortlist-25/
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Club member scales Yala Peak
Club member Rosemary J Brown has been awarded an Authors’ Foundation grant for books in progress from the Society of Authors (SoA). Endowed by Lady Antonia Fraser, the grant supports the research and writing of a biography of a woman or women. Brown used it to join an all-woman mountaineering expedition to Yala Peak (5,550…
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New book from Paul Smiddy
The latest book from Club member Paul Smiddy is Moonlight Crusaders: Special Duties Pilots over Occupied Europe (Osprey).It explores the creation, development and actions of the Special Duties squadrons, which carried spies, political figures and documents in and out of Occupied Europe. Packed with first-hand accounts and expert research, this book dives into the history…
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BLYTHE BIOGRAPHY WINS NEW ANGLE PRIZE
Blythe Spirit: The Remarkable Life of Ronald Blythe, by Ian Collins, has won the 2025 New Angle Prize for Literature. The judges said: ‘Ian Collins moved us with the obvious affection that he has for Ronald Blythe. It is a work that is rich, insightful in its research, which gives a comprehensive but totally fascinating…
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Gillian Tindall 1938-2025
The Biographers’ Club is very sorry to report the death of Gillian Tindall, an active member for many years and an outstanding biographer and historian. Gillian Tindall began her authorial career as a novelist, winning a Somerset Maugham award, but became better known for biographies such as her life of George Gissing, and for histories…
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Christmas Party and Elizabeth Buccleuch Prize-Giving
Wednesday 10 December, 6.30pm to 8.30pm, at Albany, PiccadillyJoin us for drinks and nibbles at our Christmas party, and for the presentation of the Elizabeth Buccleuch Prize, given for the best proposal by a first-time biographer. Tickets: £20 (members and guests). PLEASE PAY BY BANK TRANSFER OR THROUGH YOUR BRANCH. Book and get bank details…
