Swindon Festival Of Literature Lucy Mangan and Alice Jolly

Reading, writing, and good books – with LUCY MANGAN and ALICE JOLLY

Might you be someone who comes alive when you pull a new book off the shelf, stays up late reading just one more page, and packs their suitcases with clothes wedged between books instead of the other way around? Do you think fiction can get closer to the truth than so called facts? Do you get lost in a good book? If the answer is yes, then Bookish is a love letter to you!

Broadcaster, columnist, features writer, and TV critic, Lucy Mangan is the author of Bookish, which brims with literary insights, wry observations, and brilliant recommendations. Lucy’s other books include Bookworm, My Family and other Disasters, and Hopscotch & Handbags.

Why would a child not speak but instead, write, draw, keep a pet rat, hide in a cupboard, and have an ambition to own a thousand matchboxes? Should she trust a doctor, who, in his Viennese clinic, lets children play all day and values matchboxes?

In her latest book, The Matchbox Girl, prizewinning novelist, playwright, and creative writing tutor, Alice Jolly, tells a story that needed to be told, of a generation of lost children, and asks big questions that need honest answers.