Farewell to 2024 -- a final online gathering

To end the year you're invited to a final online gathering on Monday 30th December at 7pm (UK time). If you're not already a subscriber please leave your full name and email address at the foot of this page. This is a free event.

The photographer Anne Worthington will join us from Manchester to discuss her extraordinary debut novel The Unheard, which I chose as my Book of the Year for Review 31.

Published by Confingo, it's available here: https://www.confingopublishing.uk/product-page/the-unheard   

In the second part of the programme, and to mark what would have been his 80th birthday, we'll be celebrating the life, work and legacy of Gilbert Adair (1944-2011), the novelist, critic, film historian, poet, translator and cultural commentator. 

                                                                                            Gilbert Adair

To mark the occasion we'll share a screening of Sailor Beware, a magnificent lowbrow farce much admired by Adair and the subject of a superb essay (which will be read on the night). The film made a star of the actress Peggy Mount in the role she was born to play: the formidable Emma Hornett, the mother of all battleaxes.

                                                                 Peggy Mount as 'Ma' Hornet

Synopsis: 

Able Seaman Alfred Tufnell is looking forward to leaving the navy and marrying his beloved, Shirley Hornett. An orphan from naval care homes, the service is the only family he's ever known and Alfred can't wait to settle down with Shirley and begin life on their own terms.

He's shocked and hurt, however, to discover that Shirley's battleaxe mother Emma (Peggy Mount), has put a deposit down on a house for the pair, just 3 doors from the family home. He can cope with his future mother-in-law in limited doses, but living on her doorstep...?

                                             

                                                                          Sailor Beware