An interview with American actor Michael Brandon whose autobiography 'That's All I'm Sayin’ is released on May 1st.

 

Expect anecdotes from his early days growing up in Brooklyn, about his acting career, moving permanently to England, and the inside track on his marriage to his Dempsey & Makepeace co-star – and, of course, lots of A-List name-dropping!

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Join Rick Mayston for an entertaining and fascinating interview with Michael. Michael will sign copies of his book after his time on stage.

Rick Mayston interviews Roy Larner who, on June 3rd, 2017, confronted three machete wielding terrorists who drove a rented van into pedestrians at London Bridge and then continued slashing, stabbing and murdering innocent people in nearby pubs and restaurants.

 

Completely unarmed, Roy refused to run away, famously proclaiming ‘I'm Millwall’, standing his ground to save many lives and receiving horrible wounds in the process. He has still had no criminal compensation or recognition for his actions, and his book ‘The Lion of London Bridge’ is soon to be dramatized for television.

 

Join Rick Mayston as he talks with Roy about his experience and memories of this well documented event.

Renowned artist and author Darren Coffield talks about his latest written work, ‘Queens of Bohemia and Other Miss-Fits’, which is sure to be a cult favourite alongside his previous two books ‘Factual Nonsense: The Art and Death of Joshua Compston’ and ‘Tales From the Colony Room: Soho’s Lost Bohemia’

 

Born in London in 1969, Darren studied at Goldsmiths College, Camberwell School of Art and the Slade School of Art in London where he received his Bachelor of Fine Art in 1993. He has exhibited widely in the company of many leading arVsts including Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Patrick Caulfield and Gilbert and George at venues such as the Courtauld InsVtute, Somerset House and Voloshin Museum, Crimea – and his works are to be found in many collections around the world. 

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https://queensofbohemia.co.uk/

Social media content creator, blogger – and now author – Ruth Crilly tells us all about her first book, ‘How Not to be a Supermodel’, which was published last year and instantly became a Sunday Times bestseller. Perhaps not surprising since her blog, ‘A Model Recommends’ has been read over fifty million times!

 

‘How Not to be a Supermodel’ is a rambunctious memoir laying bare the secrets of the modelling industry in deeply controversial times. With the dubious honour of being one of the UK's original social media talents, having launched her blog and YouTube channel long before the term ‘social media’ was even coined, Ruth is perhaps uniquely qualified to give insights on this cultural ‘hot potato’.

 

Referring to the copious and detailed diaries and notes she kept during the Noughties and which informed and inspired the book, Ruth will be talking about how she used what was a very, er ... colourful ... career as a springboard into a new one as a writer.

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https://www.ruthcrilly.co.uk/​

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https://www.amodelrecommends.com/

Using extensive leaks, first-hand accounts, and the Byzantine paper trail left in the group’s wake, Jack Margolin traces the Wagner Group from its roots as a battlefield rumour to a tens of thousands-strong private military enterprise that eventually comes to threaten Putin himself.

 

He shows Wagner mercenaries committing atrocities, plundering oil, diamonds, and gold, and changing the course of conflicts from Europe to Africa in the name of the Kremlin’s strategic aims.

 

Jack Margolin is an independent international crime and conflict expert whose work focuses on the use of emerging technology and novel methodologies to expose the drivers of political violence. He has studied private military contractors and Russian criminal networks since 2014 and is the author of ‘The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army’ (ReakVon Books, 2024).

 

At C4ADS, a non-profit investigating crime and conflict, Jack has led conflict finance investigations that have been cited by the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Economist, the Financial Times and Politico. He lives in Washington, DC.

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https://jackmargolin.com/

Mark Kitto has been detained and accused by the Chinese government of being a Muslim separatist, has published two racy China memoirs, countless articles on the country, and now his first novel is out. It’s called ‘China Running Dog’ and it tells the REAL story. He is also an actor with a highly praised one man show, ‘Chinese Boxing.’ He’s joining us to talk about his novel and its setting, Shanghai in the (really) naughties.

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Mark is a fluent Mandarin speaker who spent 18 years in China where he built a media business that was eventually seized by the state. Hence the career-ending separatist accusation. While in China he walked across the ‘Desert of Death’, performed with the Shanghai People’s Arts Theatre, restored and lived in a missionary’s villa on a mountaintop and wrote the most-read feature article ever published by Prospect Magazine, ‘You’ll Never be Chinese.’

 

He now lives in Norfolk and is an actor and writer. ‘China Running Dog’ is out for review and the first responses are promising and very positive. It will be/was published in March 2025.

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https://www.chineseboxing.co.uk/

Thomas has written prose and poetry since he was fourteen years old, eventually developing a style synthesising that of Silver Latin, baroque, and modernist writers. His work has been deeply influenced by his long-standing interests in philosophy (particularly existentialism, and Neoplatonism), linguistics, mathematics, comparative mythology, and psychoanalysis.

 

Thomas studied Classics at the University of Cambridge, where he focused primarily on comparative linguistics and the composition of ancient languages.

 

This session covers a philologist's communication with his wife, which deteriorates after he begins playing chess with a male student: believing that the moves of the game provide better knowledge of another’s soul, he comes to distrust language itself and its ability to express anything truthful. Primarily, the work deals with epistemology and pragmatics.

 

Formally it is classical, exploiting the dramatic capabilities of platonic dialogue, but in manner it is a synthesis of the baroque, the modern, and the surreal. The style, though contemporary, employs the abundant rhetorical figures, aphorisms, and pith of Silver Latin prose.

Hilaire Belloc’s book ‘The Path to Rome’ describes his journey on foot from Toul, NE France to Rome in 1901, on which he broke most of the vows he made before his journey except that of arriving on his target date of 29th June. 

 

Sean's Path to Rome, however, took not a single step from his intended starting destination of Canterbury. Instead, his pilgrimage was more the road not taken than the one taken – although he did make it to Rome, more by luck than judgement – and not without some very human trials and tribulations.

 

In fact, as Sean puts it, ‘It took over ten years to do so from my first and only pilgrimage along the Pilgrim’s Way: Winchester to Canterbury’, suggesting that  his journey was more of an Odyssey than a pilgrimage.

Many women aged over forty struggle with constantly being tired – and Health Coach Evie loves helping them change their daily habits to reclaim that energy, vitality and strength – and to boost their metabolisms with the right food, exercise and stress management.  

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​https://www.eviegoodey.com/

What happens when a story becomes a mirror of the past? When the story turns back on itself, and the ghosts of history are endlessly reflected?

 

Clarissa O’Reilly explores how Joseph O’Connor’s ‘Ghost Light’ does just that. The novel reimagines the lives of the actress Molly Allgood and playwright John Millington Synge, whose love is sternly opposed by friends and family due to their differences of class, religion and heritage. However, ‘Ghost Light’ does more than tell a historical love story – blending fiction, memories and imagination, it creates a world where past and present constantly intertwine. 

 

This session is for anyone fascinated by how stories shape identity, how history refuses to stay in the past, and how fiction can expose the unresolved contradictions of colonial selfhood.

 

Clarissa O'Reilly is a literary scholar with a double major in Comparative Literature and English from Gothenburg University. 

 

Joseph O’Connor’s ‘Ghost Light’, with its layered storytelling and its reflections on history’s recursive hold on identity, is a novel Clarissa keeps returning to – it is the focus of her bachelor thesis and of her future research. This talk is her first public engagement as she steps into the literary world, bridging academic research with public discussion.

CEO and founder of the Literary and Multimedia Agency Agent Fox Media, Rick has served on the Hertford Club committee for over two years. This is Rick’s third year interviewing at the festival, having introduced and interviewed an array of his colourful clients including John Lyons, Neil Pearson, Sara Challice, Stephen Gillen and Helen Lederer.

 

Rick’s interviews are thorough and full of fun, leading questions helping to uncover the real personalities and stories behind his guests’ public biogs. 

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https://www.agentfoxmedia.com/

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