Maria Chamberlain will discuss her moving book at the Library on Tuesday evening, 10 January 2023 - 7pm to 8:30pm

Maria Chamberlain’s book, Never Tell Anyone You’re Jewish is a story of two assimilated Jewish families in Nazi-occupied Poland in the eye of the Holocaust. The two families were joined by marriage after the war and Maria was born soon after. Not surprisingly her mother initially urged her to hide her Jewishness. Later, in old age, she relented, recognising that testimonies make history, and that the lives of those who perished deserve to be celebrated. The material in the book is compiled from recounted memories of the survivors, unfinished memoirs, letters, photographs, and historical archives.

There are uplifting stories: her great uncle's survival on Schindler's List, and her charismatic, heel-clicking maternal grandfather's survival hiding in plain sight in a quasi-Nazi organisation. Maria documents the kindness of strangers, miraculous escapes, courage, guile, strength, and resilience. Her parents adopted different strategies for survival, and afterwards responded very differently to the traumas they had suffered.

The last part of the book covers Maria's early life in Stalinist Poland and her family's emigration to Edinburgh, where she and her parents led fulfilled lives as scientists. Despite this, the traumas continue to ripple through her life and following generations.

Organised by the Friends of Carnegie Library.

Please register for free ticket with eventbrite and for link to online livestream

(tickets not necessary to attend in-person - walk-ins fine)

Author Paul Baker will be at the Carnegie library on Tuesday, 13 December - 7pm to 8:30pm

Polari was a form of language adopted chiefly by gay men in the first half of the 20th century as a form of self-protection and a way of expressing humour. For many speakers it consisted of a small vocabulary although some people used it in a way that began to approach a full language. In the 1960s it was popularized in the BBC radio comedy series Round the Horne. But in the 1970s it started to be abandoned.

This book traces Polari’s historical roots and describes its linguistic nuts and bolts. It then outlines the ways that it was used by its speakers, the reasons for its decline into obscurity and the ways that aspects of the language have been rediscovered and repurposed in recent decades.

Relying on a wide range of interviews and textual sources, Professor Paul Baker tells the story of British LGBTQ+ history through the lens of Polari as well as reflecting on the ups and downs of researching this fascinating form of language over the last 25 years.

Event organised by the Friends of Carnegie Library

Attend at the library - or register with eventbrite for livestream.

Tuesday evening, 8 November - 7-8:30pm in the library or livestream online

Join sociologist and author Keith Kahn-Harris to discuss his latest book on language - The Babel Message

Keith Kahn-Harris is a man obsessed with something seemingly trivial - the warning message found inside Kinder Surprise eggs:

WARNING, read and keep: Toy not suitable for children under 3 years. Small parts might be swallowed or inhaled.

On a tiny sheet of paper, this message is translated into dozens of languages - the world boiled down to a multilingual essence. Inspired by this, the author asks: what makes 'a language'? With the help of the international community of language geeks, he shows us what the message looks like in Ancient Sumerian, Zulu, Cornish, Klingon - and many more. Along the way he considers why Hungarian writing looks angry, how to make up your own language, and the meaning of the heavy metal umlaut.

Overturning the Babel myth, he argues that the messy diversity of language shouldn't be a source of conflict, but of collective wonder! This is a book about hope, a love letter to language!

Event organised by the Friends of Carnegie Library

To attend online livestream register with eventbrite.

At the library (or online)

Tuesday evening, 11 October 7pm to 8:15pm

Can the UK expand Heathrow airport, bringing in 700 extra planes a day, and still stay within ambitious carbon budgets? One legal case sought to answer this question. This book traces the dramatic story of how the case was prepared - and why international aviation has for so long avoided meaningful limits on its expansion.

Celeste Hicks is an independent journalist who specialises in Africa and the Sahel. She has lived in Chad, Mali and Somalia.

This event is organised by the Friends of Carnegie Library

To attend online livestream, please register here - eventbrite