Tuesday, 9th of May 7-8:30pm

at the Herne Hill Baptist Church, Half Moon Lane

(while the library is closed for renovations)

Christopher Bowden presents his latest novel. It’s a literary mystery about hidden lives and second chances, moving between a house in a south London square, a Brooklyn bookstore, a theatre in Marseille, and a cottage on the east coast of England. His six previous novels are The Blue Book, The Yellow Room, The Red House, The Green Door, The Purple Shadow and The Amber Maze. Christopher Bowden lives in south London.

Reserve a spot on eventbrite

Tuesday evening, 11 April - 7 to 8:30, at the Library (or online)

Local author Adam Mars-Jones has an international reputation - his works include novels (The Waters of Thirst, Pilcrow and its sequel Cedilla) short story collections (Lantern Lecture and Monopolies of Loss) the novella Batlava Lake, a book of essays (Blind Bitter Happiness) and Noriko Smiling (a book about Ozu's film Late Spring) and numerous perceptive book reviews (appearing frequently in London Review of Books). He will join us on Tuesday evening (11 April) to talk about about his funny and touching family memoir Kid Gloves: A Voyage Round My Father.

When his widowed father - once a high court judge and always a formidable figure - drifted into vagueness if not dementia, Adam took responsibility for his care.

In the aftermath, he has written a book studded with particular emotions and events. Highly entertaining about (among other things) families, the legal profession, and the vexed question of Welsh identity. It is also a book about himself - including that implausible, long-delayed moment, some years before, when he told his father about his sexual orientation. The supporting cast includes Ian Fleming, the Moors Murderers, Jacqueline Bisset and Gilbert O'Sullivan.

Organised by the Friends of Carnegie Library

Please register with eventbrite for a link to the online livestream.

Essays on 18th and 19th Century Women - at the library (or online)

Tuesday evening 14 March, 7-8:30

Meet Eliza Fenning, a servant whose ability to read proved fatal; teenager Maria Glenn, dragged through the courts by a vengeful would-be suitor; Margaret Larney, pregnant and condemned to death; Mary Ashford, whose woeful end was staged on the opening night of a famous theatre; and French anarchist Louise Michel, welcomed, to the consternation of the great and the good, on a fact-finding visit to a London workhouse.

Join historian Naomi Clifford to discuss her new book, Out of the Shadows, a collection of essays which explores the lives of women whose stories we have forgotten or never known. The 19th-century societies for the aid of discharged prisoners. Above all, the extraordinary work of Susanna Meredith with women in Vauxhall.

Organised by the Friends of Carnegie Library

Register to attend online via Eventbrite

At the library, Tuesday 14 February - 7pm to 8:30pm (or online, livestream)

Presented by Friends of Carnegie Library

When Emily meets the enigmatic and dazzling actress Tamsin, her life changes.

Tamsin is the friend Emily has always longed for: beautiful, fun, intelligent, mysterious - and soon Emily is neglecting her previous life to bask in her glow. But Tamsin has been hiding a secret about her past, something that threatens to unravel everything . . .

Young Women is a razor-sharp novel that slices to the heart of our most important relationships and asks how complicit we all are in this world built for men.

Jessica Moor studied English at Cambridge before completing a Creative Writing MA at Manchester University. Her debut novel Keeper was published in 2020 to rave reviews and critical acclaim. Jessica Moor was selected as one of the Observer's debut novelists of 2020, and her debut, Keeper was chosen by the Sunday Times, Independent and Cosmopolitan as one of their top debuts of the year. Keeper was nominated for the Desmond Elliott Prize and an Edgar Award.

Young Women is her second novel.

Follow Jessica on Twitter @jessicammoor

To attend online, via livestream, please register at Eventbrite

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.