Marion Gibson
in conversation with Syd Moore
Witchcraft: A History in 13 Trials
This event took place on 25th June at Essex Record Office, Chelmsford, as part of Essex Book Festival 2024.
The world of witch hunts and witch trials sounds antiquated, relics of an unenlightened and brutal age. However, ‘witch hunt’ is heard often in the present-day media, and the misogyny it is rooted in is all too familiar today. A woman was prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcraft Act as recently as 1944.
This book explores the history of witchcraft and witch hunts through the stories of the victims, stories which have too often been overshadowed by those of the powerful men, such as King James VI and I and “Witchfinder General” Matthew Hopkins, who hounded them.
Marion Gibson was in conversation with Syd Moore, author of The Essex Witch Museum Mysteries series.
Listen – Marion Gibson in conversation with Syd Moore, Witchcraft: A History in 13 Trials
Wes Streeting
in conversation with Professor Pam Cox
One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up
This event took place on 30th June at Lakeside Theatre, University of Essex, as part of Essex Book Festival 2023.
The then, shadow Health Secretary was in conversation with Professor Pam Cox to discuss his hot-off-the-press memoir.
Brought up on a Stepney council estate, the young Wes Streeting saw his teenage parents struggle to provide for him. In One Boy, Two Bills and A Fry Up he vividly portrays the power of family and education to help him transform his life.
The honest, uplifting, affectionate memoir is a tribute to the love and support which set him on his way out of poverty, and informs everything about Wes Streeting’s mission now in politics.
The lively event was hosted by Colchester councillor, Professor Pam Cox. It was a heart-warming evening with Wes’ mum, aunt and partner in the audience, plus a surprise visit from one of Wes’ school teachers.
Listen: Wes Streeting in conversation with Pam Cox, One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up
Carole Angier in conversation with Jonathan Lichtenstein
Speak, Silence: In Search of W. G. Sebald
This event took place on 28th June at Lakeside Theatre, University of Essex, Colchester, as part of Essex Book Festival 2022.
W.G. Sebald was one of the most extraordinary and influential writers of the twentieth century. Carole Angiers digs deep into a creative mind on the edge, finding profound empathy and paradoxical coldness, saving humour, and an elusive mix of fact and fiction in his work, as well as in his own life.
Based on years of archival research and extensive conversations with those closest to Sebald, Speak, Silence is a unique, ferociously original portrait that pushes the boundaries of biography as its subject pushed the boundaries of fiction.
