Literary stars in London!

London is such a world hub that you have access to some amazing events and get to see your favourite stars whether they are musical, theatrical or literary!
Last week saw World Book Night roll into town.  It's a wonderful event which was held outdoors last year in Trafalgar Square but I think the literary folk got a bit too cold so this yea it moved into the Queen Elizabeth Hall, part of the South Bank complex. This was just as well, as it was a chilly wet evening again! The date was 23rd April, St George's Day but more relevant for this night, is that it's Shakespeare's birthday and the day he died!
World Book Night is an evening of book readings by authors and famous book lovers and part of a major campaign to encourage reading. 25 titles are chosen each year, then 1 million special editions of these are printed and 'givers' pledge to hand out copies to those who don't regularly read. That's a lot of extra books going round to excite new readers!

Have a look through this photos gallery of some of the stars who read for us: Margaret Attwood (by video), David Nicholls (One Fine Day) Iain Banks (also known as Iain M Banks!), Mark Haddon (Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night) Andrea Levy (Small Island) and Kathy Lette (loads of best sellers).

Margaret Attwood

Iain M Banks

Kathy Lette

Andrea Levy

David Nicholls

Mark Haddon

One other bookish event worth a mention was 5x15 held in Notting Hill. These evenings bring us 5 speakers who each have 15 minutes on a topic of their choice. The guests can be anything from famous singers to TV personalities to authors or campaigners.

The last event was a great mix including Paul Conroy who was the big draw for me. He's just escaped from Syria where his colleague Mary Colvin sadly died and he arrived fresh from hospital with a drip! We had Andrew Davies who has written and adapted major TV successes including the famous Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and more recently Bleak House.  He told us just how easy it is to adapt a famous novel for TV! We were entertained by Bettany Hughes, historian TV presenter and writer, a passionate speaker, Prue Leith, the cookery master and now writer and Richard Davenport-Hines who has just published a book on the Titanic. And here they are:

Paul Conroy

Andrew Davies

Bettany Hughes

Richard Davenport-Hines

Prue Leith

That's all from literary London for now!
Sue
www.itsyourlondon.co.uk
@itsyourlondon