2011 Meet the Author Season

We are now into the seventh year of the UK’s only “All-Year-Round Book Festival” with over 11,000 people having enjoyed our ongoing programme featuring celebrity authors. Our new Autumn line-up is below. Unfortunately we’ve had to cut back on the number of events as we’ve seen a significant fall in attendance over the last 18 months due to people having less money to spend for entertainment in the current recession. However, we’ve still got some major names, which we hope local people will enjoy and support so that we can continue running author evenings in the future.

 If you want to know which major names we will be getting as soon as they are confirmed then please sign up for our free e mail newsletter or sign on to our Facebook page.

SUE JOHNSTON

Date: Tues 27th September 7.45pm
Location: Hertford Theatre, The Wash, Hertford, Herts SG14 1PS
Box Office: 01992 531500
Book Online: www.hertfordtheatre.com
Price: Tickets: £12

As part of the ongoing celebrity author season, now in its seventh year, one of our best-loved actresses, star of numerous TV dramas from Brooksideto The Royle Family and Waking the Dead, comes to talk about her new autobiography THINGS I COULDN’T TELL MY MOTHER. This is an intimate and entertaining story of a working-class Liverpudlian childhood; teenage years in the booming 1960s record industry working for Brian Epstein and friends with the Beatles; and a successful and varied acting career spanning more than three decades.

STEPHANIE BEACHAM

Date: Wednesday 2nd November 7.45pm
Location: Hertford Theatre, The Wash, Hertford, Herts SG14 1PS
Box Office: 01992 531500
Book Online: www.hertfordtheatre.com
Price: Tickets: £12

She's one of the UK's leading actresses who has appeared at the National Theatre and on Broadway, as well as playing leading roles in a wide range of TV series on both sides of the Altantic from Tenko and Dynasty to Connie and Coronation Street. To celebrate the publication of her new autobiography MANY LIVES she'll be reminiscing about a life of glamour and glitz mixed with the heartache of a difficult divorce, the challenges of raising her children as a single-parent, and the trauma of a major health scare in her thirties which nearly killed her. .

CLAIRE TOMALIN

Date: Tuesday 8th November 7.30pm
Location: Haileybury, Hertford Heath, Herts
Price: Tickets: £8 from Books @ Hoddesdon 79, High Street, Hoddesdon 01992 442290

This former literary editor of The Sunday Times is one of our leading biographers of great authors, having previously written highly acclaimed and award-winning works on Samuel Pepys, Thomas Hardy and Jane Austin. She'll be talking about her major new book CHARLES DICKENS: A LIFE in which she paints an unforgettable portrait of another literary giant, capturing brilliantly the complex and contradictory character of this great novellist who was also a hardworking journalist, the father of ten children, a tireless walker and traveller, and a supporter of numerous liberal social causes.