A selection of bookshop readings, performances, literary lunches, salons, festivals and other writerly goings-on are listed here and regularly updated.
For your wider literary and cultural fix, check out the in-person and virtual event listings at the British Library, the London Review Bookshop, Waterstones, English PEN, the Southbank Centre, publisher and author websites and social media streams, as well as those of your local organisations and venues.
—
to Tuesday 2 June
The Conversation 2026 Spring Season: Beyond Algorithms. Beyond Orthodoxy. Real Insight for a Just World
St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 4JJ
7 pm to 8:30 pm
£10 in-person or live stream + £3.95 booking fee
Buy all conversations for just £45
The Conversation 2026 Spring Season, held in the atmospheric Crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields, explores social justice and how we imagine the world with curiosity, knowledge and wisdom – a humane intelligence that values insight and understanding over news and information. The interviews take place live and online, chaired by series director Peter Florence, Caitlin McNamara and Sam Wells. They last an hour followed by a 30-minute public Q&A, then a book-signing and informal conversation.
Tuesday 24 February
Adam Price: Greenland – Power and Glory
Monday 9 March
Carole Cadwalladr: How to Survive the Broligarchy
Tuesday 24 March
Hallie Rubenhold: The Women
Tuesday 7 April
Daniel M. Davis: World Health Day
Tuesday 21 April
Mya-Rose Craig: Birdgirl
Tuesday 28 April
Kate Bowler: Joyful Anyway
Tuesday 26 May
Armistead Maupin: 50 Years on Barbary Lane
Tuesday 2 June
Sarah Churchwell: The American Dream at 250
More info and book
—
Monday 23 February to Friday 20 March
Fatima Bhutto The Hour of the Wolf UK tour
A searing, intimate memoir, The Hour of the Wolf is the story of how Fatima Bhutto freed herself from the tight, dangerous coils of a man’s manipulative charm. It’s a tale that crosses continents, travels into myth, literature, astronomy and art, and explores Fatima’s own yearning for motherhood. By her side for the entire journey is Coco: a small, ferociously loyal Jack Russell terrier. Heartbreaking yet hopeful, this kaleidoscopic memoir is a testament to resilience, self-acceptance, the restorative power of friendship, and humanity’s connection to nature.
Monday 23 February
Daunt Books Summertown, 247 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 7HN
in conversation with Elizabeth Perry
7 to 8:30 pm
£7
More info and book
Tuesday 24 February
Veranda Books, 7 Seymour Place London W1H 5BA
in conversation with Sana Goyal
6:30 to 8:30 pm, FREE
More info and book
Thursday 26 February
Bookhaus, 4 Rope Walk, Bristol BS1 6ZJ
in conversation with Nikesh Shukla
6 to 8 pm
£7
More info and book
Wednesday 18 March
Waterstones, 150-152 King’s Road, London SW3 3NR
7 to 8:30 pm
General admission £10; Ticket and book £15
More info and book
Thursday 19 March
Pages of Hackney at Round Chapel Old School Rooms, 2 Powerscroft Rd, London E5 0PU
in conversation with Sonia Faleiro
7 to 8:30 pm
£6
More info and book
Friday 20 March
Daunt Books Festival
Daunt Books, 83-84 Marylebone High Street, London W1U 4QW
in conversation with Georgina Godwin
12 to 1 pm
£8
More info and book
—
Thursday 5 & Friday 6 March
Robert Macfarlane: Is a River Alive?
At once Macfarlane’s most personal and most political book to date, Is a River Alive? is an exhilarating and intensely thought-provoking examination of the idea that rivers are not merely landscape features or matter for human use, but are in fact living entities in their own right. Now in paperback.
Thursday 5 March
Daunt Books Marylebone, London W1U 4QW
in conversation with Adam Weymouth
7 pm
£12
More info and book
Friday 6 March
Stratford Literary Festival
Rother Street Arts House, Stratford-upon-Avon CV37 6LU
in conversation with Fiona Lindsay
6 pm
£20/£15 students
More info and book
—
Thursday 12 March
Nation of Strangers: Ece Temelkuran in conversation with Brian Eno
Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London SE1 8XX
7:45 pm to 9 pm
£15 + £3.50 booking fee; limited concessions
‘Dear stranger. Are you home? Do you feel at home? For how much longer?’
Across the world, the number of refugees and exiles, the dispossessed and displaced, the politically homeless and the economically excluded is growing. In the decade since she left her own home of Türkiye, Ece Temelkuran has been a political Cassandra, warning those convinced it couldn’t happen in their country that fascism is coming. Her new book, Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century, is a series of letters from one stranger to another. Politically attuned and deeply personal, this heartening correspondence is poetic yet precise. It shows how, as we all become strangers, our home will depend on the strength we find with one another.
More info and book
—
Thursday 12 March to Thursday 2 April
John Lanchester: Look What You Made Me Do UK tour
A compelling black comedy of resentment and entitlement from the master of the state-of-the-nation novel, Look What You Made Me Do follows the story of two very different women: Kate, thirty years into her seemingly idyllic marriage with an enviable North London life and Phoebe, a young screenwriter, who has created the year’s hit TV show, Cheating. When Kate’s world takes a darker turn, she thinks she sees details in the hit show that only she and her husband Jack could possibly have known. But who has betrayed who? Who gets to tell whose story?
Thursday 12 March
London Review Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, London WC1A 2JL
in conversation with Hattie Crissell
7 pm
£10
More info and book
Tuesday 17 March
Backstory, 71 Balham High Rd, SW12 9AP
7:30 pm
Ticket only £15/Ticket & book (RRP £20) £28
More info and book
Friday 20 March
Daunt Books Festival
in conversation with Alex Preston
Daunt Books, 83-84 Marylebone High Street, London W1U 4QW
6:30 to 7:30 pm
£12
More info and book
Tuesday 31 March
An Evening with John Lanchester
Booka, 26-28 Church Street, Oswestry SY11 2SP
6:30 to 9 pm
Ticket only £10/Ticket & book £20
More info and book
Thursday 2 April
Topping & Company, York Street, Bath BA1 1NG
6:30 for 7 pm
Ticket & book £20/Early bird £12/Scholar £5
More info and book
—
Wednesday 22 to Sunday 26 April
Cambridge Literary Festival Spring Festival
Various times and venues
Events individually priced or free
The CLF Spring Festival returns with a line-up including Harry Baker, Margaret Busby, Mary Berry, Jung Chang, Ed Davey, Greg Doran, Alan Hollinghurst, Yasmin Khan, John Lanchester, Wayne McGregor, Andrew Miller, Sarah Perry, Harriet Tyce and Zadie Smith. Other highlights include the return of the CLF lecture series with Caroline Lucas on the global climate crisis, Deborah Levy delivering the Room of One’s Own lecture and Rachel Clarke delivering the State of the Nation lecture. The free children’s programme returns with a new dedicated Children’s Zone where there will be storytelling, crafts and activities throughout the weekend.
More info and book
—
Ongoing
Arvon courses and retreats
Online or in-person, from one hour at home to five weeks at historic writers’ houses in Devon, Shropshire and Yorkshire, you can find inspiration, support and transform your writing with Arvon. Discover a range of creative writing courses and events for writers of any genre and any level of experience.
Residential courses for Winter/Spring 2026 include Writing a Novel: Make Your Story Happen with Charlotte Mendelson, Lottie Moggach and Ben Markovits (Totleigh Barton, 23 to 28 February); Fiction and Non-Fiction: Crafting Your Writing Life with Sarah Moss and Harriet Harris, (Lumb Bank, 23 to 26 February); Poetry: Time and Space for Your Creativity with Jane Commane, Mona Arshi and Gregory Leadbetter (The Hurst, 2 to 7 March); Short Story: Making Every Word Count with Vanessa Onwuemezi, Chris Power and Anna Wood (Lumb Bank, 2 to 7 March); and Editing Fiction and Non-Fiction: How to Refine and Polish Your Work-in-Progress with Hannah Chukwu, Claire Lynch and Ed Wilson (Totleigh Barton, 2 to 7 March).
More info and book
—
