A Little, Aloud: The London Launch
Yesterday afternoon Jane and I left sunny Liverpool to head down to (a rather grey) London and meet up with Angie for the launch of A Little, Aloud in Waterstone's, Piccadilly. Worried that no-one would turn up due to the tube strikes (I have poor luck when it comes to strikes interrupting my plans) and if we would even get across London in time ourselves, we were overjoyed to see the room filling up with plenty of friendly faces and some unknown ones.
Hosted by Jane, the event was full of warmth and energy and we were joined by the endearing and amusing Richard Briers, the elegant Joanna Trollope and our chief patron, Blake Morrison, all of them doing readings from the book, all of them brilliantly: Blake read Seamus Heaney's poem 'Digging' and Gillian Clarke's 'Miracle on St. David's Day', Joanna Trollope read Saki's 'The Lumber Room', and Richard Briers read 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. Angie spoke movingly about the genesis of the book - reading aloud with groups in care homes - and then read Keats' 'A Thing of Beauty', beautiful itself.
A Little, Aloud is out in the world now, and we're all incredibly proud.
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