Edinburgh Gliterary Lunch with Harriet Constable and Vanessa Beaumont

The Instrumentalist
Harriet Constable

The Author

Harriet Constable is a journalist and filmmaker based in London. Her work has featured in outlets including the BBC, Economist and New York Times. She is a graduate of Colombia University’s School of Journalism summer school, is a Pulitzer Center grantee and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

The Book

Venice. 1704. In this city of glittering splendour, destitution is never far away. At the Ospedale della Pietà, abandoned orphan girls are posted every day through a tiny gap in the wall.

Anna Maria is just one of the three hundred girls growing up within the Pietà’s walls – but she already knows she is different. Obsessive and gifted, she is on a mission to become Venice’s greatest violinist and composer, and in her remarkable world of colour and sound, it seems like nothing will stop her.

When the maestro selects her as his star pupil, Anna Maria knows she must do everything in her power to please this difficult, brilliant man. But as Anna Maria’s star rises, threatening to eclipse that of her mentor, her dream is thrown into peril…

From the jewelled palaces of Venice to its mud-licked canals, this is a story of one woman’s ambition, loss and triumph.  It is also about who we choose to remember, and who lie forgotten.

Praise for Harriet Constable

‘Enthralling, passionate, vivid. The Instrumentalist is a marvel’  Kiran Millwood Hargrave

The Other Side of Paradise
Vanessa Beaumont

The Author

Vanessa Beaumont studied Classics at Oxford University before joining Short Books, the independent publisher in London, where she was Commissioning Editor for 8 years, editing both fiction and non-fiction. She co-ran the literary agency Prentice Beaumont, before deciding to take the reckless decision to embark on a novel. She lives between West London and Northumberland, and is married with three children.

The Book

London 1921.  Jean Buckman, a young and innocent American heiress arrives in England to find a society decimated by war but resolutely clinging to the status quo. She marries Edward Warre an engaging but complex man and the owner of a once great but now struggling estate.

As the marriage falters, Jean spends her summers in the South of France where she embarks on a passionate affair that will have repercussions for the rest of her life. Two sons arrive, the oldest, heir to the estate, is not the true bloodline. But Edward needs Jean’s money to survive, and she needs her husband’s silence.

The Other Side of Paradise is the heart-breaking story of a family ripped apart by the shackles of inheritance and the rules imposed upon them by a society that cannot face the truth.

Praise for Vanessa Beaumont

‘A breathtakingly good, heartbreaking and utterly absorbing story’.  Cressida Connolly, author of After the Party