London Gliterary Lunch with Christy Lefteri & Sonia Purnell

The Book of Fire
Christy Lefteri

The Author

Brought up in London, Christy Lefteri is the child of Cypriot refugees.  She holds a PHD in creative writing from Brunel University, where she was a lecturer for many years.  Her debut, A Watermelon, A Fish and a Bible, was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She is the author of Songbirds and the international bestseller and prizewinning The Beekeeper of Aleppo.

The Book

In present-day Greece, deep in an ancient forest, lives Irini, a musician who teaches children to read and play music; her husband, Tasso, who paints pictures of the forest and Chara, their daughter, whose name means joy. One fateful day, a wildfire chases birds across the sky before consuming their lives as it races toward them.

Months later, as the village tries to rebuild, Irini stumbles upon the man who started the fire, a land speculator who had intended only a small, controlled burn to clear forestland. He is dying, although the cause is unclear, and in her anger at all he took from them, Irini makes a split-second decision that will haunt her.  As the local police investigate the suspicious death, Tasso struggles to cope with the overwhelming loss. Only his young daughter gives him hope for the future.

Praise for Christy Lefteri

‘As with The Beekeeper of Aleppo, Lefteri transports the reader to a once lush and now destroyed world’.  Kristin Hannah, author of The Nightingale

The Kingmaker
Sonia Purnell

The Author

Biographer and journalist Sonia Purnell has written for The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, and The Sunday Times. She has won many prizes for her writing including A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of Virginia Hall, WWII’s Most Dangerous Spy, which was also a New York Times bestseller; First Lady: The Life and Wars of Clementine Churchill  and Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition.

The Book

In the obituaries for Pamela Churchill Harriman, she was written off as a social climber. Much of what Harriman did behind the scenes to shape the twentieth century has remained invisible until now.  With a wealth of fresh research, Purnell unveils the spectacular story of how Harriman left an indelible mark on the world.

Her influence began at age twenty, when her father-in-law, Winston Churchill, engaged her as a ‘Secret weapon’, seducing Americans over to the British cause against Hitler. Later in the US she hand-picked Bill Clinton from obscurity. Over five decades and two continents, she influenced figures from the Kennedys and Nelson Mandela to Truman and Sinatra.

Written with the novelistic richness and investigative rigour, The Kingmaker sets out Harriman’s rightful place at the heart of recent history.

Praise for Sonia Purnell

‘Fascinating and revelatory, written with great aplomb, insight and shrewd analysis ‘. William Boyd