March of Time - London

Another chance to see Ken Worpole talking about Alexander Baron, and Ray Banks takes his Gun to a reading more exotic than normal:

Wednesday 10 March: 8.00pm
The Classic Slum? Fiction, myth and history on Hackney's wild borders. A new edition of Alexander Baron's novel, King Dido, published by Five Leaves, brings the shocking history of the 'Old Nichol' slum in Shoreditch to life again. For the Victorians and the Edwardians this handful of streets on Hackney's borders represented everything that was evil and unredeeming in decent society. Yet were they quite as bad as they were thought to be? In this joint talk, historian Sarah Wise, author of The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum, and Ken Worpole, who has written the introductory essay to the new edition of King Dido, discuss the many ways in which journalists, social campaigners and novelists have sought to provide a definitive picture of these once notorious streets.Stoke Newington Bookshop, 159 Stoke Newington High Street, London N16 0NY
Tickets: £2 (includes a glass of wine and discount on featured books).
Info: 0207 249 2808
Fri 12 March: 7.00pm
AVANT! NOIR
Music from Led Bib & Get The Blessing, Dark fiction from Toby Litt, Cathi Unsworth, Courttia Newland & Ray Banks (author of Gun, published by Five Leaves). Visuals from Huzzah!! Noir
A night of criminal fiction, comic art and music of a darker hue. Enter a world where murder smells like honeysuckle and lunch is drunk from a bottle. In Toynbee Theatre’s art deco, velvet auditorium, four authors present a selection of bleeding-edge crime stories, intercut with animated chapters of online, collaborative comic strip Huzzah!! Noir.
Toynbee Theatre £10 / £12 door
Info: www.londonwordfestival.com
Tuesday 16 March: 7.30pm
Alexander Baron - novelist of London's street life and politics. The Guardian described Alexander Baron (1917 - 1999) as 'the greatest British novelist of the last war and among the finest of the postwar period.' Jewish-born in Hackney, Baron was amongst those idealists who tried to fight in Spain, who got caught up in political and literary life in London, fought in several major wartime battles, and who, after the war became the author of a series of gripping novels about war and London life in the East End, and in Soho. Three of the most famous are From the City, from the Plough (1948), The Lowlife (1963) and King Dido (1969).This talk will be given by writer Ken Worpole, who knew Baron.
Upstairs Room, The Wheatsheaf Pub, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1.Tickets: £3.00
Info: http://www.sohemians.com/SOHabout.html