Join Paul Wood for a guided walk through Dulwich Village to celebrate the publication of the revised London’s Street Trees.

Paul, London’s best known tree expert will lead a circular walking tour from Village Books (Dulwich Village). He’ll be pointing out the great diversity of trees planted on our streets, followed by a book signing at the bookshop. There will also be wine and nibbles on your return to the bookshop.

The first guide to reveal the full, amazing variety of London’s street tree population, London’s Street Trees is now an agenda-setting, canonical work. The capital’s street tree population has continued to grow and gloriously diversify and the book is now in it’s third edition with new revisions and additions.

Every year boroughs all over the capital are planting new species, from winter-flowering cherries to brighten up winter to Hackney’s shocking pink-leaved Toona sinensis.

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In January 2022, the Cellan-Jones-Coyle family said goodbye to their beloved elderly Collie Cross, Cabbage. Newly retired, Rory had become inseparable from her during daily pandemic walks which alleviated his Parkinson’s Disease symptoms. After a grief-stricken year, Rory and his wife Diane contemplated opening up their hearts again and came across a dog listing for ‘a kind girl who loves everybody and is just looking for her forever home’. Bright-eyed, big-eared and trembling, Sophie arrives in London from Central Europe in a van on 17th December.

Rory holds the Romanian rescue in his arms, excited for their first walk together – unaware it is more than a year ahead. Sophie from Romania follows the journey of her adoption – from her battles with anxiety, to the joys of play and her first foray outside. This is the story of #SophieFromRomania, told in full for the first time.

Rory Cellan-Jones was the BBC’s principal technology correspondent until 2021. He now writes an influential Substack column on medical innovation, tech and his beloved Romanian rescue dog, Sophie. Through this and his Twitter following @ruskin147 he spreads awareness of technological developments in the fields of medicine, health care and – more specifically – Parkinson’s. Together with Jeremy Paxman and several others he has begun a new podcast on Parkinson’s called Movers and Shakers .

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Stand-up comedian Jenny Eclair was the first woman to win the Perrier Award – the UK’s top comedy award – in 1995. Jokes, Jokes, Jokes is Jenny’s very funny memoir about elbowing her way into the male dominated world of comedy.

Daughter of Major Derek Hargreaves (spy?) and June Hargreaves (spy’s wife?) sister of Sara (born to be Head Girl) and Ben (the usurper), Jenny’s comedy career took off via drama school, cider, sausage rolls, sleeping with men who looked like they lived under a carpet, punk poetry, anorexia, bedsit misery, waitressing and not really having a clue about anything.

This was a world before microphones, mobile phones, before everyone gave up smoking or started taking coke. Jenny Eclair was on the comedy circuit before there really was a comedy circuit and was the first woman to win the Perrier Award along the way. Still gigging to sell-out crowds forty years later, Jenny Eclair’s memoir charts her childhood, her career and the changing face of women in comedy, all told with hilarious brilliance.

Jenny is well known for her starring role on BBC 1’s Grumpy Old Women which ran for three series and was then adapted into four live shows touring across the UK and Australia, all of which Jenny co-wrote and starred in. Continuing her partnership with Judith Holder, producer of Grumpy Old Women, Jenny co-hosts the podcast Older and Wider the podcast for people who don’t know what a podcast is, a weekly ramble about life, with additional swearing. She is also the writer of the much-loved BBC Radio Four Little Lifetimes monologues which ran for seven series.

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In his most thrilling novel yet and the first in a series, William Boyd, Britain’s greatest storyteller transports you to the vibrant streets of sixties London, as an accidental spy is drawn into the shadows of espionage and obsession…

In Gabriel’s Moon , Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a tragedy: every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals.

As Gabriel’s reluctant initiation takes hold, he is drawn deeper into the shadows. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler, he becomes ‘her spy’, unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, it will be the revelations closer to home that change the rest of his story.

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the author of sixteen highly acclaimed, bestselling novels and five collections of stories. Any Human Heart was longlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into a TV series with Channel 4. In 2005, Boyd was awarded the CBE. Over a glittering forty year career, William Boyd has sold over 2 million books through TCM, winning countless awards in the process.

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Rick Stein is back with a major new BBC Two tv series and book, Rick Stein’s Food Stories, a celebration of the best of British food and the way we eat now.

Rick Stein’s Food Stories is a glorious collection of over 100 new recipes that celebrate the flavours, ingredients and stories of modern Britain. Rick travels every region of the British Isles to include not only traditional favourites but also his twist on new dishes that have become part of our national cuisine like kubo pork belly adobo, arros roja, paneer jalfrezi and chicken katsu curry.

Join Village Books and Alleyn’s Schools Enterprises for an evening with Rick Stein and Good Housekeeping’s Gaby Huddart where he’ll be discussing his delicious and inspiring journey through Britain’s joyous and every-changing food scene.

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A glorious new edition of the original gem at the heart of bestselling food writer Diana Henry’s much-loved repertoire, Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons gathers together dishes that combine colourful, aromatic and perfumed ingredients to bring pleasure to your kitchen and an intoxicating whiff of warmer climes to your table.

‘An all-time classic. The book I’m happy to return to, over and over again. It’s an utter joy to cook from, as it is to dig deep into the stories’ Yotam Ottolenghi

Diana Henry is one of the UK’s best-loved food writers. She has regular columns in the Sunday Telegraph and Waitrose Weekend , her work has appeared in BBC Good Food , House & Garden , delicious. and beyond, and her broadcast appearances include BBC Radio 4. Diana has won numerous awards for her journalism and books.

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Robert Harris is back with a new masterpiece…

Summer 1914. A world on the brink of catastrophe.

In London, 26-year-old Venetia Stanley – aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless – is having a love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state.

As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer is assigned to investigate a leak of top secret documents – and suddenly what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that will alter the course of political history.

Seamlessly weaving fact and fiction in a way that no writer does better, Precipice is the thrilling new novel from Robert Harris.

Robert Harris is the author of fifteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy – Imperium , Lustrum and Dictator – Fatherland , Enigma , Archangel , Pompeii , The Ghost , The Fear Index , An Officer and a Spy , which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave , Munich , The Second Sleep, V2 and Act of Oblivion . His work has been translated into forty languages and nine of his books have been adapted for cinema and television.

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Clare Chambers, award-winning author of Small Pleasures is back with a new novel exploring love, family, and the joy of freedom.

Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with Gil: a charismatic, married doctor.

One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen’s home. A thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.

Shy Creatures is a life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness.

Clare Chambers’s first job after university was working for Diana Athill at André Deutsch. Her first novel Uncertain Terms was published in 1992 and she is the author of eight other novels. Small Pleasures , her first work of fiction in ten years, became a word-of-mouth hit on publication, was selected for BBC 2 Between the Covers book club and for BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. It also won Pageturner of the Year Award at the British Book Awards 2022 and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2021.

Clare will be interviewed by Alex Peake-Tomkinson.

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Join Village Books and Alleyn’s Schools Enterprises for a delicious evening of food and conversation with Sophie Wyburd.

With 100 recipes for satisfying everyday meals, Tucking In shows us time and again that good food does not need to be complicated. Whether it’s a bowl of something hearty and warming on a weekday night, or a relaxed feast for friends squeezed around your table, these recipes make cooking a decidedly non-stressful affair. Tucking In features everything from laidback traybakes – for ease and reduced washing-up – to moreish pasta dishes, but there are also handful of more adventurous recipes, such as Spiced Blackened Salmon Tacos, along with some delicious vegan and vegetarian options.

Sophie Wyburd is a cook, recipe writer and presenter from South London. Her varied career has seen her working as a restaurant chef, a food stylist, and food lead at Mob . She now brings simple, comforting home cooking to the masses via social media and her newsletter Feeder , hosts supper clubs all over London, and is the co-host of podcasts I’ll Have What She’s Having and A Bit of a Mouthful .

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Join us for an afternoon with Cathy Newman where she’ll be discussing her new book The Ladder: Life Lessons From Women Who Scaled The Heights (& Dodged The Snakes)

Inspired by Cathy’s show on Times Radio , The Ladder brings together discussions between women – about work, love, growth, challenge, the big decisions and the stories of their lives.

Offering inspiration and wise counsel from some of the world’s most acclaimed and influential women, this book is an insight and a trove of solidarity, turning over ideas of change, anger, illness, imposter syndrome, self-knowledge, purpose, how to not panic in a crisis and how to stop worrying you’re boring when there isn’t one.

Cathy Newman is one of Channel 4 News’ main studio presenters. She is an award-winning investigative journalist whose scoops have allegations of sexual harassment in Westminster, an investigation into a British paedophile who abused vulnerable boys in Kenya; and allegations of violent abuse by the British barrister John Smyth. She was the only broadcast journalist to travel with Angelina Jolie and the then foreign secretary William Hague to the Congo as part of their campaign against sexual violence. Cathy also hosts her own show on Times Radio. Cathy’s first book Bloody Brilliant Women was published in 2018.

A Dulwich Festival event

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