Join two of the UK’s best-loved journalists, Stuart Heritage and Jonathan Dean, for a lively discussion on writing, family and their anticipated new books, Don’t Be a Dick, Pete and I Must Belong Somewhere.
Don’t Be a Dick, Pete is the unconventional and laugh-out-loud biography of Stuart Heritage’s brother Pete: Alpha Male; Danny Dyer fanatic; Iron Man champion; known to his friends as ‘Shagger’ – and total antithesis of liberal, bookish, Guardian journalist Stu. Through a series of hilarious anecdotes from throughout their lives, Stu reflects on his own experiences of fraternal dynamics and what it means to be a man, a father, a husband and a brother. Described by India Knight as “fantastically funny, so touching and brilliantly written”, Don’t Be a Dick, Pete is an affectionate study of how families work.
In I Must Belong Somewhere, Sunday Times journalist Jonathan Dean delves into his family history and the diaries that his grandfather, Heinz Schapira, had written when he came to London as a young refugee in 1939 to escape his fate as an Austrian Jew. As Dean makes the journey into his family history, the fascinating story of Heinz’s escape and eventual assimilation emerges, and he discovers disturbing parallels with the situation of today’s refugees. By viewing these contemporary experiences through the prism of his family history – and vice versa – Dean creates an impassioned, profoundly timely study of what it means to be a refugee, to be European and, ultimately, to be British.
Julia Raeside has written about television for the Guardian for over 15 years. Her writing has also appeared in The Sunday Times, Red magazine, Stylist, Radio Times, the Observer, Cosmopolitan, The Big Issue and others. She regularly pops up on BBC Radio 2, 5Live and 6Music talking about TV or current affairs and is a regular contributor on Radio 4’s Today Programme, PM, Front Row and Woman’s Hour. She is also writing a book.
Interested in learning more about Newham Bookshop and some of the people connected with it? We have four lessons for classroom or family use developed from On the Record’s oral history project centered around Newham Bookshop, Writing and Reading Newham. Click here for full details.
We are proud that Newham Bookshop is LoveReading’s Bookshop of the Month. The article features a Q&A with Vivian Archer, which you can read here.
