Speaker: Kevin Davey.
Priestley, distinguished novelist, playwright (some fascinating ‘time’ plays), screenwriter, essayist, influential broadcaster in 1940 and founding member of CND, deserves huge celebration. ‘He flipped and flopped over the question of European unity in a way very familiar to us all today. He was also a libertarian socialist, with little time for top down state intervention, and a populist who would recoil from those claiming that title in our time’. Kevin is the author of Radio Joan (2020), an encounter with an elderly former Blackshirt and lover of William Joyce, and Playing Possum (2017) in which T S Eliot is tracked through Kent in the 1920s and today. He was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2017. Tonight includes a reading from They Walk in the City, a utopian play by JB, by members of the Leytonstone Library Playreading Group.
7.30pm Buffet (please bring an item if you can: vegetarian or vegan only). 8.00pm Talk and discussion till 10pm, then back to buffet.