Francis Spufford in Conversation: Celebrating Nonesuch

It’s the summer of 1939. London is on the brink of catastrophic war. Join us for an evening with Francis Spufford as he introduces us to his newest protagonist, Iris Hawkins, an ambitious young woman in the stuffy world of City finance set during the terrors of the London Blitz.

What was supposed to be one night of abandon draws her instead into an adventure of otherworldly pursuit – into a reality where time bends, spirits can be summoned, and history hangs by a thread. Soon there are Nazi planes overhead. But Iris has more to contend with than the terrors of the Blitz. Over the rooftops of burning London, in the twisted passages between past and present, a fascist fanatic is travelling with a gun in her hand.

Francis Spufford is the author of five highly-praised works of non-fiction, most frequently described by reviewers as either ‘bizarre’ or ‘brilliant’, and usually as both. His debut novel Golden Hill won the Costa First Novel Award, the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and the British Book Awards Debut Novel of the Year. His second novel, Light Perpetual, was awarded the 2022 Encore Award and longlisted for the Booker Prize. His third novel, Cahokia Jazz, was published in 2023. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and lives near Cambridge.