Author Louis de Bernières reads from his new memoir Smelling of Rooks, with Q&A and book signing.
Louis de Bernières is coming to The Portico Library on Saturday 24 October, where he'll be reading from his new memoir, Smelling of Rooks. It's a proper afternoon session: he reads, there's a Q&A with the audience, a book signing, and a brief acoustic song or two to round it off.
If you know him, you know him as the author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Birds Without Wings. Smelling of Rooks comes from a different place entirely—it's built from the Facebook posts he wrote between 2015 and 2024, a decade's worth of reflections, anecdotes and observations on music, cats, motorcycles, politics, parenting and the perils of social media. He sets it all against the rolling fields and modest peaks of what he calls the 'Norfolk Alps'. It's an accidental memoir of ordinary days, told with the warmth, eccentricity and mischief that have made him one of Britain's most beloved storytellers, and it's described as a candid, comic and irresistibly companionable portrait of a writer's life in rural Norfolk.
The talk is part of the Reuniting the Portico Library collection, held at the library itself—a Manchester venue whose exhibition area and café, The Portico Kitchen, sit under a Georgian dome. It's a good spot for this kind of thing: quiet, light, and with a bit of room to breathe.
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It runs from 3 pm to 4 pm, with doors opening at 2:45 pm, so you've got plenty of time to get settled before he starts. Tickets are £6.13 via Eventbrite.
