Great to be in conversation with Iain Sinclair at Wanstead Book Festival on 24th September. You can book tickets here
I’m delighted to be celebrating Dalloway Day at the brilliant Hatchards Piccadilly on 22nd June 2024. I’ll be in conversation with writer Matthew Beaumont “to reflect on walking in London both in Mrs Dalloway’s 1920s and today.”
“In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.” Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
Tickets available here
Here’s the full unedited video of my wonderful conversation with Iain Sinclair at Hatchards Piccadilly on 25th January. The event was to discuss my new book, Welcome to New London – journeys and encounters in the post-Olympic city but we wandered as we’re wont to do and even had a chat about Iain’s latest book Pariah Genius.
Buy Welcome to New London: journeys and encounters in the post-Olympic city from Hatchards here
Iain Sinclair’s new book Pariah Genius is published on 25th April 2024
Chuffed to bits to be doing an event at Bookseller Crow bookshop in Crystal Palace on 28th March with the brilliant Travis Elborough.
Get your tickets here: https://booksellercrow.co.uk/event/26190/?instance_id=338
Welcome to New London is not just a book about a city; it’s a vivid, personal account of a city in flux, where the author’s passion for exploration and his commitment to bearing witness to change converge.
Our host for the evening, Travis Elborough, is described by The Guardian as ‘one of the country’s finest pop culture historians’. Travis has been a freelance writer, author, broadcaster and cultural commentator for over two decades now and his well-loved books include Wish You Were Here: England on Sea, The Long-Player Goodbye, a hymn to vinyl records that inspired the BBC4 documentary When Albums Ruled the World, Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles and Atlas of Vanishing Places, winner of Edward Stanford Travel Book Award in 2020. He is a regular host and cherished author at our Crow events. Tickets £5 (include a drink) https://booksellercrow.co.uk/shop/john-rogers-with-travis-elborough-event/
What an amazing night at Hatchards Bookshop on Piccadilly with the great Iain Sinclair talking about my book, Welcome to New London and getting a preview of Iain’s forthcoming publication, Pariah Genius.
After the talk and book signing, I wandered with a friend up to the Old Coffee House in Soho to remind myself of the glory of Brodie’s Beer (brewed in Leyton), sinking a couple of pints of Piccadilly Pale. It seemed the most appropriate place to delve into Iain’s ‘fictionalised biography of the afterlife of the photographer John Deakin‘.
The Buxton reference in the Truman’s mirror nicely echoed the discussion with Iain over the influence of the Buxton family in East London and their mention in Welcome to New London. Iain also recalled his time working at Truman’s with the sculptor and author Brian Catling in the 1970s.
Chuffed to be doing an event with Iain SInclair at the wonderful Hatchards Bookshop on Piccadilly, 25th January 2024. Get tickets here https://JohnRogersAtHatchards.eventbrite.co.uk
Back on 7th September saw a wonderful event at Swedenborg Hall in Bloomsbury with a screening + Q&A of my film, Walking the visionary London of Emanuel Swedenborg. Back on a freezing January morning, with Iain Sinclair and Stephen McNeilly we retraced the footsteps of the hugely influential 18th Century scientist, philosopher, mystic and theologian. London played a huge role in the Swedenborg story, with Swedenborg Hall in Bloomsbury continuing his legacy.
Our walk started in Warner Street, Clerkenwell where Swedenborg had his most famous vision in a Chop House. We then walked on along the course of the River Fleet to Bakers Yard / Cold Bath Square where Swedenborg died in 1772. From here we continued along Saffron Hill and Hatton Garden to Fetter Lane, the site of the Moravian Chapel that Swedenborg attended. Our Swedenborg walk took us along Fleet Street and up Ludgate Hill to Paternoster Square linking together a series of locations associated with Swedenborg’s publishing and writing career.
We then headed out to East London, passing along Leman Street, Cable Street, past Wilton’s Music Hall to Swedenborg Gardens where Swedenborg was buried in the Swedish Church, and the whole story of Swedenborg’s head, which deserves a book in its own right.
Watching the icy clouds of breath in the film offered some faint relief from the sweltering temperatures in the hall. The discussion was illuminating as ever with Iain Sinclair and Stephen McNeilly. The bust of Swedenborg ever present looming over our shoulders, and I was tickled to discover that it was modelled on the wrong mummified head.
