Past Events
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Jenifer Roberts began writing biography shortly after her 50th birthday – almost by accident. She was a professional photographer, having trained and worked in the old way, spending many enjoyable hours in the darkroom. She says “There were two strands to my work, portraiture and landscape photography, and I worked almost entirely in black and white. My landscapes were exhibited in England and abroad, and a book of my photographs, Spirit of the Place, was published by Creative Monochrome in 1992.”
After her mother’s death in 1985, Jenifer discovered letters written in the 1850s by a distant relative. They told a strange story which stayed in her mind. A few years later, eager to find out more, she began to research the family and, rather to her surprise, found that she was telling their stories in her head as she went along. This began her second career as a writer.
Now, almost three decades later, Jenifer has written six books of biography and narrative history, whose stories take place in the UK, Portugal and New Zealand. They are: Glass; The Madness of Queen Maria; Fitz, the Colonial Adventures of James Edward FitzGerald; The Beauty of Her Age: A Tale of Sex, Scandal and Money in Victorian England; and Entertaining the Braganzas. Her most recent title is Where the Wind Blows.
Join Jenifer on 25 January at 12pm, as she chats to Lucinda Hawksley about the intriguing subjects of her books and her fascinating career.
Join Humphrey and Lucinda for our brand new segment: the Goldster Community Chat. This is your chance to meet other members and chat about your experiences of Goldster, as well as to talk about the Goldster Conversations events you’ve enjoyed and what you’ve learned from our Goldster interviews on PPG and the Book Club.
This is also your chance to talk about what you would like to see happening on Goldster in the coming year, and Lucinda and Humphrey will be able to talk about what we’ve got planned for Book Club and PPG.
Our Community Chat events are open to everyone who is a part of the Goldster community. These events are not recorded, everyone is unmuted and everyone gets the chance to meet other Goldster members.
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This month we’re getting seasonal with the Queen of Crime. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas was written just before WW2, and tells the story of the tyrannical Simeon Lee, who has decided to gather his family around him for Christmas…. As Poirot himself comments in the book “There is at Christmas time a great deal of hypocrisy, honourable hypocrisy, hypocrisy undertaken pour le bon motif, c’est entendu, but nevertheless hypocrisy!”
At 12pm on 29 December – when Christmas Day is over and we’re heading to New Year – join Lucinda Hawksley to chat about a festive season Agatha Christie style. We’ll look at the characters, the plot, the storyline, and hope that no one at Goldster suffered the same kind of Christmas as the Lee family.
Our Book of the Month events are open to everyone, whether you’ve had the chance to read the book or not. These events are not recorded, everyone is unmuted and everyone gets the chance to meet other Goldster members as part of the Book Club.
This December, we have a double helping of Hawksleys, as Humphrey and Lucinda join you for a seasonal chat in the Goldster Conversation Christmas Special. Come along and talk about the books you’ve enjoyed and what you’ve learned from our Goldster interviews. They’ll be chatting about their own books and would love you to share what’s been happening with your own writing.
There will also be a chance to talk about what you would like to see happening on Goldster in the new year, and Lucinda and Humphrey will be able to tell you what we’ve got planned for Book Club and PPG.
So make Goldster part of your festive season and join our Christmas Special party on 28 December at 12pm.
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Phillipa Ashley was one of the first authors to come onto the Goldster Book Club, and she is making a welcome return to talk about the art of seasonal writing. Phillipa is a Sunday Times, Amazon and Audible best-selling author of uplifting romantic fiction, and on 15 December, she’ll be talking to Lucinda about her Christmas-themed novels.
After studying English at Oxford University, Phillipa worked as a copywriter and journalist before turning her hand to writing. Her debut novel, Decent Exposure, won the Romantic Novelists’ Association New Writers Award and was filmed as a Lifetime TV movie, 12 Men of Christmas, starring Kristin Chenoweth and Josh Hopkins.
Since then, her novels have sold well over a million copies and been translated into numerous languages. Phillipa lives in an English village with her husband, has a grown-up daughter and loves nothing better than walking the Lake District hills and swimming in Cornish coves. Join her and Lucinda at 12pm on 15 December for a festive Goldster Conversation.
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Join us in person or online for a very special Riverstone Live event, when Lucinda Hawksley will be chatting to Goldster’s much-loved Tai Chi teacher, Andy Yau.
Andy was born and raised in Hong Kong, where he trained in Musical Theatre Dance at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. It was in Hong Kong that his passion began for Martial Arts and Kung Fu, at a young age. He then developed a love of Tai Chi in his 20s. Andy moved to the UK (and is now a UK citizen) to pursue an MA in acting at The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. His acting career has taken him around the world with tours including Peter Pan, Anything Goes and Thoroughly Modern Millie.
After working as an actor in both Hong Kong and in the UK for 15 years, Andy decided to focus his career on teaching movement and Tai Chi at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Besides working as a Tai Chi instructor and a movement coach, Andy also works as a Cantonese interpreter for the NHS. Andy is proud to teach Tai Chi for Goldster.
Put the date in your diary: 12pm on 14 December. You can join Andy and Lucinda – as always – on Zoom, or Goldster members can apply to be in the live audience in London, by emailing [email protected]
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On 23 November, Lucinda will be talking to lucid dreaming and sleep expert Charlie Morley, about his new book Wake Up to Sleep. Charlie is a best-selling author who, for the past 6 years, has been developing a trauma-sensitive, breath- & body-based approach to stress or trauma-affected sleep. Originally developed for British military veterans, his system has now been adapted for the general public. It combines breathwork, lucid dreaming and Yoga Nidra, to help regulate the nervous system and integrate trauma – and, it works!
In 2018 he was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship grant to research PTSD treatment in Military Veterans and continues to teach people with trauma-affected sleep a set of practices called Mindfulness of Dream & Sleep. Charlie believes that most sleep hygiene tips are either ineffective or unsustainable. Instead he offers a pioneering new approach to troubled sleep and trauma which has been proven to improve sleep quality in 87% of participants.
Join Lucinda and Charlie to find out more about how to improve your sleep patterns and how you can use lucid dreaming methods to transform nightmares.
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In his new book Dickensland: The Curious History of Dickens’s London, Lee Jackson traces the fascinating history of Dickensian tourism. He explores both the reality and myths of ‘Dickens’s London’ – from vanishing coaching inns to submerged riverside stairs, hidden burial grounds to apocryphal shops – as well as the manufactured worlds of film, television, even a Dickens theme park. Dickensland takes readers on a journey that is simultaneously real and imaginary, navigating the peculiar hinterlands where fact meets fiction.
Dr Lee Jackson is a well-known expert on Victorian London. His other books include Dirty Old London, Walking Dickens’ London, and Palaces of Pleasure. Lee has lectured on Victorian topics for libraries and museums throughout London and is an academic advisor to the Charles Dickens Museum. On 17 November, he’ll be joining Goldster presenter and Dickens descendant Lucinda Hawksley for the Inside Story. Join them at 12pm.