Literary Lunch with Victoria Hislop

Hotel du Vin, Tunbridge Wells, Thursday June 11 at 12.30pm

Tickets £39.50 including Champagne reception and two course lunch.

Bookings: contact Maria Lemont, 60a Westwood Road, Tunbridge Wells TN4 8TP or phone 01892 549452

Interview with This is Sussex, May 29, 2009

"Sissinghurst-based novelist Victoria Hislop has become a publishing phenomenon in the space of just a few short years.

Her debut novel, 2005's The Island, held the number one slot in The Sunday Times paperback chart for eight consecutive weeks and has since sold more than a million copies.

The 49-year-old's follow-up, The Return, has also enjoyed a spell at the top of the best-seller lists since its release in paperback last month.

The book is set during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s and explores the conflict through the eyes of the fictional Ramirez family. Victoria spent time researching the story in Spain and found it a very delicate subject for Spaniards to this day.

The mother-of-two – a former travel journalist and wife of broadcaster and Private Eye editor Ian Hislop – spoke to Go! about the book ahead of her appearance at a literary lunch as part of the Tunbridge Wells Music Festival.

Do you enjoy speaking at literary lunches?

"I do enjoy them. Writers spend a long time locked inside a room and inside their own heads and I like meeting people so it's a very good opportunity. I genuinely like people's feedback, their comments and the questions they ask."

What will you speak about?

"I will be talking about the Spanish Civil War in a historical way. I think people are sometimes surprised as they don't know that's what they're going to get, but that's the background to my novel The Return. It was a three year period of conflict and a lot of English people don't know that much about it."

(read more)

Private Passions (09 May 2009)

Victoria talks to "The Scotsman" about "The Return" keeping secrets, and researching her thrid novel…

"VICTORIA HISLOP certainly knows HOW to keep a secret. No mean feat, considering she's married to a man who has made it his business to uncover cracking news stories about the great and good doing bad things which they would prefer to remain hidden.The wife of the more famous Ian, editor of Private Eye and panellist on the popular BBC1 show Have I Got News For You, Hislop admits: "I am rather good at keeping secrets, especially from Ian."

Indeed, she's currently ferreting away all sorts of things from her nosy husband, including the small library of books she's reading to research her third novel…". Read More…

April 2009

On April 16 2009, The Return, Victoria's much bestselling second novel of passion and secrets of the Spanish Civil War is published in paperback.

"…Hislop's history is reliable; her judgement sound; and the destiny of the Ramirez clan both holds and moves us. The Return aims to open the eyes of readers who mostly won't have read the voluminous literature of the war. The battle of memory against forgetting has to be fought on all fronts, and Hislop deserves a campaign medal for her efforts."

Boyd Tonkin, The Independent, April 9 read more…

February 2009

Victoria Hislop joined a list of International authors taking part in the Emirates Airline International Festival of Literature in Dubai 1 - 26 February, 2009. For more information on the festival, click here

Audio and Video

Watch Victoria discussing "The Return" at the Oldie Literary Lunch

Listen to Victoria discuss her novel "The Return" with Jenny Murray