We are excited to announce a special literary evening featuring award-winning author Thomas Harding in conversation with former New York Observer book editor and author Adam Begley. The event will focus on Thomas’s latest book, “The Maverick: George Weidenfeld and the Golden Age of Publishing” which is a biography of the influential publisher George Weidenfeld.

Born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1919, Weidenfeld fled to England in 1938 to escape the Nazi regime. He went on to become one of the most prominent figures in the publishing industry, championing some of the most important voices of the twentieth century, including Vladimir Nabokov, Mary McCarthy, Saul Bellow, Harold Wilson, Isaiah Berlin, Simone de Beauvoir, and Henry Kissinger.

“Harding has doggedly unearthed fascinating and surprising tales from George Weidenteld’s life as he rose from poverty and Nazi persecution to become one of the world’s most powerful publishers…in a richly told narrative that leaves the reader awed.” – Washington Post Magazine

Adam wrote a seminal article in the New York Times in 1989 called  Ann Getty: Publish and Perish? – The New York Times (nytimes.com).

Thomas and Adam, will each share their own experiences of their interviews and writings of George Weidenfeld which will bring about some very interesting insights and discussion.

About Thomas Harding

Thomas Harding is a bestselling author whose books have been translated into more than 16 languages. He has written for the Sunday Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian, among other publications. He is the author of HANNS AND RUDOLF, which won the JQ-Wingate Prize for Non-Fiction; THE HOUSE BY THE LAKE, which was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award; BLOOD ON THE PAGE, which won the Crime Writers’ Association “Golden Dagger Award for Non-Fiction” and FUTURE HISTORY, which was shortlisted for the German Children’s Literature Award 2021. His last book, WHITE DEBT, was published in January 2022.

About Adam Begley

For twelve years the books editor of The New York Observer, Adam Begley is the author of three biographies, Houdini: The Elusive American (Yale, 2020); The Great Nadar: The Man Behind the Camera (Tim Duggan Books, 2017); and Updike (Harper, 2014). A graduate of Harvard College, he received a doctorate in American Literature from Stanford University in 1989. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2010 and a Fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography in 2011. He has lived in England since 1997.