Alan Bennett reads from diaries at Primrose Hill book fest

The 90-year-old playwright and author will read from his famous journals at the 'celebration of local writers and writing' in Primrose Hill.

He has published several volumes of diaries, including most recently Keeping On Keeping On, and will appear on November 3rd at the library in Sharpleshall Street.

Primrose Hill resident Alan Bennett will read from his journals at the book festival next month (Image: PA)

Other talks over the weekend include Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee in discussion with former BBC Political Editor Andrew Marr about her memoir, An Uneasy Inheritance, BBC broadcaster Petroc Trelawny talking to Nicholas Crane about his travel book on Cornwall, journalist Hadley Freeman in conversation, and former National Theatre director Nicholas Hytner talking to Hampstead playwright David Hare about 'The State of Theatre'.

Events run over the weekend of November 2nd and 3rd with tickets costing £10.

Chalk Farm-based author Francesca Segal joins the line-up on Saturday afternoon to talk about her new novel Welcome to Glorious Tuga.

Chalk Farm author Francesca Segal will talk about her four book Welcome to Glorious Tuga at the Primrose Hill book festival (Image: Sophie Davidson)

Raised in Golders Green, the former King Alfred pupil won the Costa First Novel award in 2012 for her debut The Innocents set among North London's Jewish community.

Her third book Mother Ship was a diary-memoir about the traumatic experience of giving birth to twins two months premature, and the solidarity she found among her fellow parents in the hospital.

She describes her fourth novel - the first of a trilogy - as a "deliberate reaching out for joy".

It follows London vet Charlotte Walker, arriving on a remote island of wide beaches and endless sunshine to find a warm eccentric community of good people eager for her to care for their animals.

Andrew Marr who lives in Primrose Hill be be in discussion with Polly Toynbee at the festival (Image: Archant)

But her year on the paradise island to study rare tortoises has a personal motive - connected to the mysterious father she never knew. While trying not to fall for the handsome island doctor she tries to unravel the mystery that has dominated her life.

"It's such a joy to be doing a community festival and it's very fitting that it's a hyper local event," she said.

The book's origins sprang from feeling she needed community in her life.

"We have had some very dark years, society feels so polarised and frustrated, I was craving community and human connection in a place where people can feel differently but still care for each other," she explains.

"I had this understanding that I could go anywhere I wanted in my writing life. I am not one of those novelists who have stacks of ideas I have to wait until something swallows imagination whole and this world has completely taken over my imagination.

"I wanted something that feels real and nourishing and thought provoking but also a place of hope for humanity."

Segal hails from literary stock - her father Erich wrote the bestselling novel Love Story and its film adaptation - and she says of writing: "I never imagined doing anything else."

"I was an only child until the age of nine and I spent that time talking to myself," she adds.

"I was always stealing my dad's typewriter and clattering away writing stories to myself."

Winning a major prize with her debut novel was an "incredible gift" that not only gave her the confidence boost, but set her on track for a writing career.

"It changed my life, it was the permission slip I shouldn't have needed."

Although she hadn't planned on writing about herself, it was the birth of twin daughters nine years ago that spurred her memoir, which she describes as a "love letter to the NHS that was there to catch us."

"I never imagined writing such a personal story - after the girls were discharged, two months after they were born  - people urged me to write about it, and I always said 'never.'

"But something changed when they were two. I felt able to write about it. I understood the meaning of what had happened to us and that it was a story that might help other people.

"It was all there in my diaries, I just had to set it free."

Now those daughters are "amazing and keeping me on my toes."

They are also avid readers who have their own email hotline to Primrose Hill Bookshop, co-organisers of the Book Fest.

"I am obsessed with the bookshop and my children now have a relationship with them too, they communicate independently by email.

"I know it's a real privilege to have a London childhood - Primrose Hill is full of people who have been there for years and there's that feeling of living in a Nina Stibbe memoir."