Ken Worpole & Melissa Benn: Brightening from the East

Ken Worpole, ‘a literary original, a social and architectural historian whose books combine the Orwellian ideal of common decency with understated erudition’ (New Statesman), has written on many subjects during his long career, from cemeteries to hospices to the novels of Alexander Baron, but he has often returned to the subject of his beloved Essex. His latest essay collection, Brightening from the East, focuses on the natural and built landscapes of the ‘region of the mind’ that is the estuarine marshlands of the Thames and the East Anglian coast, bringing us stories of radical communities and new ways of living.

Worpole was in conversation with writer and journalist Melissa Benn; the evening was hosted by writer and producer Gareth Evans.