7th October, 7.30pm - Jonathan Coe, Proof of My Innocence

Backstory, 71 Balham High Rd, SW12 9AP

We're thrilled to welcome back to Backstory Jonathan Coe, the award-winning and bestselling author of Bournville, Mr Wilder and Me, and Middle England, among many others. He'll be discussing his latest novel, Proof of My Innocence, which is a funny, state-of-the-nation book about a young woman just out of uni.

About the book:

Post-university life doesn’t suit Phyl. Time passes slowly, living with her parents and working a zero-hours contract at Heathrow Airport, while her budding plans of becoming a writer are going nowhere. That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay.

He’s been investigating a radical think tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that’s been scheming to push the British government in an ever more extreme direction. When he follows this story to a conference in a rambling old hotel deep in the Cotswolds, events take a bizarre and sinister turn. Soon he is caught up in a world of cryptic clues, secret passages and, eventually, murder.

In the end, despite the efforts of a suitably eccentric detective, it falls to Phyl herself – ably assisted by Chris’s outspoken adopted daughter Rashida - to look for answers to the fatal mystery. But will they lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old?

Tickets Available:

Ticket only - £15 (This ticket does not include a copy of the book. You can decide to buy a copy on the night, but this will be charged in addition, at the full price of the book.)

Ticket & book  (RRP £9.99) - £20 (To collect on the night.)