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  • Colin Bramwell: Fetch

    Heron Books 7a Regent Street, Bristol, United Kingdom

    Join us to launch Colin Bramwell's poetry collection Fetch.

    Colin Bramwell was born in Ayrshire, grew up in Fortrose on the Black Isle and lives in Edinburgh. His poetry and criticism has appeared in Poetry Review, Irish Pages, The London Magazine, PN Review, Magma, The Rialto, New Writing Scotland, Interpret, Poetry Scotland, Poetry London, Poetry Ireland Review and The Scotsman, as well as in his pamphlet The Highland Citizenship Test. He was the runner-up for the 2020 Edwin Morgan Prize. His translations of Taiwanese poets won the John Dryden Translation Competition and the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize. Fower Pessoas, his rendition of Fernando Pessoa into Scots, was published by Carcanet in 2025 and was shortlisted for Scots Book of the Year.

    In Celtic folklore a fetch is a shadowy doppelganger that appears from the Otherworld, portending the beholder’s fate. Your fetch ‘fetches’ you to the afterlife, willingly or otherwise. Bramwell’s poetry uses the fetch as a model to explore a number of overlapping binaries - between the reader and the poem, most of all.
    Fetch also meditates on the differences between music and speech, the sacred and the profane, the written and the real, humanity and nature, Scots and English. Incorporating multitudes of modes, forms, registers and subjects, Bramwell converses with the Anglo-Celtic lyric tradition in our own time and in his own distinctively amiable fashion. In other words, this poet takes poetry seriously - but not too seriously.
    Fetch is an astonishingly musical tour-de-force from one of Britain’s most exciting new poets, in which reverence and irreverence, religion and faithlessness, the living and the dead, nearly rhyme.

    Do join us for a drink, a reading and a discussion of the book. 

  • Bristol Humanists: Robin Dunbar on How Religion Evolved and why it survives

    Bristol Grain Store Bristol YHA, 14 Narrow Quay, Bristol

    We look forward to supporting this event organised by the Bristol Humanists with Robin Dunbar, author of How Religion Evolved.

    When did humans develop spiritual thought? What is religion's evolutionary purpose? And in our increasingly secular world, why has it endured?

    Every society in the history of humanity has lived with religion. In How Religion Evolved, its origins are tracked back to what Robin Dunbar terms the 'mystical stance,' the aspect of human psychology that predisposes us to believe in a transcendent world, and which makes an encounter with the spiritual possible. He will explore world religions and their many derivatives, as well as religions of experience practised by hunter-gatherer societies.

    Drawing on path-breaking research, clinical case studies and fieldwork from around the globe, as well as stories of charismatic cult leaders, mysterious sects and lost faiths, How Religion Evolved will offer a fascinating and far-reaching analysis of this quintessentially human impulse to believe.

    Robin Dunbar is Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford. He is perhaps most famous for the 'Dunbar Number', which is the 150 individuals that each human can sustain meaningful relationships with. His work in anthropology and psychology focuses on the mechanisms that underpin social bonding in primates in general, and humans in particular. He considers that understanding these mechanisms, which includes religion, and the functions that those relationships serve, will give us insights into how humans have managed to create large scale societies using a form of psychology that is evolutionarily adapted to very small scale societies, and why these mechanisms are less than perfect in the modern world.

    https://www.meetup.com/bristol-humanists/events/315842885/?eventOrigin=group_events_list

  • Bristol Humanists: Sian Norris on Bodies Under Siege

    Bristol Grain Store Bristol YHA, 14 Narrow Quay, Bristol

    We look forward to supporting the annual Emma Martin lecture organised by the Bristol Humanists:

    The Rights of Women with Sian Norris: Where Are We Now, and Where Do We Go Next? 

    Think today's anti-abortion ideas are rooted in religious prohibitions or arguments about where life begins? Wrong: today's anti-abortion movements is largely financed and planned by far-right extremists. Many of them are avowedly fascist and white supremacist, afraid of a "great replacement" of the world's white population by other races, who are working hard to reshape governments and policies across Europe, North America and around the world. Much of this far-right organizing and funding network, however, has been overlooked by today's feminist and left movements.

    Sian Norris is a Bristolian author and investigative journalist, specialising in women's reproductive rights and violence against women. Her recent book Bodies Under Siege is about the international rise of the far right and its impact on women's reproductive rights. She has also visited and reported from Ukraine on the Russian invasion. Her journalism has included investigations into sexual harassment in the NHS and violence in prisons. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Times, New Statesman and The I, amongst many others, and she has reported from numerous countries, including Kenya, Romania & Bangladesh . She was the founder of the Bristol Women's Literature Festival and is Senior Investigative Reporter at OpenDemocracy.

    Tickets are available here: https://wegottickets.com/f/25511/

  • Hungarian Tragedy: on Peter Fryer’s book about the Hungarian Revolution with Ben Gliniecki

    Heron Books 7a Regent Street, Bristol, United Kingdom

    Seventy years ago, in October 1956, Hungarians flooded into the streets. For eleven days they fought a brutal Stalinist dictatorship. The revolution was ultimately crushed with an iron fist and Soviet tanks. Hungarian Tragedy is an incredible contemporary account of the revolution. First published in 1956, this new edition aims to introduce those extraordinary events to a new generation. Ben Gliniecki, author of A Communist History of the British General Strike, has written the introduction to this new edition and will be speaking about the history of the revolution and Fryer's work. Please join us in the shop from 5pm for a short talk, question and answer session and chance to pick up your copy of Hungarian Tragedy. The event is free but space is limited. Please RSVP to read@heronbooks.info.

  • Brian Bilston: How To Lay An Egg with a Horse Inside

    St George's, Bristol St George’s Bristol, Great George Street, Bristol, United Kingdom

    We are very much looking forward to hosting a book stall and signing at St George's for an evening with Brian Bilston. Full details and tickets on their website.

    With over 500,000 followers on social media and a host of sell-out shows across the country, Brian Bilston is one of the UK’s most popular poets.

    He has published several bestselling collections of poetry, including You Took the Last Bus Home, Alexa, what is there to know about love? and Days Like These. His novel Diary of a Somebody was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, and he has also written collections of poetry for younger readers. In 2025 he released an album of his poetry set to music, Sounds Made by Humans, in collaboration with The Catenary Wires.

    This autumn sees Brian return to the stage with his latest book, How to Lay an Egg with a Horse Inside. Get ready for an evening of comedy and laughter, as he takes us through the hows, whys and whats of reading, writing and enjoying poetry every day.

  • Philosophy Salon: Free Speech under Fire

    St George's, Bristol St George’s Bristol, Great George Street, Bristol, United Kingdom

    Does free speech have limits? Can and should social media platforms control what their users say?

    In his new book Setting Fire to Reason, philosopher Jeffrey Howard argues that free speech is among our most important moral rights, but—like all rights—it has limits, determined by moral duties we owe to each other. Howard will be unpicking the law, morality and limits of free speech with and host Julian Baggini and political theorist Judith Squires. In the second half, the conversation will be led by your questions. Come not only to hear about free speech, but to participate in it.

    Jeffrey W. Howard is professor of political philosophy and public policy at University College London, where he is director of the Digital Speech Lab. He is the author of Setting Fire to Reason: The Ethics of Free Speech and co-editor of the journal Political Philosophy.

    Judith Squires was Professor of Political Theory and Dean of Social Sciences and Law at the University of Bristol before becoming its Deputy Vice Chancellor and Provost. The New Politics of Gender Equality is among her many publications and commissioned reports.

    Tickets from the St George's Bristol website: https://www.stgeorgesbristol.co.uk/whats-on/philosophy-salon-free-speech-under-fire/

  • Bristol Humanists: Mark Williamson on making life happier

    Bristol Grain Store Bristol YHA, 14 Narrow Quay, Bristol

    We look forward to supporting this event organised by Bristol Humanists. 

    Full details to follow. 

    Dr Mark Williamson is co-founder and Director of Action for Happiness.

    His book offers 23 practical ways to make life happier. It's based on evidence from the latest scientific research combined with unique insights from the author plus proven ideas that he has helped thousands of people to adopt successfully in their everyday lives. It goes much deeper than typical self-help advice, covering a wide range of themes which contribute to lifelong wellbeing.