Hampstead Arts Festival - ADD EVENT

Hunter Davies

After he left university Davies worked as a journalist and in 1965 he wrote the novel Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush that was made into a film of the same name. He raised the idea of a biography of the Beatles with Paul McCartney when he met him to discuss the possibility of providing the theme song for the film. McCartney liked the idea of the book and advised him to obtain the approval of Brian Epstein. He agreed to it and the resulting authorised biography, The Beatles, was published in 1968. John Lennon mentioned in his 1971 Rolling Stone interview that he considered the book "bullshit", though Lennon at the time was vigorously debunking the Beatle myth and anyone who had helped to create it.

In 1972 Davies wrote what is widely regarded as one of the best ever books about football, The Glory Game, a behind the scenes portrait of Tottenham Hotspur. Davies also wrote a wry column about his daily life in Punch called "Father's Day", presenting himself as a harried paterfamilias. In 1974 he was sent by the Sunday Times to look at a comprehensive school in action. He wrote three articles and then stayed on at the school – Creighton School in Muswell Hill, North London, now part of Fortismere School – to watch and study through a year in its life. The result was a book, the Creighton Report, published in 1976.

Davies has also written a biography of the fell walker Alfred Wainwright, and many works about the topography and history of the Lake District. In children's literature, he has written the Ossie, Flossie Teacake and Snotty Bumstead series of novels. As a ghostwriter, he has worked on the autobiographies of footballers Wayne Rooney, Paul Gascoigne and Dwight Yorke. He has also ghostwritten politician John Prescott's 2008 autobiography, Prezza, My Story: Pulling no Punches.
He writes a football column for the New Statesman, which is written in his trademark humorous, irreverent tone. A compilation of these articles was released as a book, The Fan, in 2005 by Pomona Press. Davies writes "Confessions of a Collector" in The Guardian's Weekend colour magazine. He has written a book about his collections with the same title.

Davies was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to literature.

Piers Plowright

Piers Plowright was born in London in 1937 and made a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature in 1998 without writing a single book (although he did write a thriller called ‘The Smuggler’ in 1975, intended for learners of English, which has been translated into Basque and still sells. A collectors’ item). However, he had spent the previous 30 years making radio plays, documentaries and features for the BBC, including literary portraits of Olivia Manning, Yukio Mishima, Jorge Luis Borges, Grazia Deledda, Alberto Moravia, Arthur Waley, and Naguib Mahfouz, as well as working with young British writers.

While at the BBC, Piers won three Prix Italias for his documentaries, and numerous Sony Radio Awards. In 2005 he was made an Hon DLitt at Bournemouth University, and an Audio Luminary at the Chicago Third Coast Radio Festival in 2007.  He currently runs the literary side of the Hampstead Arts Festival and organises conversations with distinguished figures in the Arts and Sciences at Burgh House Hampstead. He’s also trying to improve his drawing, painting and jazz-piano playing (he notes: 'don’t hold your breath').

Piers’s five part series “Thames Crossings” was recently heard on BBC Radio 4.