Books about Emma Darwin’s great-great-grandparents, Charles and Emma Darwin, are legion, but when she agreed to write a novel about her family, she looked for stories less often told. Join her on her journey through the artists, scientists, composers & poets of the Darwin-Wedgwood-Galton clan, as seen through the lens of her creative struggle to write fiction about them. Along the way, her wry, witty and honest memoir becomes a brave book about failure - and, above all, a book about writing and how stories are told.

This talk is kindly sponsored by the Royal Literary Fund, which was founded in 1790 to help professional authors. Past beneficiaries have included Coleridge, Ivy Compton-Burnett, D H Lawrence and Dylan Thomas.  Last year it helped 200 writers, though not all of them are quite so famous yet.

For more information, and to buy tickets, click through to the Borderlines Book Festival website.