War, women and Charleston

Charleston Festival. Copyright courtesy of The Charleston Trust. www.charleston.org.uk/whats-on (01323 811 626).

Acclaimed screenwriter and novelist William Nicholson will be at the next Book Lovers’ Supper Club in Ditchling with his wife Virginia Nicholson, the grand-daughter of painter Vanessa Bell.

Vanessa lived at Charleston farmhouse with other members of the Bloombsbury Group and her sister was the celebrated novelist Virginia Woolf, who lived not far away at Rodmell.

William Nicholson, scriptwriter for the films Gladiator and Shadowlands and more recently Les Miserables and Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom, will be reading from his latest gripping novel, Reckless.

The plot is set during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and follows the glamorous lives of two young people living in the shadow of impending nuclear war.