Love, life and war in London's East End

Best-selling fiction and non-fiction writer, Kate Thompson, will be the next guest speaker at Molesey Library’s popular series of Author Events. During her visit on Tuesday April 28 2020, Kate will tell us about some of the formidable women living and working in London’s East End before, during and after the War.
Kate, who had worked for 20 years on women’s magazines and national newspapers, published her debut novel Secrets of the Singer Girls in 2015 telling the story of women working together in an East End clothing factory during the Blitz. Bound by ties of friendship, loyalty and family, their lives are thrown into turmoil by the devastating events of the War but their shared experience brings them closer together than they could ever have imagined.
The book rapidly became a Sunday Times bestseller and has recently been optioned for a TV series.
Other sagas of East End life followed and then, in 2018, Kate published her first non-fiction work The Stepney Doorstep Society, drawing on her years of research into East End life and telling the true-life stories of five formidable matriarchs. From confronting the Kray twins, taking over the London Underground and crawling out of bombsites, these women fought to protect their community during some of the country’s darkest hours. The book reached No 1 in Amazon’s history category.
Kates’s latest novel - Secrets of the Homefront Girls - was published in August last year and a further work is also in the pipeline.
Kate currently lives in Sunbury but has an even closer connection to Molesey as her parents live locally.
Please come along and join us on April 28 for what promises to be a lively and entertaining evening - doors open at 7.15 pm. Tickets cost £5 and are available from Molesey Library - PLEASE BUY YOUR TICKETS IN ADVANCE IF YOU CAN as it is a great help with setting up the room if we know how many people are likely to attend.

Help wanted with Molesey Library coffee mornings

Thanks to our team of very dedicated volunteers we have been able to continue with our Coffee Mornings between 10-12 each Friday.
Staff here at Molesey really value our efforts to run the weekly session as it does make a difference to the footfall and tends to reach out to a different section of our local community. People know there will be a warm welcome and the opportunity to have some lively conversation. It is a real asset.
We were delighted to have one new volunteer this year but in order to continue more volunteers are needed to help out as it can be a struggle when members of the team are either on holiday or not well enough to come along. If you can are interested in becoming a volunteer please get in touch, email pauline.morozgalska@gmail.com

Solving the Murder of Dr Helen Davidson

The Friends of Molesey Library know that crime thrillers and murder mysteries are among our most popular genres of books with local readers. So, we are expecting a lot of interest in our next author event, an evening with the true crime writer Monica Weller.

The date for your diary is Tuesday 25 February, 7pm at Molesey Library in Walton Road. The title of the talk ‘Injured Parties. Solving the Murder of Dr Helen Davidson’ is also the title of Monica’s 2016 book.

In November 1966, popular physician Helen Davidson was battered to death in dense woodland a few miles from her Buckinghamshire home. She had binoculars around her neck, from bird watching and Detective Chief Inspector Jack 'Razor' Williams of Scotland Yard, surmised she had “spied illicit lovers, was spotted, and one or both of them killed her". He had received 50 police commendations in his career, yet not one for a murder case. Unsurprisingly, within weeks the police operation wound
down, Williams retired, and another Cold Case hit the statistics.

However, 50 years later amateur sleuth and author Monica Weller set about solving the murder. As she sifted the fresh evidence, a number of suspects and sinister motives began to emerge. She uncovered secret passions, deep jealousies, unusual relationships, and a victim with a dark past. Finally, her persistence and dedication were dramatically rewarded when she uncovered the identity of the murderer!

Monica previously uncovered fresh evidence about Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK, in a book she co-wrote called ‘Ruth Ellis: My Sister's Secret Life’. The talk in February will be an opportunity to find out more about this remarkable author’s life and works. Tickets are £5 on the door or in advance from the Library.

On 28 January the Friends of Molesey Library held our ninth Annual General Meeting. We’re grateful to all the Molesey residents who came along to hear about our efforts to promote and support the Library. We were delighted to welcome Sarah Holding, a leading author in the growing ‘cli-fi’ genre of science fiction inspired by climate change.

Climate Change author to speak at Library AGM

On January 28 2020, we will be hosting our first Author Event of the New Year when we welcome Sarah Holding, who writes for young adults and whose successful SeaBEAN trilogy has been described by former Children’s Laureate Dame Jacqueline Wilson as “A different way of
introducing children to environmental issues”.
Sarah, whose books fall into the burgeoning “cli-fi” or climate fiction genre had been a postman, an architect, a university professor and a community planner before becoming a full-time author.
SeaBEAN tells the story of Alice and five other children living on the remote Scottish island of St Kilda whose life changes when the strange C-Bean Mark 3 shows up and transports them far and wide to New York, Australia and the Amazon rainforest. Their travels soon lead them to understand that there are forces at work which have put the whole planet in jeopardy.
Since SeaBEAN was published in 2013, Sarah has given workshops and talks in over 150 schools, and the trilogy was republished in a compendium edition in 2018. Sarah’s new book Chameleon, which is due to be published in early 2020, is about three genetically engineered humans and is set during the fall of Atlantis, which she speculates happened during an earlier period of intense climate change.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

Before Sarah’s talk, the Friends of Molesey Library will hold their Annual General Meeting, which will provide an opportunity to report on our activities during the past year and, as far as possible, to look ahead at possible future developments.
The AGM will start at 7.30 pm and the whole evening is FREE to attend. However, it would be very helpful if you could pick up a ticket at the Library in the usual way so that we are able to gauge numbers attending.

Using Molesey Library is crucial to its survival

The new season, 2019- 2020, of our popular Author Events will be opened by Robin Driscoll on 24th September 2019.The tickets are on sale in the library this week and as ever it is VERY helpful if you are able to buy your ticket in advance as this helps us with set up.
As a point of information, there will be some changes at the library and we said farewell to three of our regular staff during the last two months. I understand that during this period many staff have left the Library Service so at the moment staff seem to be moving between libraries as needed. Hopefully, in the near future staffing issues will be sorted out and we will have a more permanent team again.
I think you are all aware that the Library Service is under review and I have no idea what the future holds. However, I do know that using the library is crucial to its survival so as ever I urge you to use our library as much as you can as footfall (numbers of users going in) and issues (number of books taken out) are measured each month by officers and comparisons are made between all the other libraries.
We look forward to welcoming you on 24th and do remember that we hold a weekly coffee morning every Friday between 10a.m - 12 noon. 

Kind Regards,

Pauline MorozgalskaChair of the Friends of Molesey Library

My career with TV's Mr Bean!

Robin Driscoll, picture credit: Bridport News

After the summer break, our popular series of Author Events at the Library will resume on Tuesday September 24 with a visit from Robin Driscoll, author and former scriptwriter for Mr Bean.
Robin’s early career was spent travelling with the Cliffhanger Theatre Company and performing around the country including, for a number of years, at the Edinburgh Fringe.  There they were spotted by Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones and in due course Robin had great success writing for, and taking on supporting roles in, their very successful show Alias Smith & Jones.
Later Robin was asked to join Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis (of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Blackadder fame) in co-writing Mr Bean for Thames Television - the start of a dream job that kept him busy, along with other work, for 25 years.
Now Robin has put scriptwriting aside to write mystery thrillers choosing, as he says, to write what he himself likes to read. He has three fast-paced thrillers already under his belt, the latest of which -Still Warm  - tells the story of NYPD detective Josie King searching for the kidnapper of her young god-daughter.
With such a varied career, Robin will have plenty to talk to us about so please come and join us at the Library at 7.30 pm on September 24 for what promises to be a most entertaining evening. Tickets cost £5 and are available from Molesey Library.

Meet the Author event - Harriet Sandys

The next speaker in our series of Author Events at Molesey Library will be Harriet Sandys who will talk about her book Beyond the Last Blue Mountain.
She will tell us about her experiences as a young woman from a sheltered and privileged background who she set off alone to find out more about the plight of Afghan refugees displaced by the Soviet invasion.
Determined to do something about the refugees’ dire situation, she set up a small silk weaving project for illiterate Turkmen refugees, and was sent by UNESCO to Mazar-i-sharif to work with Afghanistan’s last remaining silk ikat weavers. During those years she was arrested by the KHAD, narrowly missed being blown up, survived acute bacterial meningitis in a Kabul hospital, and rescued an abandoned pi-dog puppy who became her devoted companion.
At the end of the first Gulf War Harriet travelled with the Peshmerga in the newly-liberated Iraqi Kurdistan. Then in 1994 she joined a group of unemployed builders and decorators driving convoys of food and aid from Croydon to the Muslim enclaves in Bosnia Herzegovina.
These days, Harriet continues to raise money for charity through her business selling oriental textiles and remains friends with the refugees she helped in Afghanistan.


Harriet will join us at the Library on WEDNESDAY 24 APRIL 2019 at 7.30 pm. Please note the day - Wednesday - rather than Tuesday when we normally hold our Author Events. We hope you will be able to join us for what promises to be a fascinating talk. Tickets are available from the Library priced £5. We would be very grateful if you could buy your tickets IN ADVANCE as this really helps with planning the event.

Meet the Author event at Molesey Library - Stuart Laing

After the excellent talk about Iraq given to the Friends at January’s AGM by Sir Terence Clark, we are pleased to welcome another career diplomat - Stuart Laing - as speaker at our next Author Event on Tuesday 26 February.
Stuart Laing is co-author of a book on Omani-British history, Unshook Till the End of Time, took an MPhil at Cambridge in 2012 on the abolition of slave trading in the Indian Ocean, and has published a biography of Tippu Tip, the Arab ivory trader of the late 19th century.
His talk for us has the intriguing title Tippu Tip - Ivory, Slavery and Discovery in the Scramble for Africa.
In his Foreign Service career, Stuart Laing specialised in Arab and Middle Eastern affairs and served in Saudi Arabia and in Cairo, and then as High Commissioner in Brunei, Ambassador in Muscat, and later Ambassador in Kuwait. After leaving the world of diplomacy, he served as Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge for 10 years.
We hope you will be able to join us on Tuesday February 26 at 7.30pm - tickets cost £5. It is very helpful for planning purposes if you can commit by buying your ticket IN ADVANCE from Molesey Library.

What to expect at the Friends of Molesey Library AGM on 22 Jan, 7pm

The Friends of Molesey Library Annual General Meeting will be taking place at the library on Tuesday 22 January at 7pm. Admission is free, and we've lined up a distinguished speaker in Sir Terence Clark, a former diplomat and expert on the Middle East.

He will be entertaining us with a talk entitled 'In The Cradle of Civilisation'. Sir Terence will introduce you to Iraq, where he spent nearly 5 years as the British Ambassador, during much of Saddam Hussein’s war with Iran. But, as he will show, it was not all bombs and bullets and in the many quieter interludes he was able to explore this ancient land in depth, often with the aid of a native four-legged ally, his Kurdish Saluki.

Sir Terence was a career diplomat and Arabist and had previously served in many other countries of the Middle East as well as in Europe. He and his wife went to war-torn Iraq with some trepidation in 1985 but found the situation less fraught than media coverage suggested. By showing an interest in the history of Mesopotamia (the Land between the Two Rivers - Tigris and Euphrates), with which Britain has often been closely involved, he had licence to travel far and wide, getting to know Iraqi professionals, academics, artists, tribal sheikhs and people at every level of society and visiting the many historic sites from the Garden of Eden on-wards. In this talk, Sir Terence will highlight some of the fascinating people and places that he came across in the hope that it might encourage a more positive view of Iraq.

Sir Terence was also Ambassador to the Sultanate of Oman. In retirement he has written extensively on the history and politics of the Middle East. His latest book – The Salukis in my Life, here, there and everywhere, from the Arab world to China – describes his many adventures in unusual places with these “Companions of Kings” across the vast region of their natural habitat.

In addition to hearing from Sir Terence you'll also hear briefly from our Chair Pauline and Treasurer Liz and assist in appointing the Committee for the coming year. We will aim to get the formalities out of the way quickly and on to our guest speaker. We hope to see you there.

Talk cancelled

Unfortunately the talk this evening with Dr Peter Clark has had to be cancelled due to ill health. We will try to arrange this for another date. If you have already purchased tickets we will contact you to arrange a refund. - The Friends

From the Middle East to Molesey

What connects Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens and the Middle East? They are all specialist subjects of Dr Peter Clark who will at Molesey Library on Tuesday 20 November to give a talk.

The Middle East is never far from the news and Peter has known the region for over 50 years, 30 of them working locally for the British Council. In 1988 he was posted to Abu Dhabi to run the Council’s office there. As a self-confessed romantic, he took up his new job rather reluctantly, initially viewing the United Arab Emirates as a brash, consumerist society and lacking in history.

Over time he fell in love with the country and its people. He got to know Abu Dhabi sheikhs and Dubai merchants and people at every level of society. He introduced a riotous Shakespeare company, organised the return of explorer Wilfred Thesinger and greeted royalty, politicians and celebrities.

With fluent Arabic, Peter has had access and insights denied to most visitors. The country was on the cusp of enormous economic expansion and his Emirates Diaries paints an affectionate picture of the country when it still resembled a chain of large informal villages.

Our events organiser John Coope will be 'in conservation' with Peter on the night and assisting the audience to find out more about Peter's life and works. He says: "Peter is a recognised authority on the Middle East and has translated and edited books written in Arabic and published other books in English about the area. He has led cultural tours to many countries in the region. We are lucky to have the opportunity to hear an expert view of an area which features so largely in the news headlines today."

Now back in the UK, Peter has also published two books on places associated with the life and works of Charles Dickens and has a new book looking at locations linked to Winston Churchill.

It promises to be a lively and wide-ranging discussion so we hope you will be able to join us - tickets cost £5 and are available from Molesey Library.

Jessica Hepburn returns to Molesey Library

Regular supporters of our Author Events will remember the inspiring talk given by Jessica Hepburn - then Executive Director of the Lyric Hammersmith - on her first visit to Molesey Library. On that occasion she spoke to us movingly about her book The Pursuit of Motherhood which charted her experience of eleven rounds of unsuccessful IVF, multiple miscarriages and a pregnancy which almost proved fatal.

Following the success of that book, Jessica has become a leading spokesperson and campaigner on infertility and founded Fertility Fest, the world’s first arts festival dedicated to fertility, infertility, modern families and the science of making babies.

In her early forties, after her last unsuccessful round of fertility treatment, Jessica decided that it was time to move on and, in her new role of ‘adventure activist’, she has taken on some of the world’s most iconic endurance challenges to raise awareness and money for adults and children without the families they long for.

Her successes so far have included swimming the English Channel, running the London Marathon and climbing both Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and the highest peak in South America.

Jessica will be returning to Molesey Library on Tuesday September 18, 2018 to talk to us about her latest book 21 Miles which draws its title from the distance she swam across the Channel.

As her punishing training for this challenge commenced, Jessica learned that she needed to put on weight to stave off the cold. And this led to another idea: what if she were to write to a collection of inspiring women and ask if they would meet and eat with her, and answer the question: does motherhood make you happy or can you have a fulfilling life without children?

21 Miles tells how Jessica ate 21 meals with 21 women, from baronesses and professors to award winners and record breakers, amazing women from different walks of life - and swam 21 miles to try and find an answer to this question.

Join us at Molesey Library on Tuesday September 18, 2018 at 7.30 pm to hear Jessica speak about her new book. Tickets cost £5 and are available from Molesey Library.

Your support is important for the future of the library

We are delighted to welcome back Jessica Hepburn on 18th September 2018 at 7.30pm to open our season of Author Events.

Tickets are now available at the library. We would ask you to purchase tickets prior to the event, if at all possible, as this helps us to know how much space needs to be created by moving the book stacks and then setting up an appropriate number of chairs.

Please remember that YOUR SUPPORT is very important to the future of the library. We are living through a period of time when very sadly libraries in many parts of the country are being closed as Council budgets are being squeezed and the service often under-used for the size of the local population. As Friends of the Library, we don’t want this to happen in Molesey and we try to boost the numbers of people using the library by arranging Author Events and a weekly Coffee Morning.

You can help by coming along or if you are unable to attend, please spread the word to friends and neighbours.

We cannot afford to be complacent and always remember that if we don’t use the Library we could risk losing this wonderful resource.

Molesey author Holly Vanstone to reveal African adventure

Holly (right) and a friend, in Uganda

Local resident and respected teacher Holly Vanstone will be joining us at Molesey Library on the evening of Tuesday 24th April 2018, from 7pm to talk about challenges, joys, risks and achievements of the eight years which she spent as head of a primary school in Uganda.
Holly has lived in Molesey for 32 years and was well known as a teacher at St. Lawrence Junior School from 1990 to 2000. Having then become a Head Teacher in the area, she succumbed to stress and severe depression. After continuing for a while with supply and music teaching, she then set off to pursue an adventurous dream.
A passion for Africa led Holly to move to Uganda in 2005 to head a primary school near Kampala. Here she found pupils who ran with joy into their classrooms but also a somewhat rigid, exam-based curriculum. While striving to maintain exam performance, she also worked hard to ensure that creative subjects had their place in school life.
Although this was a voluntary post for two years, Holly stayed for eight. And, since returning to the UK, she has continued to visit Uganda annually to provide both teacher and leadership training.
There will be an opportunity to buy Holly’s book Africa: Birthright and Calling on the night, cost £8.
Do come along and join us for what promises to be a fascinating talk. Tickets cost £5 and can be purchased from Molesey Library or on the night.

Author David Lindsley to give talk on 'Engineering a literary success'

At February’s Author Event at Molesey Library - on Tuesday 20th February -  local author David Lindsley will speak about his own writing career and draw on this experience to tell us something about how the writing process works in our current digital age. How for instance does employing a ‘real-life’ publishing agent compare with self-publishing using the likes of lulu.com and Amazon’s Create Space?

 

David, now resident in Hampton Wick, took up writing himself after three decades of travelling the world in his job as a professional engineer working in the power sector. Perhaps no surprise then that  David featured an engineer, Dan Foster, as the hero of his first novel “Far Point’, which centres on how a corrupt politician’s actions endanger the safety of a Chines nuclear power station.

 

Encouraged when ‘Far Point’ won first prize in a literary contest, David wrote two more Dan Foster novels, ‘The Darkfall Switch’ about a disaster which hits Central London and ‘Blind Danger’ which sees Foster teaming up with a crusading American lawyer to take on an international energy conglomerate. Continuing the engineering theme, David has also published ‘Ribbons of Steel’ about a Victorian locomotive engineer working on the railways in India (the land of David’s birth).

Key points from Friends of Molesey Library AGM

Guest speaker Lizzie Parker and daughter Fiona Fraser

The Friends 7th Annual General Meeting was held at Molesey Library on 23rd January 2018 with nearly 50 members of the local community present.

Vice- Chair Steve Bax opened the meeting, apologised for the absence of the Chair Pauline Morozgalska, who was recovering from an operation. Steve listed some of the highlights of 2017. These included the Friday Coffee Morning, which is now embedded in the weekly timetable. We are grateful to the new volunteers who have joined this year and to those who continue to bake and donate cakes and we could not continue without them. More volunteers are welcome.

John Coope has organised five author events during 2017. We were delighted to welcome Rear
Admiral Kit Layman, Journalist, Barbara Fisher, Mary Lawson, Jenny Wood, Chair of Molesey Local History Society and Terri Fleming. Sadly, SSC have stopped us giving a glass of wine to Friends at the end of the talk without purchasing a license for each event. This is an unsustainable demand. Proceeds from our fund raising events have been used as usual to purchase items that the Library Service is no longer able to fund. (see Treasurer’s Report).

Unfortunately, the Knit & Natter Sessions have ended as Mary Gill; the key volunteer moved away from Molesey. A new volunteer would be very welcome to take this over. The Library Book Club, supported by the library staff and led by Clare Newman, is no longer able to meet at the library because of the early closure on a Tuesday.

Concern raised following report that Somerset CC are closing 15 of their 36 libraries. More than
ever the community needs to demonstrate that our Library is a valued resource by using the
facilities as much as possible or closure could be proposed again by the Council.

Election of Officers: Committee member Nigel Cooper presided over the election of the committee for 2018 as follows: Chair: Pauline Morozgalska (proposed Michael Watson Seconded Pam Pinkett; Vice Chair: Steve Bax ( proposed Feliks Morozgalski. Seconded Michael Watson); Treasurer: Elizabeth Cooper (Proposed Clare Newman. Seconded: Feliks Morozgalski); Secretary: Post rotated at meetings between committee members. The Committee will also include John Coope, Nigel Cooper, Cllr. Victor Eldridge, Feliks Morozgalski, Carol Parker (Proposed: John Meech Seconded: Clare Newman)

Presentation of the Accounts: Treasurer Elizabeth Cooper distributed a prepared account funds
raised during the year from Author Events and Coffee Mornings - £1757.45. Expenditure this year Coffee Machine, carpet cleaning and re-varnishing of outside benches and tables total £1066.39. Balance at 31st December 2017 £ 4,577.69. We have agreed to a request from the staff to fund some cushions for the children to use at Rhyme-time and 3 new sofas.

Revised FOML Constitution: Steve Bax asked Friends if they had any comments or queries to the
Constitution, revised by the Committee in November 2017 ready for the discussion and approval by the Friends. Copies were distributed to Friends on arrival at the AGM. The Constitution was accepted.

Any Other Business (AOB): Steve invited the Library Area Manager Andrea Hurren to address
the Friends. She was unable to deny or confirm if there would be any reduction to library services in 2018 although Surrey does value it’s libraries and want to keep the status quo as long as possible. She re-iterated that the main issues are footfall i.e. number of people visiting the library and issues i.e. the number of books borrowed each month. At the moment we are second in the sub-cluster so work to be done! Andrea and Helen answered various questions from the floor.

Guest Talk by Lizzie Parker: Introduced by Author Event Convener – John Coope. A fascinating
and entertaining question and answer session about her book “A Life Lived”. Books sold well at the end of the evening.

Finally, John Coope thanked Lizzie Parker interesting interview and everyone for attending the AGM
and their continued interest in supporting the Library. He invited everyone to stay for a drink and the
opportunity to speak to our guest speaker and the committee members.

AGM ended at 8.55 and 40 – 50 people attended.

Come to the Friends AGM and hear from guest author Lizzie Parker

A Happy New Year to all users and supporters of Molesey Library, if you are making changes for 2018 why not make it your resolution to read more - there's a great selection at Molesey and every item borrowed helps keep the library viable.
On 23 January the Friends will hold our annual general meeting where our chair, Pauline, will give an update on the past year's activity and we will appoint the committee for the coming year. The meeting is open to the whole community and you will be warmly welcomed.
The formal business won't take long and afterwards there will be a chance to enjoy a talk from an author and former Molesey called resident Lizzie Parker. She will speak about her new memoir A Life Lived.
Now in her eighties, Lizzie has lived a busy and eventful life and will have plenty to tell us about. Having arrived at school in England from India, she subsequently studied at RADA and toured the country as a juvenile lead. She married well-known actor Ronal Fraser, with Sean Connery in attendance as an usher.
Divorced seven years later, Lizzie married an academic and took to study herself, becoming a social worker and psycho-dramatist. She eventually moved to Greece and bought a run-down taverna and sailing club on a tiny island with no electricity or telephone which she ran with her daughter Alison. Sadly Alison was to die at the age of only 45 and, in her book, Lizzie talks about this tragic loss and how she coped.
Nowadays, although still a regular visitor to Molesey, Lizzie continues to live the island of Lefkada in the Ionian Sea. Come along and join us as she looks back on a fascinating life of triumphs and tragedy.

Molesey Then and Now - a journey of discovery

September 26th is the date for the next author event at Molesey Library, when we shall welcome Jenny Wood - chairman of Molesey’s own Local History Society - to tell us about how the Society went about bringing to publication its new book ‘Molesey Then And Now’. 

Having only recently hit the bookshelves, the book has already sold out its first print run but further copies are expected shortly and will be available to purchase on the night.

“Molesey Then And Now’ provides a unique insight into the development of Molesey over the years through a fascinating collection of Then and Now photographs.  Some of the original Then photographs were already in the Society’s archive, others were forthcoming through appeals to Society members and others. Then it was a matter of arranging for all the equivalent Now photographs to be taken, making it possible for the book to chart all the many changes which have taken place in our local environment in recent times.

As Jenny says, this was a major undertaking for the Society and the whole production process was a steep learning curve!  So, if you would like to find out more about how a dedicated team of local enthusiasts made it happen, come along to the Library and hear Jenny’s illustrated talk, which will begin at 7.30 pm. Tickets cost £5 - which includes refreshments - and can be obtained from Molesey Library.
 

Author Terri Fleming on daring to take on Jane Austen

This year marks 200 years since the birth of Jane Austen, so it's only fitting that Molesey Library will be receiving a visit from a lady who is following in the great author's footsteps.
Terri Fleming has penned a sequel to Austen's most famous work Pride and Prejudice - it is titled Perception and is the story of the unmarried Bennet sisters, Mary and Kitty, a few years after their sisters marry.
She will be speaking about the book and how it came to be when she visits Molesey Library on Tuesday 21 November, 7.15pm. Tickets will be available at the next author event on 26 September, in the library thereafter and also on the door.
Terri was born in Tasmania "surrounded by every luxury of landscape" but limited access to the wider world in the days before the internet. Books were her joy and refuge. She adds: "If I was naughty, the greatest threat was to be denied a visit to the bookmobile."
Very early she determined to be a writer and after a career in copywriting and seeing the world she settled in England with her husband.
She said the following about the plot of her novel: "The Bennet sisters remain at Longbourn with their parents and few prospects. Mrs Bennet has become increasingly determined to find a husband for at least one of her girls. She spies her chance when a wealthy bachelor returns to his home near Meryton.
"Mary has little desire for marriage and Kitty is still tempted by old habits. As new people enter their world, the two sisters find themselves questioning themselves and the world around them. Can either sister overcome perception?"
 

Friends discuss author events at last committee meeting

The Friends of Molesey Library met on 5th September for the first time since the summer. Pauline Morozgalska, the chair, welcomed Silvana Marenghi who has helped with Friday coffee mornings run by the Friends and has decided to join the committee.
Author events coordinator, John Coope, said a speaker that had been planned for the 26 September had fallen through and efforts to find a replacement had been unsuccessful (though on the upside a couple said they are willing to come to Molesey as part of next year's programme). Thankfully Jenny Wood, chair of the Molesey Local History Society, has agreed to fill the slot with a talk about Molesey Then and Now – a book researched and written by members of the history society over a five year period. The book has been very well received in Molesey and has already sold out its first print run, so we're hopeful of a good turn out.
Vice chair Steve Bax is working on a publicity poster and will drum up publicity. Meanwhile John is fixing up details for our 21 November event where Terri Fleming, author of the Pride and Prejudice sequel ‘Perception’ will visit.
Treasurer Liz Cooper updated on the status of the bank account and it was agreed that the Friends will spend some of that money on carpet cleaning for the library and refurbishing or replacing the sofas that are getting a bit tatty. We are also keen to have the garden benches repainted.
The Friday coffee and cake mornings run by the Friends are still popular, but may have to end in future if we can't find a few more volunteers to help run things. It would be a 2-3 hours and involve helping to set-up, serve and pack away. Anyone reading this who's interested can post below or email MoleseySteve@gmail.com. The Friends' next meeting is 7th November.