This is a rolling list of London’s literary events over the next three months, aggregated from 90 bookshops, libraries, academic institutions, and arts venues.
The first seven days are free to access, refreshed every Thursday. To receive a free weekly email of listings, subscribe below. To read beyond the next seven days, you can buy a subscription for £40 a year or £4 a month. If you pay annually, that’s 77p a week for a comprehensive view of London’s literary scene.
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Further lists filtered by subject and date: history and politics; poetry; LGBTQ+;
Theatre listings: literary theatre productions, Sep 2026 to Apr 2027; Shakespeare plays, Sep 2026 to Apr 2027
See also Literary Backlistings, in which I recommend remarkable books and other literary goings-on.
This month
Tuesday 6 October
Doom Painting: A. K. Blakemore and Rebecca Perry
Daunt Books Notting Hill, 6.30pm, tickets
Blakemore discusses her historical novel set during the 16 days of the Peasant’s Revolt in 1381.
Before I Forget by Anne Pauly
Veranda Books, 7pm, tickets
Pauly discusses her tragicomic novel about a woman grieving her father, who was a contradiction and man of many faces: Buddhist, old romantic, violent alcoholic. With the novel’s translator Dina Leifer and Oonagh Devitt Tremblay.
Mary Beard: More Secret Histories of Ancient Rome
Cadogan Hall, 7.30pm, tickets
Beard reveals the rich and complex lives of those often left out of the history books and casts fresh light on what we think we know.
Paul Waters and Ajay Chowdhury with Dan Carrier
Owl Bookshop, 6.30pm, tickets
The crime and thriller writers will discuss their fiction with Dan Carrier of the Camden New Journal.
Perilous Enchantment: Sarah Clegg and Ronald Hutton
Foyles Charing Cross Rd, 7pm, tickets
Clegg discusses her history of how fairy myths grew and spread across Europe, and why for centuries people been so enthralled by the danger and enchantment of the fae.
Homesick: The End of London by Peter Apps
Waterstones Gower St, 6.30pm, tickets
Tracing the impact of the last 40 years of housing policy, from Right to Buy to build-to-let, Apps follows a diverse group of Londoners as their fortunes rise and fall alongside the economic forces sweeping through the capital. With Holly Smith. 10 Questions with Peter.
New Ruins: The Story of the World in Twenty-One Abandoned and Collapsing Places by Alastair Bonnett
Stanfords, 7pm, tickets
The map expert will discuss how modern life is defined by constant creation, abandonment and collapse, and why ruins are no longer relics of the past but a defining feature of the present, with editor of The Geographical Graeme Gourlay.
Trump, Putin and the New Age of Conquest: Luke Harding in conversation with Masha Karp
Pushkin House, 7pm, tickets, also online
In his new book, the Guardian foreign correspondent argues that today’s world resembles not a new Cold War, defined by ideological rivalry, but a return to ‘Great Power’ politics, driven by military strength and national self-interest.
Climate Change: Science, Politics and Solutions – an evening with Mark Maslin
Waterstones Gower St, 6.30pm, tickets
The professor of Earth systems science discusses his new comprehensive guide to climate change.
To an Unknown Receiver: Erica Hesketh and Will Harris
Burley Fisher, 6.30pm, tickets
An evening spanning the climate crisis, art, war and other human legacies, as Erica Hesketh reads from and discusses her new pamphlet To an Unknown Receiver: Sonnets & Cascades.
Berliner Ensemble: De Profundis by Oscar Wilde
Coronet Theatre, 7.30pm, also 2-4 & 7 Oct, tickets
Actor Jens Harzer performs the long, impassioned letter Wilde wrote from prison to his estranged young lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. In German with English surtitles.
Hold Space Poetry Festival
Crypt Gallery, 1-6 Oct, tickets
For seven days, poets will make and perform work in a crypt beneath London. Expect poetry, silence, sound, and the particular aliveness that comes from being in a room where people are telling the truth. Prompts provided daily. Part of the Bloomsbury Festival.
Wednesday 7 October
The Two Roberts: Damian Barr and James Cahill
Foyles Charing Cross Rd, 7pm, tickets
Barr discusses his novel about lovers and artists Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun, who met on their first day at the Glasgow School of Art in 1933 and never left each other’s side.
On Difficulty (and Poetry) by Lavinia Greenlaw
The Bindery, 7pm, tickets, also online
Through poetry, Greenlaw will look at the concept of difficulty – why we might both crave and fear it, how we use and perform it, and how our relationship to it might expose habits of thought.
Berliner Ensemble: De Profundis by Oscar Wilde
Coronet Theatre, 7.30pm, also 2-4 & 6 Oct, tickets
Actor Jens Harzer performs the long, impassioned letter Wilde wrote from prison to his estranged young lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. In German with English surtitles.
Deep into the Sixties: Britain 1965-1966 - David Kynaston and Samira Ahmed
London Library, 7pm, tickets
The historian will discuss the latest instalment in his landmark Tales of a New Jerusalem series, transforming how we see post-war Britain and the so-called Swinging Sixties.
Malcolm Gaskill & Lamorna Ash: Worlds of Fear and Wonder
London Review Bookshop, 7pm, tickets
The historian of witchcraft explores the role of the supernatural in human thought and experience, ranging from the Middle Ages to the contemporary horror film.
Daniel Trilling in conversation with Aamna Mohdin
Old Spotted Dog Clubhouse, 7pm, tickets
Trilling explores the dangerous forces unleashed in British politics and what we can do to change course before it’s too late.
Portrait of an Obsession: How England’s Greatest Private Library was Built from the Ruins of Europe’s Monasteries by Kelsey Jackson Williams
Hatchards Piccadilly, 6.30pm, tickets
The historian explores how the 2nd Earl Spencer combed a Europe torn apart by the Napoleonic Wars for rare books, using agents and runners to intimidate librarians, ransack monastic collections, and deal in stolen goods to form his library at Althorp. With Dennis Duncan.
An Evening with Katherine Rundell
Conway Hall, 7pm, tickets
Rundell will discuss her new book Napoleon’s Orangutan, which documents 12 animals, from Napoleon’s pet orangutan to pigs who can learn the difference between Bach and a brass band.
James Webb’s Ancient Cosmos by Dr Maggie Aderin
Waterstones Piccadilly, 6.30pm, tickets
Aderin takes readers on a journey back in time to explore the formation of our solar system and galaxy, as well as other exoplanetary systems in the universe.
The Poetry Review Autumn 2026 launch
The Poetry Café, 7pm, free tickets, also online
Readings to celebrate the Autumn issue, edited by Wayne Holloway-Smith, from Jane Yeh, Fiona Benson and Helen Quah, and a recording from Oli Hazzard.
Special Edition: Shanzhai Lyric Runway Reading
Southbank Centre, 8pm, tickets
Collaborators of Shanzhai Lyric read and wear poetry inspired by counterfeit T-shirts made in China, exploring how the language of counterfeit uses mimicry, hybridity and permutation to reveal global hierarchies.
UP//ROAR Poems of Queer Resistance
Keats House, 7pm, free tickets
Join Arachne Press and a bevy of queer poets to celebrate the launch of the anthology, edited by Cherry Potts and Jeremy Dixon.