We're delighted to welcome back Jonathan Coe to discuss his blistering political critique wrapped up in a murder mystery. In conversation with Adam Biles.

Free & open to all. Places limited. Arrive early to avoid disappointment. Most events take place on our first floor, which is accessible by stairs. If you have any concerns about access, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Post-university life doesn’t suit Phyl. Time passes slowly living back home with her parents, working a zero-hour contract serving Japanese food to holidaymakers at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. As for her budding plans of becoming a writer, those are going nowhere.

That is, until family friend Chris comes to stay. He’s been on the path to uncover a sinister think-tank, founded at Cambridge University in the 1980s, that’s been scheming to push the British government in a more extreme direction. One that’s finally poised to put their plans into action. But speaking truth to power can be dangerous - and power will stop at nothing to stay on top.

As Britain finds itself under the leadership of a new Prime Minister whose tenure will only last for seven weeks, Chris pursues his story to a conference being held deep in the Cotswolds, where events take a sinister turn and a murder enquiry is soon in progress. But will the solution to the mystery lie in contemporary politics, or in a literary enigma that is almost forty years old?

Darting between decades and genres, The Proof of My Innocence is a wickedly funny and razor-sharp new novel from one of Britain’s most beloved novelists, showing how the key to understanding the present can often be found in the murkiest corners of the past.

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Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. He is the award-winning, bestselling author of 14 novels, which include The Accidental Woman, What a Carve Up!, The House of Sleep, The Rotters’ Club, The Rain Before It Falls, Expo 58, Middle England, Mr Wilder and Me and Bournville. He has won the Costa Novel Award, the Prix du Livre Européen, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Prix Médicis Étranger and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, among many others. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work been translated into 22 languages. Suspended Moment, an album of his musical compositions recorded live in Italy, was released on the British Progressive Jazz label in 2023. Jonathan Coe lives in London.