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PRODID:-//Essex Book Festival - ECPv4.0.4//NONSGML v1.0//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-WR-CALNAME:Essex Book Festival
X-ORIGINAL-URL:http://35.176.91.154
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Essex Book Festival
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID="Europe/London":20260606T140000
DTEND;TZID="Europe/London":20260606T150000
DTSTAMP:20260518T164529
CREATED:20260326T090044
LAST-MODIFIED:20260327T171847
UID:11351-1780754400-1780758000@35.176.91.154
SUMMARY:Death of An Ordinary Man
DESCRIPTION:Sarah Perry\nDeath of an Ordinary Man\nSaturday 06 June 2026\, 2.00pm\nColchester Samaritans\, Walsingham Road Community Hall\, 34 Walsingham Road\, Colchester\, CO2 7BN\nLonglisted for the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction 2026\nWinner of the Nero Non-Fiction Award 2025\nA Book of the Year for The Times\, Guardian\, Financial Times and Observer.\n\n\nFestival Patron Sarah Perry's Death of an Ordinary Man is a deeply moving\, unstinting account of death by cancer\, a reportage into the daily experience of caring\, and most importantly a testament to her father-in-law David’s life\, that of an ordinary man.\n\nSarah Perry’s father-in-law David died in the autumn of 2022\, only nine days after a cancer diagnosis. He was in some ways a very ordinary man: he loved stamp collecting\, fish and chips\, comic novels and his local church. Yet as Sarah and her husband Robert nursed David through his final days\, they realised how extraordinary he really was.\n\nThis loving\, clear-eyed and unforgettable book shows how death may be met and understood as a part of life – a universal experience that is terrible and beautiful\, intimate and real\, sometimes all at once.\n\nSarah Perry will be in-conversation with James McDermott.\n\n\nTickets: £10 / £8 (students\, under 27s and unwaged)\nBox Office: essexbookfestival.org.uk or Mercury Theatre 01206 573948\n\nThis event is part of our Love & Loss day of events at Colchester Samaritans on Saturday 06 June.\n\n \n\nEvent Information\n💬 The event will include an audience Q&A session.\n📚 Copies of the book will be available to purchase on the day.\n🖊️ After the event there will be an opportunity to get the book signed by the author.\n🪑 Seats are unallocated.\n☕ Colchester Samaritans are kindly offering refreshments at this event - donations to Samaritans welcome.\n🚗 There is limited free parking at the school next to the hall. Parking details will be sent to ticket-holders a few days before the event. The nearest public car park is St Johns Multi Storey which is opposite the Samaritans Hall on the other side of Southway or St Mary's Multi Storey is a 10 minute walk away.\n♿ The venue is wheelchair accessible. There are disabled facilities on site.\n\n\n \n\n\n\n \nSarah Perry\n[caption id="attachment_8779" align="alignnone" width="300"] Photo of Sarah Perry © Sophie Davidson[/caption]\n\n \n\nSarah Perry is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Enlightenment\, Melmoth\, The Essex Serpent and After Me Comes the Flood\, and the non-fiction Essex Girls. She is a winner of the Waterstones Book of the Year Award and the British Book of the Year Award. Enlightenment was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025 and her other work has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Women’s Prize for Fiction\, the Dylan Thomas Prize\, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.\n\n\nDeath of an Ordinary Man\n\n\nAn unflinching and profoundly moving account of caring until death\, from Booker-Prize-longlisted Sarah Perry.\n\nSarah Perry's father-in-law\, David\, died at home nine days after a cancer diagnosis and having previously been in the good health. The speed of his illness outstripped that of the NHS and social care\, so the majority of nursing fell to Sarah and her husband. They witnessed what happens to the body and spirit\, hour by hour\, as it approaches death.\n\nDeath of an Ordinary Man is an unstinting account of death by cancer\, a reportage into the daily experience of caring\, an exploration of the structural conditions of dying in the UK\, and most importantly a testament to David’s life\, that of an ordinary man.\n\nUnflinching and profoundly moving\, Sarah Perry confronts the taboo surrounding death and shows us how to confront all of the terror and beauty that comes with the end of life - and how the saddest thing she has ever seen is also the best thing she's ever done.\n\nNow I understand there are no ordinary lives - that every death is the end of a single event in time's history: an event so improbable as to be miraculous\, and irreplaceable in every particular.\n\nIn Death of an Ordinary Man\, Sarah Perry brings her Booker-shortlisted novelists eye to her first full length work of non-fiction. A genre defying work of extraordinary empathy and power with all the qualities that make her fiction so compelling.\n\nOrder a copy of the book from bookshop.org.\n \n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n \n\n 
URL:http://35.176.91.154/event/death-of-an-ordinary-man/
LOCATION:Walsingham Road Community Hall\, 34 Walsingham Road\, Colchester\, Essex\, CO2 7BN\, United Kingdom
CATEGORIES:Memoir
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