Sarah Winman is an international bestseller and prize-winning author of When God Was a Rabbit, A Year of Marvellous Ways and Tin Man. She is also an actress and attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and went on to act in theatre, film, and television. Her debut novel (When God Was a Rabbit), won her numerous awards including the Galaxy National Book Awards’ New Writer of the Year. Sarah Winman’s latest novel, Still Life, is a beautiful, big-hearted, richly tapestried story of people brought together by love, war, art, flood... and the ghost of E.M. Forster.

Vanessa Nicolson was brought up in Florence and London and graduated from Sussex University in Art History and Italian in 1979. She began her career at the Tate Gallery and has since worked as a feature writer, reviewer, curator and film programmer as well as an interviewer for the British Library Sound Archive ‘Artist’s Lives’ project. Her books include Have You Been Good? The Truth Game and Angels of Mud. Vanessa is married to the journalist and writer Andrew Davidson and lives in Sissinghurst, Kent.

 Sarah and Vanessa will talk about their passion for Florence, their love of history and storytelling referencing Still Life and Angels of Mud.