Monty Lit Fest is delighted to welcome to Montgomeryshire the award-winning, bestselling author, Jonathan Coe.

Join us to hear about his writing life as the author of satirical, often funny books that explore the best and worst of British social and political life, including the much-loved The Rotters’ Club, Middle England, Bournville and 2024’s The Proof of My Innocence, a cosy crime mystery – but not, of course, as we know it.

 Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. He is the award-winning, bestselling author of novels that include What a Carve Up!; The Rotters’ Club; Middle England; Bournville and 2024’s The Proof of My Innocence. 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 has 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.

Michele O’Leary is now retired and living in Pembrokeshire, but for 41 years she practised as a barrister and, for the last 21, sat as a fee-paid judge at the Central Family Court in London. She became a Master of the Bench of Lincoln’s Inn in 2007 and has been heavily involved in advocacy training in the UK and internationally. She continues to teach advocacy in Keble College and Lincoln’s Inn and enjoys being close to the Irish Sea. Preferably only in it in the summer. She has known Jonathan Coe since they both had real colour in their hair.