An alternative title for this talk by Dr Nicola Wilson could well be ‘The biggest celebrity book club you’ve probably never heard of!’ With a publication date of 26th June 2025, this event could not be more timely.  Note that this event replaces Dining with Great Writers: Samuel Pepys, which has been cancelled due to the illness of the speaker.

Before Reese Witherspoon and Zoella’s Book Clubs, there was Oprah Winfrey and Richard and Judy. And before them, there was Hugh Walpole and the Book Society. This is the story of Britain’s first celebrity book club and the judges who changed how we read. For forty years between 1929 – 1969, the Book Society chose from the best of world literature to mail out one book a month – fiction, history, travel, or biography – to subscribers in over thirty countries. The judges established what a good ‘book club book’ looked like: well-written, entertaining, informative; worth investing your time and money in, not too highbrow, nor obscure. Making book-buying easier, they started a revolution. And the legacy of their taste is still with us on bookshelves today.

Nicola Wilson lives in Pershore and is Associate Professor of Book and Publishing Studies at the University of Reading and Co-Director of the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing. She says: “The Book Society were massive – they had 10,000 members by the 1930s.  Publishers submitted manuscripts to them before books came out, and the judges selected many well-known titles that would become classics.”