Events

Join much-loved broadcaster and award-winning author, Clare Balding for an evening discussing her extraordinary life and career as Harper Collins publish her debut novel, Pastures New in paperback.

This event will run from 7pm until 8:15pm (no interval) and will be followed by a book signing. Clare will be in conversation followed by an audience Q&A.

From the courts of Wimbledon to Buckingham Palace to the Traitor’s Castle, Clare is know to millions on screen for her warmth and wit. Now she brings the same humour and insight to her fiction. Pastures New is a funny and heartwarming novel that captures Clare’s deep affection for the countyside and the people she meets, which listeners of her BBC Radio 4 series, Ramblings, are bound to enjoy. A lifelong lover of animals, she also seeks to shine a light on the role they play in our lives through her writing and other projects, which will see her adding an entrepreneurial string to her bow this year.

Pastures New

Alex has perfected the art of dodging responsibility during her almost 40 years – until an unexpected letter turns her upside down.

She’s inherited a crumbling sheep farm in wildest, wettest Wales. This was not her life plan. Not at all.

Now her closest companion is a stubborn Welsh terrier, she’s speed-reading The Idiot’s Guide to Farming  and her arrival has set the village gossip mill spinning. With the farm near collapse, Alex sets out to uncover the truth behind her mysterious inheritance.

Clare Balding grew up in the countryside surrounded by horses and dogs and reading everything from Jilly Cooper to Henry James. Her autobiography, ‘My Animals and Other Family’, won the National Book Award for Autobiography of the Year. A keen rider, she competed as an amateur flat jockey during her teenage years, winning Champion Lady Rider in 1990. After an English Literature degree at Cambridge, she became a journalist. Alongside her award-winning sports broadcasting and coverage of major Royal events, Clare hosts her much-loved Ramblings series on Radio 4, taking her across the British Isles exploring its landscape and its storytelling. A passionate campaigner for equality and women’s sport, Clare was awarded a CBE for her services to Sport and Charity in 2022, which she was honoured to receive at Buckingham Palace.

This event will be BSL interpreted by Paragon Interpreting.