December 2025 - Tuesday Glimpse
2025-12-09 15:00 - 15:30 (Europe/London) | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
Mini-tour and Glimpse of the Reading Rooms
Are you curious about the origins of Gladstone’s Library? Would you like a sneak peek at the famous Reading Rooms?
Built more than a century ago, Gladstone’s Library is one of the hidden gems of North Wales. While the Library is open to day visitors who wish to enjoy spending time in the grounds of this Victorian Gothic landmark, the Reading Rooms are silent study spaces usually only accessible to registered Readers or residential guests staying here overnight.
Steeped in local and national history, this is the UK’s only Prime Ministerial library and a rare example of a residential library. Known originally as St. Deiniol’s Library, it was renamed in 2010 to reflect its connections with founder and four-times Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.
By booking onto a Glimpse, you will be given a talk about the building, its purpose, its links to UK and world affairs and the ways in which it has evolved through time. You will also be able to peep inside the Reading Rooms, where researchers, writers and scholars of all kinds come to make use of the extensive collections and to work in silence.
All Glimpses last approximately 30 minutes.

November 2025 - Friday Glimpse
2025-11-28 11:30 - 12:00 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

November 2025 - Tuesday Glimpse
2025-11-11 15:00 - 15:30 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

Masterclass: Putting Yourself on the Page with Caroline Crampton
2025-11-08 10:30 - 15:00 | Glynne Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
Putting Yourself on the Page – a writing masterclass with Caroline Crampton
10.30am-3.00pm (please note end time is approximate), Saturday 8th November 2025
Join writer and podcaster Caroline Crampton for a day-long detailed look at the craft involved in blending autobiography with other subjects.
This way of weaving a personal journey through a work of creative non-fiction has become very popular with readers and publishers alike, but how should writers go about it? What is the best way to structure and pace a memoir strand within a larger work, and how to find the balance between the different types of material?
As a writer, how much of yourself should you share with readers? What are the possible ramifications of putting too much, or too little, of yourself on the page? Together, participants will explore all facets, from the emotional to the practical, of this highly effective technique for writing. As the author of two books that are structured around memoir — The Way to the Sea (2019) and A Body Made of Glass (2024) — Caroline Crampton has spent a lot of time considering these questions and will explore them here through talks and exercises with class participants.
Photograph by Jamie Drew.

October 2025 - Friday Glimpse
2025-10-31 11:30 - 12:00 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

October 2025 - Tuesday Glimpse
2025-10-14 15:00 - 15:30 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

Masterclass: Ways into Historical Fiction with Joanna Miller
2025-10-11 10:30 - 15:00 | Glynne Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
Ways into Historical Fiction – a masterclass with Joanna Miller
10.30am-3.00pm (ending times approximate), Saturday 11th October 2025
Join novelist and poet Joanna Miller for a day masterclass that gives you the tools to get started with historical fiction. This masterclass is suitable for those wanting an introduction into writing long and short form historical fiction; there will be guidance on practical matters such as editing and research and help with creating immersive settings and building a character’s distinct voice.
Led by Joanna, participants will consider ways of creating memorable characters, immersive settings and compelling plots. Over the day, the course will build confidence in writers, providing them with practical tips for moving forward with writing that is fresh and authentic.
This masterclass is suitable for writers at any stage, whether you’re just starting out or your work-in-progress needs a shot in the arm.
Image by Lucy Noble Photography.

Talk: Necessary Women; The Untold History of Parliament's Working Women
2025-10-09 15:00 - 16:00 | Chapel, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
Necessary Women; The Untold History of Parliament’s Working Women, with Mari Takayanagi
3-4pm, Thursday 9th October 2025
When suffragette Emily Wilding Davison hid overnight in the Houses of Parliament in 1911 to have her name recorded in the census there, she may not have known that there were sixty-seven other women also resident in Parliament that night: housekeepers, kitchen maids, and wives and daughters living in households. This talk, with historian and archivist Mari Takayanagi, tells their story.
Women have touched just about every aspect of life in Parliament. From ‘Jane’, dispenser of beer, pies and chops in Bellamy’s legendary refreshment rooms; to May Ashworth, Official Typist to Parliament for thirty years through marriage, war and divorce; and Jean Winder, the first female Hansard reporter, who fought for years for equal pay; the lives of these women have been largely unacknowledged – until now.
Drawing on new research from the Parliamentary Archives, government records and family history sources, historians and parliamentary insiders, Mari’s recent book Necessary Women (with Elizabeth Hallam Smith) brings these unsung heroes to life. Join Mari at Gladstone’s Library to learn about women left out of the history books – including Mary Jane Anderson, a previously unknown suffragette.
Dr Mari Takayanagi is a historian of women and Parliament from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries, and Senior Archivist at the UK Parliamentary Archives.
Her research interests include legislation affecting women’s lives and gender equality, early women MPs, and women staff in the House of Commons and House of Lords. Her most recent publications are ‘Suffrage Centenaries’ in the Routledge Companion to British Women’s Suffrage (Routledge, 2024), and as co-editor with Erika Rackley and Rosemary Auchmuty, Women’s Legal Landmarks in the Interwar Years (Hart Publishing, 2024).
Her monograph, Necessary Women: the Untold Story of Parliament’s Working Women, co-authored with Elizabeth Hallam Smith, was published in 2023 by The History Press.

Talk: Beyond Science vs Art with Selali Fiamanya
2025-10-07 19:00 - 20:00 | Chapel, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
‘The Diagnosis is in the Patient’s Story’: Beyond Science vs Art with Selali Fiamanya
7pm-8pm, Tuesday 7th October 2025
Novelist Selali Fiamanya trained as a scientist and medical doctor, and always found a tension between his aspirations as an artist and his life as a scientist. As he’ll suggest in this evening talk, however, such distinctions are thoroughly modern, and the sciences and the arts have more uniting than dividing them.
In Selali’s case, he understands both art and science as investigations into truth, and these investigations have historically taken many forms. In his own life and work, using the systematic skills of diagnosis and problem solving got him through the thorny aspects of writing of his novel, whilst learning how to communicate a story in an engaging way has helped him endlessly with patients.
In this hour-long event Selali will reflect on doctor-writers from Anton Chekhov to Adam Kay; as well as other historical and modern thinkers, scientists and artists, aiming to blur the boundary between fact and fiction and suggest that each makes the other stronger.
Selali Fiamanya is a novelist and essayist who is interested in the contradictions that define human experience. Before We Hit the Ground, his first novel, is due for publication in early 2025 having been runner-up for the PONTAS and JJ Bola Emerging Writer’s Prize as an unfinished manuscript.
Selali began writing through involvement with radical zine collective Skin Deep, where he wrote and edited fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and visual arts pieces on the themes of race and culture, which were distributed widely, free of charge. This collaborative approach was maintained with several other zine projects such as People of Content and whut?, all championing queer people of colour to produce collaborative, multi-disciplinary work.
Selali’s love for collaborative writing also took him to the traditional publishing world, having worked with a former refugee to write a collaborative narrative non-fiction piece for the anthology Will You Read This Please? (edited by Gladstone’s Library regular Joanna Cannon) about her mental health journey.

September 2025 - Friday Glimpse
2025-09-26 11:30 - 12:00 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

September 2025 - Tuesday Glimpse
2025-09-09 15:00 - 15:30 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

Festival: Gladfest!
2025-09-05 16:00 - 2025-09-06 22:00 | Library and Grounds, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
Gladfest is back!
Friday 5th-Saturday 6th September 2025
The nation’s friendliest festival returns! Save the date and watch this space!

Talk: Equal Citizenship of the Mind with Joanna Miller
2025-09-04 19:00 - 20:00 | Chapel, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
Equal Citizenship of the Mind with Joanna Miller
7pm-8pm, Thursday 4th September 2025
This talk explores women’s fight for equality at Oxford, from the establishment of the first colleges in the 1880s, to 1920 when women were finally accepted as fully fledged members of the university.
In writing her novel, The Eights, writer and poet Joanna Miller gained some fascinating insights into the lives of the first women at Oxford, and the role that suffrage and World War One played in changing male attitudes.
From overbearing chaperones, to climbing in windows and finding loopholes to beat the men at rowing, the lives of the first women at Oxford were certainly never dull!
Joanna Miller is a writer from Hertfordshire whose debut novel The Eights will be published by Fig Tree Penguin (UK) and Putnam Books (US) in March 2025. The novel tells the story of four women from different backgrounds who are amongst the first to matriculate at Oxford University in the shadow of the First World War.

Joanna’s work explores themes around female friendship, feminism and suffrage and is inspired by museums and local history. Joanna works part-time as a bookseller and has just completed an Undergraduate Diploma in Creative Writing at Oxford. She is also graduate of Faber Academy and Escalator, the National Centre for Writing’s talent development scheme.
Prior to that, Joanna established an award-winning poetry gift business and worked as an English teacher and literacy adviser. Her rhyming verse has been filmed twice by the BBC, and in 2015 she won The Poetry Prize, run by Bloomsbury Publishing and The National Literacy Trust.
Picture by Lucy Noble Photography.

August 2025 - Friday Glimpse
2025-08-29 11:30 - 12:00 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

August 2025 - Tuesday Glimpse
2025-08-12 15:00 - 15:30 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

July 2025 - Friday Glimpse
2025-07-25 11:30 - 12:00 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

July 2025 - Tuesday Glimpse
2025-07-08 15:00 - 15:30 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

In Conversation: Muslim, Actually, with Tawseef Khan
2025-07-03 19:00 - 20:00 | Chapel, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
Muslim, Actually: How We Get Islam Wrong and Why it Matters, with Tawseef Khan
7pm-8pm, Thursday 3rd July 2025
Join Tawseef Khan for a discussion of his first non-fiction book Muslim, Actually, in which he looks at the Islamophobia persistent in some segments of Western society, from its ancient origins and development, to how it operates and manifests today. Talking to Andrea Russell, Warden at Gladstone’s Library, Tawseef will look to dismantle the essential stereotypes that Islamophobia is constructed around. How have Tawseef’s reflections on how the discourse on Islamophobia (and his attitudes towards it) changed since writing and publishing the book? What does he feel are the future prospects of the West embracing its Muslim communities unconditionally? And finally, where does the conversation go from here?
Tawseef Khan is a qualified immigration solicitor and holds a doctoral degree from the University of Liverpool, where he examined the fairness of the British asylum system. He is also a graduate of the creative writing programme at the University of East Anglia, where he received the Seth Donaldson Memorial Bursary. His fiction has appeared in Lighthouse and Test Signal: a Northern anthology; his non-fiction in the New York Times, The Face and Hyphen. His debut non-fiction book Muslim, Actually was published by Atlantic in 2021. He lives in Manchester.

June 2025 - Friday Glimpse
2025-06-27 11:30 - 12:00 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

Talk: Writing Yourself Well, with Caroline Crampton
2025-06-19 19:00 - 20:00 | Chapel, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
Writing Yourself Well, with Caroline Crampton
7pm-8pm, Thursday 19th June 2025
Writing about illness is an entire genre unto itself — memoirs of extraordinary pain and survival against the odds are regulars on bookshop shelves and bestseller lists alike. But what is it actually like to write about your illnesses, and how can it impact how you feel?
In order to write her book A Body Made of Glass: A History of Hypochondria, writer and podcaster Caroline Crampton spent five years immersed in stories about illness from writers like Philip Larkin, Charles Darwin, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen and many others. Over time, this intimacy with all of the different ways to be unwell actually began to have a positive effect on Caroline’s own hypochondria and her relationship with her health.
By sharing these literary stories from the past and recounting the techniques involved in crafting her own story, Caroline’s talk discusses how the ways we read – and write – about our illnesses can impact the way we experience them.
Caroline Crampton is a writer and podcaster whose work aims to bring people closer to material they may never have considered approachable before. As she says, ‘I like to combine autobiography, deep research, careful structure and considered prose to produce work that will, I hope, inform as much as it entertains or delights’. Caroline’s first book, The Way to the Sea: The Forgotten Histories of the Thames Estuary (2019) combines the unusual personal story of her parents’ emigration to Britain on a small boat with travelogue, history, literary criticism and a portrait of an unusual landscape.
Her next book, A Body Made of Glass: A History of Hypochondria (2024), is a chronological narrative of health anxiety spanning from the very earliest humans to today. Critics hailed it as a ‘landmark’ book for its examination of what this universal doubt and fear can tell us about life and medicine in every age, as well as relating Caroline’s own experiences as a teenage cancer survivor who perpetually fears she will be sick again. Alongside her book projects, Caroline produces a fortnightly podcast, Shedunnit (BBC Sounds); each episode looks at an aspect of golden age detective fiction, covering everything from Agatha Christie’s skill at archaeology to the influence of science on whodunnits.

June 2025 - Tuesday Glimpse
2025-06-17 15:00 - 15:30 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

Alibis in the Archive 2025
2025-06-06 15:00 - 2025-06-08 14:00 | Library and Grounds, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
Alibis in the Archive
3pm, Friday 6th June – 2pm, Sunday 8th June 2025
The North-West’s Crime Weekend is back for another year!
Appearing at Alibis in the Archive 2025: The British Library talks Crime Classics – – John Curran on Agatha Christie and The Collins Crime Club – – Shelly Dickson Carr remembers ‘My Grandather, John Dickson Carr’ – – Christina Koning on Cambridge Crime – – Paul Charles talks to Martin Edwards about Colin Dexter – – Caroline England puts the Criminal in Crime – – Alex Pavesi explores metaphysical detective fiction and GK Chesterton.
For the full Alibis in the Archive weekend timetable, please see below.

May 2025 - Friday Glimpse
2025-05-30 11:30 - 12:00 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

Lecture: 'More Matter for a May Morning': Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and the Thresholds of Foolery, with Emma Rees
2025-05-24 17:00 - 18:00 | Chapel, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
‘More Matter for a May Morning’: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and the Thresholds of Foolery, with Emma Rees
5pm, Saturday 24th May 2025
The 1623 First Folio labels Twelfth Night a comedy. But how comfortably does this chaotic and subversive play actually sit in that genre? Do modern sensibilities demand a more nuanced interpretation of it?
In thinking about comedy’s limitations and the thresholds of foolery, Emma Rees will use Trevor Nunn’s glorious 1996 film adaptation as a springboard into considering the shadows that haunt three of the play’s characters: Feste, Malvolio, and Antonio. Is this a comedy suited, as the roguish servant Fabian suggests, to the folly of a bright May morning, or is it more properly placed, as its title proposes, firmly in the melancholy darkness of January?
In 2016 Emma Rees was Gladstone’s Library’s first Political Writer in Residence. She is Professor of Literature and Gender Studies at the University of Chester where she has taught Shakespeare’s works for a quarter of a century. In 2017 she finally achieved her goal of seeing every one of Shakespeare’s plays live on stage at least once, and she ran her first residential Gladstone’s Library Shakespeare course in 2018, on The Taming of the Shrew. She returned in 2019 with The Merchant of Venice; led a weekend course on Macbeth in 2023; and on The Tempest in 2024. She’s delighted to be returning in 2025 with Twelfth Night.

May 2025 - Tuesday Glimpse
2025-05-13 15:00 - 15:30 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

Talk: The Home Child with Liz Berry
2025-05-01 19:00 - 20:00 | Chapel, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
The Home Child, with Liz Berry
7pm-8pm, Thursday 1st May 2025
Join award-winning poet Liz Berry for an evening of readings based around her latest book, The Home Child. Called ‘ground-breaking’ by Benjamin Zephaniah, The Home Child is inspired by the life of Liz’s aunt and tells the story of Eliza Showell, sent to Canada for a ‘better life’ in 1908.
As well as weaving poems with Eliza’s story, Liz – whose poems are known and loved for their use of vernacular language – will think about the use of regional or ‘home’ language, particularly how using such language vividly conjures story and emotion. In previous performances, audience questions have led to deep and moving discussions about family histories, social justice, looked-after children, how writing might play a role as witness or agent of change, and (of course) love.
This is sure to be an evening full of poetry and warm discussion – not to be missed!
Liz Berry is an award-winning poet and author of the critically acclaimed collections Black Country (Chatto, 2014); The Republic of Motherhood (Chatto, 2018); The Dereliction (Hercules Editions, 2021) a collaboration with artist Tom Hicks; and most recently The Home Child (Chatto, 2023), a novel in verse.
Liz’s work, described as “a sooty soaring hymn to her native West Midlands” (The Guardian), celebrates the landscape, history and dialect of the region. Liz has received the Somerset Maugham Award, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, Eric Gregory Award and two Forward Prizes. Her poem ‘Homing’, a love poem for the language of the Black Country, is part of the GCSE English syllabus. Liz is a patron of Writing West Midlands and holds an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton for services to literature.

Lecture: The Last Enchanted Places? A Journey Through the Spa Towns of mid-Wales, with Ian Bradley
2025-04-26 19:15 - 20:15 | Chapel, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
The Last Enchanted Places? A Journey Through the Spa Towns of mid-Wales, with Ian Bradley
7.15pm, Saturday 26th April 2025
There is a Brigadoon-like quality about the four spa towns in the old Welsh county of Radnorshire, now part of Powys. Llandrindod Wells, Builth Wells, Llanmarach Wells and Llanwrytd Wells seem to be lost in the mists of time, just as they are frequently also lost in the mists and rain that often descend on the green hills and valleys in this part of mid-Wales. Between them, they have the most varied and unusual natural mineral water springs of anywhere in the British Isles. The legendary origins of these health giving springs derive from Celtic mythology. Once thriving health and holiday resorts, the mid-Welsh spas retain a bewitched and intriguing atmosphere – are they, indeed, among the last enchanted places left in Britain?
This talk is given by Ian Bradley, author of forty-six books on Theology and related subjects, and frequent course leader at Gladstone’s Library.

Course: Liquid Faith
2025-04-25 17:00 - 2025-04-27 13:00 | Glynne Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
Liquid Faith, led by Ian Bradley
Friday 25th – Sunday 27th April 2025
Please contact Reception to book your place – 01244 532350 / enquiries@gladlib.org
Water plays a central role in Christianity and in all the world’s religions – it has often been taken as a metaphor for faith – flowing and yet still, yielding and yet in full spate. Ian Bradley leads a weekend which asks what message the booming interest in wild swimming might have for the churches, and explores holy wells, sacred watery sites and spas in Wales and elsewhere. ‘Watery’ images and metaphors in the Bible, in poems and in theological texts will be shared and discussed, as will examples of liturgical innovations making use of water.
The weekend will include a visit to Holywell, a unique and evocative place of pilgrimage based around an early medieval holy well.
Ian Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Cultural and Spiritual History in the University of St Andrews and well known as a preacher, retreat leader, writer and broadcaster. He is the author of 46 books, including Water: A Spiritual History; Health, Hedonism and Hypochondria: The Hidden History of Spas and Water; and Water Music: Making Music in the Spas of Europe and North America and five best-selling studies of Celtic Christianity.
Please note there is an optional visit to the National Shrine of St Winifrede at Holywell on the Saturday afternoon. Once you have made your booking we will be in touch regarding this. There may be a (hopefully small!) additional cost.
Residential rates

One delegate in a single ensuite: £407 (or £359 with a student, clergy or Society of Authors discount)
Two delegates in a twin or double: £627 (or £565 with discounts)
One delegate in a double or twin occupancy: £477 (or £415 with discount)
One delegate and one non-delegate guest in a twin or double: £577 (or £515 with discount)

Includes breakfast, two course lunch with tea or filter coffee on Saturday and Sunday and a two course dinner with tea or filter coffee on Friday and Saturday.
Non-residential rate: £220 (including breaks, lunches and dinners)
Please contact Reception to book your place – 01244 532350 / enquiries@gladlib.org

April 2025 - Friday Glimpse
2025-04-25 11:30 - 12:00 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom

April 2025 - Tuesday Glimpse
2025-04-08 15:00 - 15:30 | Gladstone Room, Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire, CH5 3DF, United Kingdom
