North Cornwall Book Festival Author Tours: Rachel Joyce on Miss Benson’s Beetle

Rachel Joyce swept to household name status with the runaway success of her debut novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and its sister novel, The Love Song of Queenie Hennessy.  Her latest, Miss Benson’s Beetle, transported thousands during the early months of lockdown with the tropical voyage of its unlikely heroine, an unregarded schoolmistress, as she reconnects with her childhood passion for entomology. It won Rachel the Wilbur Smith Prize for Adventure Writing and secured her reputation for being able to raise laughter and tears in a single paragraph. She’ll be in conversation with novelist and memoirist Cathy Rentzenbrink and has promised to give us a sneak preview of the third instalment of her Harold novels, in which she finally gives the side of his misunderstood wife, Maureen.

This event will take place at The Eagle House Hotel in Launceston and tickets will cost £8. Accompanied under 16s free.

Image: Pal Hansen