A date to add to your calendar! Bude Literary Festival are hosting a Mother’s Boy book talk event with Patrick Gale and Jim Causley on the 18th May at The Parkhouse Centre in Bude.

Mother’s Boy explores the lives of two principal characters — Laura and Charles. Laura, based on Charles Causley’s mother, is an impoverished Cornish girl who meets her husband when they are both in service in Teignmouth in 1916. They have a baby, Charles, but Laura’s husband returns home from the trenches a damaged man, already ill with the tuberculosis that will soon leave her a widow. In a small, class-obsessed town she raises her boy alone, working as a laundress, and gradually becomes aware that he is some kind of genius. Charles is an intensely private young man, who signs up for the navy with the new rank of coder. His escape from the tight, gossipy confines of Launceston to the colour and violence of war sees him blossom as he experiences not only the possibility of death, but the constant danger of a love that is as clandestine as his work. Mother’s Boy is a story of a man who is among, yet apart from his fellows, in thrall to, yet at a distance from his own mother; a man being shaped for a long, remarkable and revered life spent hiding in plain sight. But it is equally the story of the dauntless mother who will continue to shield him long after the dangers of war are past.

Secure your ticket now for the chance to meet Patrick and Jim and have your copy of Mother’s Boy signed. The event will take place between 8 and 9 pm and costs £7 to attend. For more information see the Bude Literary Festival website.

To find out more about Patrick, see galewarning.org. To find out more about Jim, see his website.