The Madness of Grief: A Memoir of Love and Loss, Revd. Richard Coles & Linda Grant

An emotionally charged and deeply personal account of grief and love

The Reverend Richard Coles has an improbable CV: one half of the hugely successful 1980s rock band The Communards, a vicar in a parish in Northamptonshire, a regular broadcaster on radio, and even a participant in Strictly Come Dancing. In 2019 he lost his husband David Oldham, and in his book The Madness of Grief he describes this experience eloquently and movingly. He will be in conversation with the Orange Prize winning novelist Linda Grant.

“Bold, intimate writing… The Madness of Grief is not a manual for the bereaved, but as a vivid account of how it feels when the world suddenly falls away, it performs another kind of service.”

victoria segal – the sunday times

The Reverend Richard Coles

The Reverend Richard Coles is the presenter of Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4. He is also the only vicar in Britain to have had a number-one hit single. He read Theology at King’s College London, and after ordination worked as a curate in Lincolnshire and subsequently at St Paul’s Church in Knightsbridge, London. He is the author of Lives of the Improbable Saints and two memoirs, the bestselling Fathomless Riches and Bringing in the Sheaves. He lives in his parish of Finedon, Northamptonshire.

Linda Grant

Linda Grant was born in Liverpool. She read English at the University of York and did further postgraduate studies in Canada at McMaster and Simon Fraser Universities. For some years she worked as a journalist, writing for the Guardian and Independent on Sunday. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds honorary doctorates from the University of York and John Moores University. Linda has published a number of novels and works of non-fiction.  Her novel When I Lived in Modern Times won the Orange Prize in 2000. Her latest novel, A Stranger City, was published in 2019.

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