Graham Swift

The quietly loved British author, Graham Swift, promoted his eighth novel, Tomorrow to a bustling crowd of older individuals. For someone who has previously won the Booker Prize, had three of his novels made into films and whose early novel, Waterland, has become a fixture on the British A-level English Literature syllabus, this is unsurprising.

Swift confirms the suspicion that a writer is inevitably a good orator – he transformed the reading from a quick snooze into a captivating interpretation of his book, through his use of eye contact, expressive hand gestures and varying tone of his voice. Tomorrow is crammed with thought-provoking issues. It tackles the inextricable connection between ideas of family and sex, difficulties in telling your loved ones a long-held secret and how the minutiae of daily life are connected to the external world. The resulting question and answer session covered topics as diverse as the nature of happiness, why novels require endings and why he has no children of his own.

Graham Swift loves the act of telling stories and offered glimmers into himself as both an individual and a writer. This combination made the talk an enjoyable and captivating event.