Booze and Books Featuring Helen Lederer, Honey Spencer & Lauren Rae

Brighton Book Festival presents the very best in wine tasting and comedy. Celebrating the natural wines of the UK and those that love them.

18th June  7.30pm

Come and join us for an evening of laughter and a little bit of learning. You will have the opportunity to taste wines and learn about the process of natural wines under the tutelage of a seasoned sommelier.  Then our panel of comedians and wine lovers will talk about their own wine journeys professional and just for fun. 

Helen Lederer A hilarious and alarmingly honest memoir by one of Britain’s first female stand-up comedians of the 80s, when Alternative Comedy created a new generation of TV heroes. “I invite you to imagine a time when women didn’t do comedy unless they were fat, or an impressionist, or enabled by a man. Be happy you weren’t around in the ’80s. But I was. I needed to write this.’ And you need to read Helen Lederer’s memoir, Not That I’m Bitter; the alternative guide to the Alternative Comedy era; full of personal revelation, reflection, and insight, never losing sight of the funny.

Honey Spencer’s has worked around the globe at world-renowned venues including Sager and Wilde, London, 10 William Street, Sydney and NOMA Mexico and used to be wine director for Studio PASKIN, where she curated and executed the wine list for restaurants such as The Palomar, The Barbary, and 1* Michelin restaurant, Evelyn’s Table. In November 2023, she opened her own restaurant Sune on Hackney’s Broadway Market in London with her partner Charlie Sims, where she is co-owner and sommelier. She is a fierce advocate for sustainability within the wine industry, and is listed in Drink’s Business ‘50 Most Powerful Sommeliers in London,’ CODE’s ‘100Most Influential Women in Hospitality’, and a GQ Awards and Fortnum & Mason Awards Judge. Her book ‘Natural Wine, No Drama’ is published on 11 April 2024 (Pavilion Books).

Lauren Rae is a twenty-something Black British journalist and writer. Her originally self-published memoir completely sold out in just few weeks on a limited print run. The demand for a reprint was so high that Lauren created a newsletter combining a love of memes and obsessive TV references with the tribulations of day-to-day life; to keep her readers sated with comic relief, nostalgic reference points and sage life advice. Lauren is mostly based in Europe, having grown up in the UK with insatiable wanderlust. Her journalism has featured in Stylist, Bustle, Refinery29 and Elle. Her candid, comical memoir Love, Wine & Other Highs was an instant digital bestseller and was hailed as one of the hottest titles to look out for in 2022 by Aurelia and Bustle magazines.