events

About the book: In August 1303, the people of the southern French town of Carcassonne rose up in revolt. Their rebellion against King and Inquisition saw the prison stormed, many of the town elite driven out and their houses sacked, and the inquisitors humiliated. For eighteen months, Carcassonne was a town where the French royal writ did not run.

Reconstructed from the contemporary accounts, the revolt emerges as an important incident in medieval class struggle. It was also the apogee of the fight by the people of Languedoc against the northern French invaders of the Albigensian crusade and the persecutions they brought with them.

Combining political analysis with original research, this book reveals the hidden story of a significant medieval rebellion and its importance for our understanding of oppression and resistance today.

About the author: Elaine Graham-Leigh is an activist and writer of history, politics and fiction. She is the author of The Southern French Nobility and the Albigensian Crusade, (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2005), A Diet of Austerity: Class, Food and Climate Change, (London: Zero Books, 2015), Marx and the Climate Crisis, (London: Counterfire, 2020), The Caduca, (Canterbury: The Conrad Press, 2021) and Revolution in Carcassonne: The Story of a Fourteenth-Century Rebellion, (London: Whalebone Press, 2025). She is a founding member of Counterfire. 

 An evening of  video games or board games!

Come to a relaxing evening of retro video games and a special selection of board games. Have your own favourite board game? Why not bring it along?

Games not your thing? Then you can still come along to chill, chat and relax and take time to browse our curated selection of books.

This event will also have a bar. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult. 

Join us to celebrate the launch of this fabulous new cookbook!

You care about the planet and the climate crisis. You've been tempted to take the plunge into plant-based cooking, but you never knew where to start. This is the book you've been waiting for! Pioneering vegan community cookery school Made In Hackney use their 12 years of experience to take you on a practical, inclusive and delicious plant-based culinary journey.

Their firsthand experience of the challenges people face when evolving to plant-centred eating - cost, culture, access, housing, equipment, time, physical and mental conditions - makes them an emphatic and informed collective with tips and tricks for almost all life circumstances. Try over 100 mouth-watering, global recipes. From fermenting your own Kimchi or Mango Kombucha, to sweet treats of Chocolate and Black Bean Pudding or Pistachio and Cardamom Kheer, to feasts of Chipotle Mushroom Tacos or Brazilian Feijoada - there's something for everyone.

Become a better global citizen by understanding the bigger picture around our broken food system, including juicy topics like organic versus regen, what's really causing hunger, how to decolonize the food system and the difference between culinary appropriation and appreciation. Create eggy, cheesy, meaty and umami flavours with nothing but whole food plants. Work your seasonings and herbs.

Learn how to cook the essentials like lentils, pulses and rice in foolproof ways. Discover everything you need to know to thrive on a plant-based diet, with advice and content from Plant-Based Health Professionals. Never preachy.

Always joyful. Often funny. This cookbook will get you inspired and informed to put more plants on your plate forever.
 

This month in our gallery: a spectacular group show!

Before the gallery closes for December we finish our first full year of amazing exhibitions here with a group show by artists from the local area and elsewhere - and a chance for you to own or give something unusual and special as we move into the festive season.  

Free.

We are hosting a Comedy Club, on the 1st Friday of the month. The Comedy Club 

show-cases some of the most exciting rising stars of London’s vibrant, contemporary circuit. Come & check out some of London’s emerging comedy talent, and experienced comics trying out new material!

The line up:

To be announced.

With compere: Mike Lash

Mike is a comedian and compere known for his work in the UK comedy circuit. He has built a reputation as a warm and engaging host, known for his quick wit.

Join us and poet Hilary Davies for readings from her latest collection.

In Compass Light we cross landscapes, unravelling time, discovering how change and journeys become a celebration of a life. Poems move through the points of the compass and across sacred sites, exploring the many different ways in which we live in time and space, and considering how our experience of time is fundamental to meaning in human life. We are carried along through years spent in Greece, observing the markets, the ancient rhythms of village life, the sudden appearance of the gods in a violent countryside, the cycles of love, death and the earth.

With a flick of the compass we find ourselves gazing across the seascapes and night skies of Cornwall and west Wales, then hurtling along on the Underground and through the East End of London. Beautifully crafted and wildly evocative, Compass Light is a wide-ranging collection that illuminates the dazzling richness of how we perceive time, and how it makes us who and what we are.

 

Have you ever stopped to consider what goes into a painting beyond what you can see? Welcome to a fascinating journey of discovery... The Geometry of the Last Supper skilfully blends the worlds of Renaissance art, geometry and symbolism, allowing the reader to uncover, for the very first time, the simple and delicate geometry at play in the composition of Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece. Never before has a single and unified solution been proposed to explain the making of the Last Supper.

During the Renaissance, symbolic significance was ascribed to geometrical shapes. These symbols, such as those encountered in The Geometry of the Last Supper, have an ancient history, deeply rooted in a tradition that goes back to Pythagoras and beyond. Thanks to them, the geometry presented in this book comes to life as the inner message of the Last Supper is revealed.

Once the meaning of the geometry becomes clear, you will be left with the feeling of having been let into a priceless secret. Ideal for any art-lovers or any reader who enjoys looking behind the layers.