The world’s oldest surviving grand music hall and one of London’s best kept secrets will play host to an afternoon of inspiring and unexpected talks by three shortlisted authors for the Wellcome Book Prize 2014.


Come and hear bestselling writer Elizabeth Gilbert speak about The Signature of All Things, a novel which covers everything from London to Tahiti, people with extraordinary characters from missionaries, abolitionists, adventurers, astronomers, sea captains, geniuses to the quite mad, as well as unforgettable heroine Alma Whittaker, a woman of the Enlightened Age, who stands defiantly on the cusp of the modern.


Author Sarah Wise will talk about Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England, a book that exposes the phenomenon of false allegations of lunacy and the dark motives behind them in the Victorian period. Eccentric heirs, women in white, embarrassing offspring: come and hear the strange and shocking stories of the victims of malicious asylum incarceration in the 19th Century.


Historian Emily Mayhew will talk about Wounded: From Battlefield to Blighty, the story of a journey from injury on the battlefield to recovery in Britain.
The Wellcome Book Prize is an annual award, open to new works of fiction or non-fiction, with a central theme on some aspect of medicine, health or illness.


Talks for the Incurably Curious: Celebrating the Wellcome Book Prize 2014 is at Wilton’s Music Hall, Graces Alley, London E1 , April 27 from 4pm until 5.15pm. Details:  020 7702 2789, wiltons.org.uk