The Oldie Event – Giles Wood and Mary Killen – Country Life – in conversation with Harry Mount

Former townies Giles and Mary swapped city life for rural Wiltshire over thirty years ago, and they’ve each embraced it in their own very different ways.

Mary has happily traded sophisticated London salons for monthly lectures at the Farmers’ Club, competitive school quizzes, church interactions and local Auction House sales. While Giles has immersed himself in the catastrophic consequences of conventional farming, his organic no-dig veg-patch, the increasingly disproportionate response by local landlords to harmless trespassers and the strange death of the village house martins.

For recent city escapees and indigenous country folk alike, Giles and Mary sift through the unhelpful dreamy myths and offer a practical reality, with robust back and forth on every aspect of life in rural outposts, including but not limited to planning wars, class wars, dog thefts, tree-felling fights, misunderstandings between incomers and natives and the role of the Heron Appreciation Society.

The much-loved Wiltshire couple share their combined, hard-earned lessons, so we can learn the secret skills of grumbling and bumbling our way towards a new contented country life.

Giles Wood Giles Wood is an accomplished artist, and is also a published writer, with columns in The Telegraph and The Oldie. In the podcast space, he can be heard on Giles and Mary’s Oldie Newsround with Harry Mount.

Mary Killen is a busy journalist, with a weekly column in The Spectator, and regular contributions in many other national publications. She has been appearing on Channel 4’s hit show Gogglebox since 2015 with her husband Giles, sitting together in their cottage in Wiltshire. This is Mary’s seventh book.

Giles and Mary will be in conversation with Harry Mount, editor of The Oldie Magazine.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)