🪑 Seated

Mat Osman is the bassist and founder member of iconic British rock band Suede and a composer of music for TV and films. He also worked as a culture journalist during the noughties, writing about art and travel for papers, magazines and online.

We first met Mat when Suede played the Forum's predecessor, The Rumble Club in 1992. 32 years later, he's returning to talk about and do a book signing of his Guardian Book of the Year 2023, "The Ghost Theatre" as part of Tunbridge Wells Literary Festival.

THE GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2023

'The Ghost Theatre finds its way into the hidden corners of Elizabethan London, telling the story of a group of misfit actors. Beautifully written and completely convincing’ OBSERVER

A dazzling punk re-imagining of Elizabethan London through the eyes of a clairvoyant, bird-worshiping protagonist and her unlikely theatre troupe.

On a rooftop in Elizabethan London two worlds collide. Shay is a messenger-girl and trainer of hawks who sees the future in the patterns of birds. Nonesuch is the dark star of the city's fabled child theatre, as famous as royalty yet lowly as a beggar.

Together they create The Ghost Theatre: a troupe staging magical plays in London's hidden corners. As their hallucinatory performances incite rebellion among the city's outcasts, the pair's relationship sparks and burns against a backdrop of the plague and a London in flames. Their growing fame sweeps them up into the black web of the Elizabethan court, where Shay and Nonesuch discover that if they fly too high, a fall is sure to come...

Fantastical and captivating, The Ghost Theatre charts the rise and dramatic destruction of a dream born from love and torn apart by betrayal.

Publication date: 28 March 2024 Hardback: £9.99

Also available in Ebook and Audio