An Evening with Ben Elton

Ben Elton is a writing all-rounder: he got his start creating cult television comedy classics like The Young Ones and Blackadder, then moved onto novels, movie screenplays and musicals.

His bestselling books blend page-turning comedy and biting social comment – but his tenth, Two Brothers, marks a dramatic shift in tone. It tells the story of two boys who grow up in the same Jewish family – one adopted, an Aryan – and their predicament as the Nazi threat closes in.

The novel explores very personal territory: Elton’s German-Jewish father fled Czechoslovakia to England in 1939.

The world-famous funny man gets serious, and talks about his inspirations and his craft with chair Kaz Cooke.