BUT, Life isn’t like that: songs & stories with boff whalley

Please check ticket info for this event below, incl. information about access.

But: Life Isn't Like That, Is It? 

Join us for an evening with Boff Whalley, musician, author, and a founding member of the anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba and Commoners Choir.

Part reading, part gig and part conversation, Boff will play songs from a lifetime of writing and making music, songs which chime with the book, and will draw from a personal history of creative activism.

Whalley's new book But is a collection of stories about real lives, real people, and real life: Stuttering, wayward, disjointed, funny, ridiculous, and unplanned.

We're thrilled the have a Radical Book Fair pit stop on Boff's tour, to talk about, and sing, the stories that make up the book.

The Speaker:

Boff Whalley is a former guitarist and songwriter with anarchist band Chumbawamba. He has written several touring plays and large-scale musicals, created projects at Manchester Museum, Somerset House and the Tate Gallery, and composed for Welsh National Opera. Boff has published three books (‘Footnote’, ‘Run Wild’ and ‘Faster! Louder!’) and continues to write songs for the situationist Commoners Choir as well as collaborating with a wide range of artists and activists. He once had a job building plywood grottos for supermarket Santas. When he isn't writing, it’s a good bet Boff is fell running across the hills of Northern England, where he lives in Yorkshire with his family and a very old cat.

*Please note that masks will be required at this event (as with all Lighthouse events).

*Accessibility: All events will be professionally filmed & livestreamed. The Roxy is wheelchair accessible (including toilets) and we'll have provisions for neurodivergent guests including stims, quiet space and colour-coded lanyards.

*Events are £5 or free -we completely understand paying for one or two events and then getting free spots for others. The Radical Book Fair is entirely bookshop run and ticket sales are vital to keeping the fair sustainable and paying all our speakers so all support is heartily welcome!

*Featured books: The book & ticket option will select the most recently published book at any given event, if you’re not sure which book you want or don’t want that featured book, then buy a £5 voucher ticket that can be used for any of the books below. There are also DONATION TICKETS which are £10, listed as a 'book', please note these are not redeemable at the fair, and rather a much appreciated contribution to the Fair's running costs,

*If you'd like to help make the book fair accessible to more folks, please consider adding to our pay-it-forward fund HERE.