Four Feet Under with Tamsen Courtenay

4th June 2020 Eventbrite

Tamsen Courtenay

Author of Four Feet Under

Tamsen Courtenay author of bestseller Four Feet Under will be taking part in a reading and Q&A in support of Together in Barnet on the 4th June 2020 at 8pm.

What is the book about?

The secret, horrifying world of homelessness, as told by the people themselves. During the months I spent on the streets of London, I recorded our conversations as people told me how they survive the horrors of street-life and about who they were before their nightmare began.

I learned about what they dream of for the future, what they're afraid of and what they actually feel, underneath all those dirty, torn clothes. It was incredible.

What's in the book?

Inside the book are thirty life stories, thoughts and reflections from a wide range of homeless people. People like Benji (a chef-cum-builder), Edward (a marine biologist), Jade (a child prostitute), Kenny and Jane (an elderly couple), Brad and Patrick (businessmen), and Jasmine (a transsexual).

Between us, the homeless and I tried to make sense of their lives – lives they live four feet below the rest of us, on the pavement – where they laugh, think, worry and sometimes die.  I asked countless questions: What was their childhood like? How do they manage to stay alive? What do they think about when they fall asleep at night? Where are their families? Where are they when I can’t see them? What do they do all day?

Tamsen Courtenay

Click to visit the author’s website

Tamsen Courtenay studied at the Pushkin Institute, in Moscow, worked for the Home Office researching police powers, and in broadcast journalism on the BBC’s Panorama and C4’s Dispatches. Tamsen wrote a photo-journal blog about her life during the two years of the Italian Earthquakes of 2016/17 in which she lost her own home.

Tickets and further details here

Witty, humane and shocking. Every politician in the country should be strapped to a chair and made to read it. THE GUARDIAN

Touching and human, this book demands a social and above all, political response. JON SNOW, C4

Heart-wrenching. THE OBSERVER

Four Feet Under was selected as one of the THE FINANCIAL TIMES’ top books of 2018.

Tickets for the evening with Tamsen are available now through Eventbrite