📕 Playing Cupid, by Hillie Marshall
Before the apps, there was Dinner Dates. Hillie Marshall founded it in the late 1980s, while working as a singer and theatre producer, and built it into an introduction and social events agency that ran for years without a single algorithm.
Playing Cupid is her memoir of it, published on Wednesday, the same night she was on stage at the George IV opening this year's Book Festival. It is a time capsule of how people met before anyone had a phone to do it for them, and by her own account the staff spent as much time calming tempers and averting disasters as making matches. Sweethearts, scoundrels, stalkers, bounders and rebounders, in her words, plus a few tragedies.
She went on to become an agony aunt and a dating expert on television and radio. She has also lived in Chiswick since 1974, which is longer than most of the High Road.
Published by SilverWood Books. Paperback £14.99, Kindle £6.99. On sale at Waterstones Chiswick, on Amazon, and direct from her own site. Her launch party is on Sunday.
Welcome back.
The Book Festival is halfway through as this lands. It opened on Wednesday at the George IV and runs until Monday, and the biggest weekend of it is still ahead. Chiswick author Hillie Marshall published her new book the same day it opened, which is either very good planning or very good luck.
Also inside: the archive that shows almost 500 published authors have lived in W4, the Sea Cadets down at the Pier coming out of a big year with an award and some space for new recruits, and the funfair back on Turnham Green next Thursday with the music switched off.
Glad to have you with us.
📖 The Book Festival's second half
The 18th Chiswick Book Festival opened on Wednesday at the George IV and runs until Monday. Most of it is still ahead.
Saturday afternoon brings the weekend's headline session, Double Cross, Double Bill: Spies in Fact & Fiction, in which Ealing novelist Alex Gerlis interviews Charles Cumming and Jane Thynne. It is sponsored by St Benedict's School in Ealing, which has just joined the festival as a Diamond Partner after backing the Ealing Book Festival. The St Benedict's sessions are at St Michael & All Angels, by Turnham Green station.
Alex Gerlis, who interviews Charles Cumming and Jane Thynne on Saturday afternoon.
That Ealing thread runs deeper than it looks. This festival grew out of the Ealing Literary Festival, which was held in Chiswick in 2007 and 2008, and a third of Chiswick's homes sit in the Borough of Ealing. Director Torin Douglas has been leaning into it for years, through the University of West London's sponsorship since 2017 and by helping get the Ealing Book Festival off the ground in 2024. Agatha Christie, who spent much of her early life in Ealing, gets her own moment fifty years after her death, with Cathy Rentzenbrink and Sophie Hannah on why she has never gone out of fashion.
The wider programme has Samira Ahmed, Nick Clegg, Robert Hardman, Fergal Keane, Ben Macintyre, Kate Mosse, Mary Portas and Jacqueline Wilson. It closes on Monday at Hogarth's House.
Worth remembering what this actually is. Volunteer-run, non-profit, every penny of profit going to four charities: St Michael & All Angels, Read for Good, Koestler Arts and Read Easy Ealing. It has raised more than £170,000 since the first festival in 2009.
Source: Chiswick Book Festival
🥧 Aussie Gourmet Kitchen
Not technically Chiswick, this one. It sits on the far side of Kew Bridge, in the old Hammonds butchers, a short walk along the river from Strand on the Green. The beef, though, comes from Macken Brothers on Turnham Green Terrace, which is about as W4 as a pie gets.
Geoff Webb is from Sydney, came over for a year about thirty years ago and stayed. He was a television and film executive until Covid stopped that, at which point he went to the Australian Women's Weekly for a pie recipe, started giving them to neighbours, and ended up with a stall on Portobello Road and a catering contract at Australia House.
All-butter pastry, their own pastry chef, gravies made in house, no preservatives. £7.95 for a full-size pie, £4.75 for a party pie. The beef is the classic, but there is also chicken with wild mushroom, leeks and gorgonzola, and one with spinach, feta, ricotta and macadamia. Sausage rolls too, and the sweets Australians here complain about missing: Tim Tams, Twisties, Cherry Ripes.
They are sold hot at the counter or frozen to take home, so they work either as lunch or as something for the freezer. Geoff's hope is that Brentford fans will find him on the walk up from the Strand on the Green pubs, which he will get a proper go at when Chelsea come to the Gtech on the 18th.
Running as a pop-up for now, every day from 12pm to 7pm. When the builders finish this autumn it becomes a proper shop with cabinets and eighteen seats.
📍 8 Kew Bridge Road, TW8 0FJ
🔗 aussie-shops.com | ig: @aussiegourmetuk
Source: The Chiswick Calendar
The local wins, openings and milestones worth knowing about this week.
📚 Almost 500 published authors have lived in W4
The Book Festival keeps an archive called the Timeline of Chiswick Writers and Books, and it now runs to almost 500 names. All of them people who lived in W4 and wrote a book.
The roll call is better than a place this size has any right to: two Nobel laureates in literature, a Booker winner, two Oscar winners and a poet laureate. When the first version of the archive went up, The Observer called Chiswick "Britain's most literary location", which sounds like local boosterism until you look at the list.
It is still growing, and Wednesday night added to it. Twenty-one local authors took two minutes each at the George IV, hosted this year by Capital Xtra's Jojo Silva. Among them: the Rev Martine Oborne from St Michael's on Elmwood Road with her first novel, Karen Liebreich of Abundance London on the history of Chiswick in apples and pears, a primary schoolteacher with the second part of a sci-fi trilogy, and a school librarian with a rhyming book about a crocodile who sells ice cream.
⚓ The Sea Cadets at the Pier have had a very good year
TS Stork, the Chiswick Sea Cadets unit that meets under the lifeboat station at Chiswick Pier, was awarded the Burgee for its training standards at this year's Royal Naval Parade inspection. That puts it in the top quarter of units nationally.
The numbers behind it are better than the award. Boating qualifications across all levels rose 45% in a year, cadets averaged more than 30 hours on the water each, and retention sits at 70%, close to three times the national average. Able Cadet James Meyer took the Deputy Lieutenant's Award, and his 13-year-old brother Sebastian a Jack Petchey Achievement Award for dinghy sailing and windsurfing.
Around 30 cadets aged nine to eighteen meet on Wednesdays, 7pm to 9.15pm. The unit has places for new cadets, and is also looking for adults, both uniformed staff and casual volunteers.
The Chiswick Antique and Vintage Market has 8,692 followers, which is a lot for something that happens once a month for six hours.
The feed is mostly dealers showing what they are bringing, which turns out to be the useful bit: you can see the stock before you walk down there and work out whether Sunday is worth your morning. Painted furniture, French brocante, embroidered postcards, vintage clothes, jewellery, architectural salvage.
Second Sunday of every month, which means this one.
🎡 The funfair comes back, with the music off
Turnham Green | Thu 17 to Mon 21 September
George Irvin's funfair returns to Turnham Green next Thursday, and as ever it runs with no music and no amplified sound at all.
That is the whole point of it. Irvin Leisure built the quieter version so that children with autism, ADHD, SEN or sensory sensitivities could come without the wall of noise that makes most fairs impossible, and it has stuck. Everything else is a normal fair. Dodgems, waltzer, twist, the Crazy Caterpillar coaster, teacups, monster trucks, helicopters, the Jungle Adventure funhouse, bungee trampolines, and a food row doing burgers, chips and candy floss.
Open 3pm to 10pm on the Thursday, Friday and Monday, and midday to 10pm across the weekend. Entry is free every day. Rides are half price on the Thursday and the Monday, and tokens booked online in advance are 20% off on the other days.
Irvin Leisure say there has been a fair on Turnham Green since at least 1822, and the family have been running travelling fairs for about as long, which makes this one of the oldest things that still happens here. They are donating a proportion of takings to Age UK Hounslow's Dementia Services, the Mayor's chosen charity, and to the Friends of Turnham Green.
This week
📖 Chiswick Book Festival | Fri 11 to Mon 14 Sept | Multiple venues
Spies in Fact & Fiction on Saturday afternoon, the Agatha Christie 50th sessions across the weekend, and the festival closes Monday at Hogarth's House. Details
🏛️ The Victorian Society opens its Bedford Park HQ | Sat 12 Sept | Priory Gardens
An 1880 house, open for Open House Festival, paired with a walking tour of Bedford Park led by local historian John Scott. Free, but book ahead. Details
🕰️ Chiswick Antiques & Vintage Market | Sun 13 Sept | 9am to 3pm | Old Market Place
Police station down to Metro Bank.
🥖 The Food Market at Dukes Meadows | Sun 13 Sept | 10am to 2pm | The Pavilion, Market Drive, W4 2RX
Every Sunday, proceeds back into the park. Details
🎶 Hogarth Singers open rehearsal | Mon 14 Sept | 7.30pm to 9.30pm | St Michael and All Angels, Bath Road, W4 1TT
Second and last of the free no-commitment sessions. No audition. Bass and tenor singers get 50% off their first term.
🏛️ Chiswick Town Hall opens its doors | Tue 15 Sept | Two tours
The Italianate vestry hall built in 1876 for St Nicholas Parish Council, open for Open House. Free, book ahead. Details
Further ahead
🎺 The Phil Brown Swingtet plus guests | Thu 17 Sept | 8pm to 10.30pm | The Duck and Ball, Chiswick Cricket Club, 12 Riverside Drive, W4 2SP
Six-piece band, Armstrong through to Basie, every third Thursday. Free entry.
🎨 The next W4th Plinth unveiled | Sat 19 Sept | 2pm | Turnham Green Terrace piazza
New image, special guests, and the last chance to see Tanya Meditsky's. Details
🐕 Chiswick House Dog Show | Sun 20 Sept | 11am to 4.15pm | Cricket Pitch, Chiswick House
22nd year, 17 classes, fancy dress theme is The Traitors. £6 a class, spectators free. Details
🏛️ Learning Hub Community Celebration Day | Sun 20 Sept | 10.30am to 3.30pm | Chiswick House & Gardens
The building the crowdfunder paid for, open at last. Free throughout, including entry to the House. Details
🧘 The Body Reset Day | Sun 27 Sept | 9.30am to 1pm | Chiswick Catholic Centre, 2 Duke's Avenue, W4 2AE
A three-hour workshop from Anny at Personal Best Fit: three 45-minute sessions covering Pilates, resistance-band strength and mobility, with breaks between each. £65. Book
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