Our fifth Real Magic Weekend festival lands in Wendover 25-27 September.
Music from Nadeem Din-Gabisi and Naima Bock, talks from the Beta Band’s Steve Mason, Booker Prize nominated Luke Kennard, Joanna Miller, the Guardian’s John Harris, DJs Luke Solomon and Sean Rowley and much more.
Another special weekend of talks, walks, music, drinking and dancing, and lots more magic. It will also be our fourth birthday party too. We weren’t 100% sure this one would be going ahead, so forgive us for our slightly late announcement. But we’re really happy we have pulled this together and can’t wait to see you all once again in the village for our magic gathering.
There are a handful of weekend tickets still available, these get you into every single event over the three days. There are also tickets for Saturday and Sunday, plus each individual event as well. All below!
Our festivals are always super important for helping to raise funds for the shop, to help keep us here on the High Street, and to be honest, this year more so than ever. Come and support this stuff if you can. Buy a ticket, buy a cocktail, buy some books. Independent bookshops promote culture in our communities – buy books from us not billionaires.
Head to the website to find out everything we have in store. We promise you brilliant music, the best talks, beer and cocktails, lovely people and good times!
Carl and Sophie x
FRIDAY 25 SEPTEMBER
NAIMA BOCK
+ BEN HARDING (live)
The Legion Club
7pm
We are very excited to finally be bringing Naima Bock to the village for a special headline performance at the Legion on Friday 25 September. Formerly a member of Goat Girl, she has released two acclaimed solo albums on Sub Pop, her debut Giant Palm and 2024’s Below a Massive Dark Land.
The roots of Naima Bock’s music are far reaching. Born in Glastonbury to a Brazilian father and a Greek mother, Naima spent her early childhood in Brazil before eventually returning to England and various homes in South-East London. This heritage combines with more recent pursuits in Naima’s music; from the Brazilian standards that the family would listen to driving to the beach, to the European folk traditions she tapped into on her own, and the pursuits that interest her today – studies in archaeology, work as a gardener, and walking the world’s great trails – Naima’s music draws from family, the earth and the handing down of music through generations.
Support comes from Wendover’s own Ben Harding, playing his first ever live show. Plus DJ Zephyr George.
SATURDAY 26 SEPTEMBER
THE SPINSTER COOKBOOK with ELI DAVIES
Real Magic Books
12pm
Sophie will be in conversation with Eli Davies about culture, politics and pleasure in the singles woman’s kitchen. We expect this to be a very popular start to a weekend of talks in the shop.
‘A richly fascinating, and inspiring read – a real breath of fresh air.‘ Felicity Cloake
The Spinster Cookbook is a piercing exploration of what it means to cook for one in a society designed for couples and families. With sharp cultural insight, Eli Davies takes us on a culinary tour of the single woman’s kitchen, a space shaped as much by a search for freedom as by appetite.
The kitchen has always been a complex space for women: a place of labour and gendered expectations, as well as a site of nourishment, care and company. But how does this change when you’re alone, not cooking for family or friends, but simply for yourself?
Eli Davies explores what happens when food is uncoupled from domestic duty and romantic relationships and what it means to cook (or not) for yourself and by yourself. How does this shape your mealtimes, the way you shop for food, the kitchen equipment you use, and your relationship to cleaning up and looking after yourself?
With warmth, humour and insight, The Spinster Cookbook explores shopping and leftovers, solo meals and dinner parties for one, joy and grief and the politics of living on your own. This is a book about making a home in the face of housing precarity, loneliness, heartbreak and social norms, and finding independence, pleasure and self-expression through cooking. It’s a cookbook of sorts, and a manifesto for living differently.
THE SECRET PAINTER with JOE TUCKER
Real Magic Books
2pm
Already a shop favourite and big hit at our Real Magic book group, we cannot recommend this book enough. Carl will be talking to Joe Tucker about his Uncle Eric, the Secret Painter.
‘A timely reminder that art did not originate as an investment opportunity or a get-rich-quick scheme but as a way for human beings to make sense of their lives (plus make them bearable into the bargain). Miracles happen in the most unlikely places’ Jarvis Cocker
Joe Tucker’s Uncle Eric was a beloved yet unconventional figure throughout Joe’s life. A shambolically dressed man who lived with his mother for almost eighty years, he had an almost compulsive need to charm strangers with working men’s club comedy routines, and appeared to exist only for daily trips to the bookie – and yet had also amassed over five hundred of his own remarkable paintings without anyone ever realising his achievements.
Towards the end of his life, Eric requested an exhibition of his work. As Joe and his family sorted through hundreds of paintings of street scenes, circus and theatre performers, and busy pubs, they began to ask more questions about Eric’s life: why had this fanatically sociable man never left his mother’s home? Had Eric ever experienced love when he painted it so beautifully? And what had driven him to create so much, yet share it so rarely?
In this touching, funny and thoughtful investigation of the nature of expression, the ownership of art and the secret life of those nearest to us, Joe Tucker brings us into his uncle’s extraordinary and compelling world. Perhaps more importantly, he also brings Eric Tucker’s life’s work into ours.
MADAM V with MATT EATON
The Library
3pm
Our first Real Magic Weekend event at the library and one for all the history fanatics. Madam V is already receiving lots of press attention and Matt Eaton is also a local writer and Real Magic patron. This event is proudly presented in association with the library, hosted by Jane Larkham and part of the National Year of Reading 2026 campaign.
‘Meticulously researched and appropriately entertaining, Madam V dances through the history of ENSA with a light, rapid, airborne step.’ Clare Mulley, author of Agent Zo
In 1939, at the outbreak of war, 46-year-old Virginia Vernon was recruited to bring morale-boosting entertainment to British troops overseas. With fluent French, a Parisian education and a successful Broadway career behind her, she was the ideal candidate to oversee the welfare of ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) performers. But as she quickly discovered, ‘welfare’ would come to mean far more than she imagined.
Grieving after the loss of her husband, Vernon battled entrenched sexism within the military, endured punishing journeys through the most inhospitable places, and took on responsibilities that stretched far beyond her role. From arranging performances under fire to safeguarding the lives of artistes in peril, she became a formidable force and earned the respect of generals, royalty and some of the biggest stars of the age. Known as ‘Madam V’, she gained a well-earned reputation for achieving the impossible.
This gripping new account traces her extraordinary wartime journey, from Arras in 1939 to VJ Day in Rangoon: a story of resilience, courage and the unyielding power of hope in the darkest of times.
BLACK BAG with LUKE KENNARD
Real Magic Books
4:30pm
A chance to hear the Booker Prize nominated Luke Kennard talk about his warped campus novel, an investigation into the crisis of masculinity and an off-kilter love story. This is a really brilliant book that we love here at Real Magic.
‘Black Bag is a masterpiece from one of the best writers at work today’ Joe Dunthorne
A penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr Blend’s students react to someone zipped into on oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of autumn term lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences. A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own, in particular can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag? Meanwhile, the actor’s childhood friend and flatmate forms a vision for monetising this new situation. Black Bag is a firework of a novel: blazingly funny and profoundly humane.
REAL MAGIC DISCO with LUKE SOLOMON, SEAN ROWLEY
+ REAL MAGIC DJs
The King and Queen
7pm
Our Real Magic Disco returns but this time super powered by two VERY special guest DJs. Luke Solomon is a true hero of the house scene. Co-founder of the legendary Classic record label with Derrick Carter, resident at the infamous Space alongside Kenny Hawkes, a celebrated DJ, Honey Dijon collaborator and producer for Beyoncé. What a treat to have him come and play the back room of the pub. Real Magic.
Luke will be joined by Sean Rowley, the man behind Guilty Pleasures, founder of the Mighty Hoopla festival, an award winning broadcaster and DJ and now the mastermind behind our very own Real Magic Records!
SUNDAY 27 SEPTEMBER
OFF THE BEATEN TRACK x REAL MAGIC WALK
Real Magic Books
10am
A morning-after-the-disco walk with Luke Solomon to celebrate the forthcoming release of his, Off The Beaten Track Vol.1. fanzine. Meeting at the shop at 10am, we’ll be out for an hour and a half, probably up a hill or two.
Always a highlight of our Real Magic Weekend.
MAYBE I’M AMAZED with JOHN HARRIS
Real Magic Books
12pm
Real Magic Records’ Sean Rowley will be talking to Guardian writer John Harris about his brilliant book, Maybe I’m Amazed – A Story of Love and Connection in Ten Songs.
In this extraordinary memoir, a father tells the story of how music has opened up the world to his son, one song at a time. Obsessed with music since he was a child, John Harris had no idea that he was in fact preparing himself for the greatest challenge of his life. But so it transpired. When his son James was born, and three years later diagnosed with autism, music became a source of precious connection and endless wonder for both of them.
Maybe I’m Amazed describes how the music of The Beatles, Kraftwerk, Funkadelic, The Velvet Underground, Amy Winehouse and many more were soon woven into the fabric of James’s life, becoming an essential part of who he is. It takes us through the struggles of raising an autistic child in a prejudiced world, and uncovers a hidden history of neurodivergence and creativity that casts new light on why notes, chords and lyrics speak so powerfully to the human mind.
Anyone who has fallen in love with a band or heard their life reflected back to them by a song will recognise themselves in the story of this father and his son. And in considering the intense and transcendent way James absorbs and connects with music, it has lessons in listening and living for us all.
‘This book contains magic’ Caitlin Moran
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKIES with ROB McGLADE
Real Magic Books
2pm
London Review of Bookies is Rob McGlade’s first work of nonfiction, a work-in-progress ethnography of London’s betting shops. It uses a full walking traversal of every bookmaker in London—over 800 in total, with more than 300 visited so far—as the framework for a wider study of British and Irish working-class culture, told from the perspective of the punter rather than the usual discourse of policy and moral panic.
Throughout, humour is treated as a tool of perception rather than ridicule, a way of locating the comic inside the serious without cheapening either. The book moves between ethnography, memoir, art theory, and cultural criticism, examining shop interiors, virtual horse racing, and the slow disappearance of the physical bookmaker from the high street.
At the centre of the project is the Archive of Broken Dreams, an ongoing collection of discarded, processed betting slips, capturing the handwritten gestures of London’s diverse peoples, documenting one of the last corners of public life where people still write by hand every day, in a society where handwriting is increasingly marginalised.
Sophie met Rob when he was supporting David Sedaris on his latest tour, and has been raving about his performance ever since. Rob will be performing and then in conversation with Sophie about his work.
THE EIGHTS with JOANNA MILLER
The Library
3pm
Our second event of the weekend over at the library and we’re delighted to welcome very special guest, Joanna Miller to discuss her debut novel, The Eights. This event is proudly presented in association with the library, hosted by Frances Tipper and part of the National Year of Reading 2026 campaign.
‘I came to love the four as they were my sisters’ Tracy Chevalier
Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1,000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight and find themselves thrust into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship. They have come here from all walks of life, but Dora, Beatrice, Otto and Marianne all long to move on from the Great War, whose ghosts, grief, and secrets still feel very real indeed.
But Oxford is a place caught between tradition and change, where centuries of misogyny and exclusion clash with the promise of new freedoms. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time under the city’s dreaming spires, their friendship will become more important than ever.
FAILURE IS ALWAYS AN OPTION with STEVE MASON
Real Magic Books
4:30pm
Our final talk of the weekend, discussing his long awaited autobiography, the musical maverick, polymath and Beta Band front man, Steve Mason.
‘Self-destructive pop saboteurs who did it all wrong in all the right ways. Utterly brilliant’ NME
Scottish singer songwriter and founding member of the Beta Band Steve Mason has long been at the centre of tales of unruly non-conformism and destructive self-sabotage. Now in this long-awaited autobiography he sets the record straight (well, straight-ish) with his wildly funny, brilliantly told memoir of youth culture, failure, success, sadness and redemption.
Mason rose to widespread critical acclaim in the late ’90s as front man of the Beta Band. Famously impossible to pin down and fiercely independent with intense live shows and a reputation for difficult press interviews, the Beta Band created music that was completely original: captivating blends of guitars, house, blues, psychedelia, folk, ambient drone and poignant, enigmatic lyrics.
Even whilst the band railed against the bloated death throes of Britpop they were praised by their most successful peers, including Oasis, the Chemical Brothers, the Verve, Primal Scream and Radiohead, who they toured with in 2001. Constantly reinventive and experimental, lavishly praised with all three of their studio albums reaching the top 20, the Beta Band story appeared to end in 2004, with the band owing their label £1.2 million and seemingly forever tagged as one of the most infamous ‘should have been massive’ bands.
Following a twenty-year break, in 2025, the Beta Band announced their return, selling out an Autumn UK tour within two hours. 2026 has seen the band build on this huge success and outpouring of love with live dates in the UK, Australia and Japan.
NADEEM DIN-GABISI (live)
Real Magic Books
6pm
Our final event of the Real Magic Weekend and a really special one to finish. We’re honoured to welcome Nadeem Din-Gabisi to join us, playing live in the shop. Unmissable closing party vibes.
Nadeem Din-Gabisi is a storyteller working in the realms of music, poetry and the visual arts. Nadeem’s work channels his experiences as a London born, second generation immigrant of Sierra Leonean Krio descent. His debut album OFFSHORE, on Moshi Moshi Music tackles themes of belonging, estrangement and identity with ‘potent streams of consciousness’. The record received support from BBC 6Music, Byte FM, Somewhere Soul, Apple Music, as well as being featured in NPR, Worldwide FM and The Fader’s list of Best New Albums, The Observer’s ‘Ones To Watch’, Clash Magazine and included on The Quietus and Electronic Sound Mags albums of the year lists.
Nadeem is also one half of the musical duo; An Alien Called Harmony (alongside Momoko Gill), has worked with Metronomy, Coby Sey, Sans Soucis, Sampa The Great, Beni Giles, Tony Njoku and Shrink and was a member of the first iteration of Steam Down. Live, Nadeem has supported Joshua Idehen, Murkage Dave, Falle Nioke, Nnenka and Momoko and Herbert. After his appearance at the Real Magic Weekend Nadeem is set to embark on a October 2026 OFFSHORE Tour across the UK and the EU.
