Shy Creatures and Warlingham Park Author Q&A

Join Clare Chambers, award-winning author and Croydon native, and archivist David Luck as they discuss Clare’s acclaimed 2024 novel ‘Shy Creatures’.

 ‘Shy Creatures’ follows the lives of patients and workers at the fictional Westbury Park Hospital through the early 1960s. Whilst drawing from many different real-life events across the country, the fictional setting is firmly based on Warlingham Park Hospital, the psychiatric hospital opened by the Borough of Croydon in 1903, whose historic records were brought to Bethlem Museum of the Mind following its closure in 1999.

David will introduce the hospital, then speak to Clare about how it inspired elements of ‘Shy Creatures’, and talk more generally about the book’s themes and characters. There will be an opportunity for audience questions, for book signings and for discount-rate purchases.