John Berger From Life: Tom Overton

2026 marks the centenary of the birth of John Berger (1926 to 2017), the celebrated writer, critic, artist and cultural thinker whose work continues to shape how we see art, politics and society.

Norwich Book Festival welcomes writer and editor Tom Overton, whose acclaimed new book offers a fresh and intimate portrait of Berger. Drawing on personal memories, conversations and previously unseen archive material, Overton explores Berger’s remarkable life, from his groundbreaking work on art and technology to his writing on migration, community and social justice.

Overton comes face to face with John Berger, showing the continued importance of a figure, whose work focused on the creating and recreating of communities past and present. For at the centre of this book, above all, is the idea that John Berger wants our company, and we need his.

Hosted by author and art critic Emmanuel Iduma.

The event will be followed by book sales and a signing with the author.

Tickets: £12

Age Guidance: 16+

Tom Overton

After cataloguing John Berger's archive at the British Library, Tom Overton spent fifteen years following its traces from Moscow to Texas, from the Alps to Istanbul. He worked with Berger on editing Portraits: John Berger on Artists and Landscapes: John Berger on Art, with Matthew Harle on The Underground Sea: John Berger on Miners and the Miners' Strike, and with Katya Berer on a forthcoming edition of Berger's letters. He's written for The Guardian, New Statesman, frieze, and London Review of Books and Paris Review blogs, works as the Archive Curator of the Barbican Centre, and lives in Sheffield.

Hosted by Emmanuel Iduma

Emmanuel Iduma is a writer whose work spans memoir, fiction, and criticism. His travelogue, A Stranger’s Pose, was longlisted for the 2019 Ondaatje Prize. His latest book, I Am Still With You, a memoir on the aftermath of the Nigerian civil war, was a finalist of the Hurston Wright Legacy Award in the memoir nonfiction category, and was featured on best-of lists by The New Yorker, TIME, Boston Globe, Vulture, and The Republic.

His nonfiction and criticism have appeared in Aperture, AGNI, Artforum, Granta, n+1, the New York Review of Books, New York Times, Yale Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, ArtReview, and other publications. He is a contributing writer to Art in America. His honours include the AICA-USA Irving Sandler Award for New Voices in Art Criticism, and the C/O Berlin Talent Prize for Theory. In 2020, Iduma was recognized in Apollo International Art Magazine’s “40 under 40 Africa” for the broad social impact of his work, and in 2022, he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize. He is cofounder of Tender Photos, a digital platform of photography and visual storytelling.