The Unfinished Harauld Hughes – Richard Ayoade

Part of the University of Sheffield's Off the Shelf Festival of Words, described as one of the North's largest literary festivals, which brings the biggest names in local, regional and international literary talent, media and the arts to Sheffield each October.

The gifted filmmaker, corduroy activist and amateur dentist, Richard Ayoade, chanced upon a copy of The Two-Hander Trilogy by Harauld Hughes in a second-hand bookshop. Startled by his uncanny resemblance to the author’s photo, he opened the volume and was electrified. Terse, aggressive, and elliptical, what was true of Ayoade was also true of Hughes’s writing, which encompassed stage, screen, and some of the shortest poems ever published. In The Unfinished Harauld Hughes, Ayoade chronicles his dogged quest to rescue this great mid-century playwright from obscurity. Join Ayoade for a scintillating evening of conversation about his literary lookalike.

Richard Ayoade is a BAFTA-winning actor, director and writer.

‘Funny and brilliantly rendered – Nabokov meets Spinal Tap’ Stephen Merchant