The Day That Went Missing by Richard Beard is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club. On the podcast this week, he talks to Sarah Meyrick, who has written this month’s Book Club essay about the memoir.

The book, which won the 2018 PEN Ackerley Award for literary autobiography, is published by Vintage and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for £8.99.

The Church Times Book Club is run in association with the Festival of Faith and Literature. Tickets are now on sale for the next Festival, which takes place in Winchester in February. For more information and to buy tickets, visit here.

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About the book: The Day That Went Missing is a memoir covering Richard Beard’s search for what happened on the day when his younger brother Nicky did not return from their swim off the coast of Cornwall in 1978. The author was 11 years old at the time. In the aftermath, the event was never discussed by his family, and he didn’t attend his brother’s funeral. In the following years at boarding school, where he was taught to maintain a stiff upper lip, the pain remained suppressed. Forty years later, after an unlocking of memories and a search for the facts, his trauma is laid bare.

Click the play button above to listen to this podcast. You can also listen to the Church Times Podcast on the Church Times app for iPhone and iPad, SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and most other podcast platforms. Music for the podcast is by Twisterium.