Derby Book Festival 2026 returns this week with a programme of powerful conversations, bestselling authors and inspiring stories – and Penguin PR is proud to be part of it through sponsorship and live author interviews.
At Penguin PR, we have always believed in the power of storytelling.
Stories shape our understanding, challenge assumptions and, at their very best, create real change, which is one of the reasons we are so proud to sponsor Jo Hamilton’s event at this year’s Derby Book Festival, writes Sarah Newton 🐧
Jo Hamilton and the power of human stories
In recent years, Jo’s story of what it felt like to be a subpostmaster caught up in the Horizon scandal has become known to millions through the award-winning ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office.
While the Post Office Horizon scandal had been reported on for years, it was the television adaptation that truly brought the scale of the injustice into public consciousness.
Suddenly, audiences across the country were not simply reading about a legal case or a corporate failure – they were emotionally connecting with the human experiences at the heart of it.
And that mattered so much it finally instigated change.
Facts and information are vital, but it is by accessing stories about people that we truly engage emotionally and begin to care deeply about an issue.
Storytelling still matters
Mr Bates vs The Post Office succeeded because it took something complex and systemic and made it human. Viewers saw the fear, frustration and sheer devastation experienced by ordinary people whose lives had been turned upside down.
Jo’s role in that story is extraordinary and her book The Post Office Scandal and Me: My Extraordinary Fight for Justice provides a deeper insight into the human cost of the scandal.
Wrongly accused of false accounting because of failures within the Horizon IT system, Jo, who ran a village Post Office in Hampshire, became one of the courageous voices willing to challenge a powerful institution and fight for the truth.
Her resilience, honesty and determination helped expose one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in modern British history.
Through the television drama, her experience reached an even wider audience and sparked a national conversation in a way that years of headlines alone had struggled to achieve.
A television drama succeeded in making millions of people stop, pay attention and empathise. It changed the public conversation.
It showed how culture – whether through books, television, journalism or live events – can influence awareness and accountability in ways few other things can.
Why Penguin PR supports Derby Book Festival
And that is exactly why supporting this event feels so important to us at Penguin PR, because Jo’s story demonstrates the extraordinary impact storytelling can have when it is done well.
It is one of the many reasons we as an organisation are happy to support the festival, because it feels like a natural extension of what we value – communication and creativity.
This year, I’m personally delighted to be on stage interviewing novelist Lucy Steeds about her book The Artist during the festival weekend.
The debut novel was named Waterstone’s Book of the Year and is a richly atmospheric historical novel set in Provence in the aftermath of the First World War.
My colleague Lucy Stephens will meanwhile be talking to Gilly McArthur about her beautifully illustrated book The Beauty of Cold: The Restorative Power of Cold Water for Connection and Joy, which explores how wild swimming and cold-water immersion can transform both mental and physical wellbeing.
And Simon Burch will be interviewing psychologist, broadcaster and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind, Claudia Hammond, about her new book Overwhelmed: Ways to Take the Pressure Off, an insightful look at stress, resilience and how we navigate the pressures of modern life.
Simon’s event is sponsored by Crystal Care Collection.
You could hardly imagine three more different books, although, some might argue that plunging into freezing cold water is exactly the solution to feeling overwhelmed – I’m just not willing to put that to the test.
But that contrast is exactly the beauty of Derby Book Festival. Within the same programme, you can move from historical fiction to psychology to cold-water swimming, from stories that transport you to ideas that challenge the way you think and live.
As a communications agency, we understand that stories sit at the heart of everything.
They shape how people feel, what they remember and how they respond. Derby Book Festival celebrates that brilliantly and we are delighted to play a small part in this year’s programme.
We’re looking forward to an inspiring weekend of conversation, ideas and storytelling in all its many forms. And we hope to see some of you in the audience.
But no heckling please!
Find out more about the festival programme and the events Penguin PR is supporting at Derby Book Festival 2026.
