Georgina Moore talks about her new book River of Stars at the Chiswick Book Festival 2026

Georgina Moore reading from her book River of Stars at the Tabard Theatre on Sunday

A very successful publicist who has “changed lane” to become a successful writer

Georgina Moore was at the Chiswick Book Festival on Sunday (13 September) talking about her latest book River of Stars with Natasha Poliszczuk.

Georgina is a very successful publicist in publishing – she toured with Hilary Clinton when she came over to promote her Living History memoir in 2003, loving every minute of riding around in her motorcade with the Secret Service in tow. She currently represents Maggie O’Farrell.

She knew at university that she wanted to get into publishing but was getting nowhere with job applications. Her boyfriend at the time suggested she work in a bookshop, so she took a job in Dillons, in the shop which was the predecessor to Waterstones on Chiswick High Road.

It was there she discovered the role of a publicist, watching one working with Mavis Cheek when she arrived to promote one of her books, and wanting to know what that job was.

“It was a light bulb moment when I heard that the job was called Publicity”

By the age of 29 she was a publicity director running her own team. There were a lot of parties, which means she spent years “on the canape diet”.

“Publicists worked hard and played hard. It was a lifestyle, not a job”.

Georgina Moore with Natasha Poliszczuk

She was very interesting talking about the reaction from some of her colleagues in publishing to her branching out into writing – there was a definite sense that you should “stay in your lane” from some quarters, she told the audience at the Tabard Theatre, and there were jokes about which of them would represent her as an author, and what a nightmare that would be.

She was very funny about overhearing one after the launch party for her first book The Garnett Girls saying: “thank God it’s a success”.

It does take some nerve to be that successful in publishing (she used to run the press office at Headline, part of Hachette UK, one of the biggest publishing groups in the UK, and is now deputy MD of the Arts PR firm Midas), to stick your head over the parapet as a writer. It would have been quite humiliating if The Garnett Girls had bombed.

But it didn’t. It was a Sunday Times bestseller, an Amazon Editor’s Choice and it won The Isle of Wight Book Awards. Mystery writer Lucy Foley (The Midnight Feast) called it: ‘A rare and wonderful delight’, while Rachel Joyce (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry) described it as: ‘A delicious read’.

Reading from River of Stars

And here she is with her second book. She has already written the third, which will be published next summer, and is currently writing her fourth. Introducing her to the Chiswick Book Festival audience at the Tabard Theatre, Natasha Poliszczuk described her as “the heir to Maeve Binchy and Rosamude Pilcher”.

River of Stars is set on a fictional island based on Eel Pie island, famous as the cradle of Britain’s Blues and Rock scene in the sixties.

“That part of the Thames I know really well”, she told the audience. “I live on Taggs Island, a houseboat island by Hampton Court Palace. It’s an eccentric floating village”.

The novel is a time slip story told from the perspective of Mary, who “fell hard for a rock star in a whirlwind romance in the 1960s, when she was just sixteen” and still lives on Walnut Tree Island, and her grand-daughter Jo, an artist “who feels life is passing her by” and is disconcerted when her first love unexpectedly returns to the island.

It sounds like a romance, and there are romances in it, said Georgina, but it is more about the relationship between the women. She describes it as “emotional, but unsentimental”.

Eel Pie hotel; Rolling Stones Eel Pie card

Eel Pie Island was dubbed the “Isle of Vice” by the newspapers “so it was very attractive for teenagers all around” said Georgina.

The gig list of the island’s hotel ball room read like a Rock hall of fame – the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Long John Baldry, Rod Stewart, David Bowie, Jeff Beck, not to mention visiting American bluesmen such as Howlin’ Wolf and John Lee Hooker.

READ ALSO: Celebrating the Rock heritage of SW London

Her book is very evocative of the era. Mary slips away from home to meet her mates, pay her penny toll to Rosie on the bridge and join the heaving crowd of teenagers.

I asked Georgina whether it had received the seal of approval from the generation who went there to party in the sixties.

“One of the events I did was at Twickenham library. It was packed and I asked the organisers what was going on. ‘All the Eel Pie Islanders are in’, she said. My heart was in my mouth, but they were lovely”.

Michele Whitby, founder and creator of the Eel Pie Island Museum, told her she had captured it perfectly and really evoked the atmosphere.

River of Stars is available to buy from local bookshops and online.