Events
Radio Academy Festival
10.15am – Tuesday 12th September, 2023
The award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster, Helena Merriman, host of podcast Room 5 will explain how her own personal experience took her on a journey to connect with others and share a powerful collection of stories about lives changed and the process of recovery.
The Podcast Show
12pm – Wednesday 24th May, 2023
How does a Rose D’Or Award-winning journalist, whose podcasts have had over 30 million downloads, develop and produce her stories? Journalist, Author and Podcaster Helena Merriman is one of the UK’s most versatile creatives – writing, presenting and producing her own podcasts. In this fireside conversation we hear how Helena takes the seed of an idea and turns it into a fully formed, immersive production that captivates audiences.
Chalke Valley History Festival
2pm, Saturday 25th June, 2022
Helena Merriman, the award-winning creator of the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 podcast, Tunnel 29, will discuss with Trevor Dolby the true story of the most remarkable escape tunnel dug under the Berlin Wall.
RNID
6.30pm, Wednesday 22nd June, 2022
Join Helena Merriman who will be doing a talk for the RNID – the national hearing loss charity about her experience of hearing loss.
Hay Festival
5.30, Friday 27th May, 2022
Join Helena Merriman (Creator of Tunnel 29 and Room 5) for a special recording of BBC Radio 4’s new series all about our minds and bodies – and what happens when they behave in ways we don’t understand. Helena’s guest is Abi Morgan – the BAFTA and Emmy-award winning playwright and screenwriter whose credits include The Iron Lady, Suffragette, Sex Traffic, The Hour, Brick Lane and Shame. Abi Morgan is also the creator and writer of BBC drama, The Split. Abi will be talking about her book – This is Not A Pity Memoir.
Wigtown Book Festival
4pm, Friday 1st October 2021
The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of an era, an earthquake that has shaped the geopolitical landscape ever since. Following on from her celebrated podcast Tunnel 29, the BBC’s Helena Merriman has drawn from a wealth of Stasi documents and in-depth interviews to tell the incredible true story of a secret get-away tunnel dug under the Berlin Wall in 1962.
Qian Julie Wang in conversation with Helena Merriman
Penguin Live
7pm, Thursday 30th Sept, 2021
Join writer Qian Julie Wang in conversation with Helena Merriman to celebrate the release of Beautiful Country: A Memoir of an Undocumented Childhood.
HELENA MERRIMAN IN CONVERSATION WITH SHEENA McDONALD
Edinburgh International Book Festival.
4.15-5.15, Monday 30th August, 2021
Many of us remember 1989 and the images of people dancing on the Berlin Wall before it fell. Journalist and broadcaster Helena Merriman has focused on the other end of the Berlin Wall story, the early 1960s when it was first built. Based on her award-winning Radio 4 podcast series, her book tells the spine-tingling true story of a man who escaped from East Berlin and then, from the western side, dug a tunnel under the Wall to allow others to escape too. In a series of fascinating interviews, Tunnel 29 follows Joachim and his friends as they set about digging a passage which enabled 29 strangers to travel to the West. Join the author as she shares the many twists and turns, setbacks and Stasi infiltrations encountered along the way. Sixty years on, when political dividing walls have become fashionable once again, the story of Tunnel 29 is strikingly relevant. This event is chaired by Scottish journalist and broadcaster Sheena McDonald.
This is a live event, with an author Q&A. Followed by virtual author book signing.
For tickets: book here.
HELENA MERRIMAN IN CONVERSATION WITH HANNAH MacINNES
how to ACADEMY
Online
6.30 – 7.30pm, Wednesday 25th August
Fans of Philippe Sands, Ben Macintyre and John le Carré should not miss the stranger-than-fiction story of escape from one the cold war’s most brutal regimes.
It’s summer, 1962, and Joachim Rudolph, a student, is digging a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Waiting on the other side in East Berlin – dozens of men, women and children; all willing to risk everything to escape. But as he burrows closer, Joachim doesn’t know that the escape operation has already been infiltrated…
Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with the survivors, and thousands of pages of Stasi documents, award-winning broadcaster Helena Merriman joins us to reveal the true story of the most brazen and brilliant escape attempt of the cold war.
We’ll meet the student-diggers, the glamorous red-haired messenger, the American News network which films the escape, and the Stasi spy who betrays it. This is the story of what happens when people lose their freedom – and how some will do anything to win it back.
For tickets: book here.
HELENA MERRIMAN IN CONVERSATION WITH JOHN O’FARRELL
EVENT HOSTED BY FANE
7.00pm, 13th August, 2021
Crazy Coqs, Soho
Every ticket includes a copy of Tunnel 29 (RRP £20)
He’s just escaped from one of the world’s most brutal regimes.
Now, he decides to tunnel back in.
Join award-winning journalist and broadcaster Helena Merriman as she chronicles the incredible true story of an extraordinary escape beneath the Berlin Wall.
Following on from her acclaimed BBC Radio 4 podcast, Tunnel 29, which had 6 million downloads and is soon to be a TV series directed by Johan Renck (dir. Chernobyl), Helena is celebrating her new book of the same name, in conversation with historian, scriptwriter, podcaster and political campaigner John O’Farrell.
It’s summer, 1962, and Joachim Rudolph, a student, is digging a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Waiting on the other side in East Berlin – dozens of men, women and children; all willing to risk everything to escape.
Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with the survivors, and thousands of pages of Stasi documents, Helena will brilliantly reveal the stranger-than-fiction story of the ingenious group of student-diggers, the glamorous red-haired messenger, the American News network which films the escape, and the Stasi spy who betrays it.
Tunnel 29 is about what happens when people lose their freedom – and how some will do anything to win it back.
Book tickets here
HELENA MERRIMAN – TUNNEL 29 BOOK LAUNCH
Stanfords Bookshop, Covent Garden
7.00-8.30pm, 5th August, 2021
HELENA MERRIMAN IN CONVERSATION WITH DEBORAH BONETTI, CHAIR OF FPA
Online
11am – 12pm, Friday 23rd July, 2021
LAUNCH OF TUNNEL 29 – THE PODCAST
HELENA MERRIMAN IN CONVERSATION WITH OLLY MANN
HOSTED BY RADIO 4 and BBC SOUNDS
7pm, Wednesday 16th October, 2019
The Steel Yard, AllHallows Lane, London, EC4R 3UE