This event is part of the 2026 Essex Book Festival Programme
Doors 1.30pm / Start 2.00pm
From an award-winning journalist comes the hugely timely story of Britain’s broken asylum system and the search for belonging in Britain today. With unique and unparalleled access, award-winning journalist and former Home Office insider Nicola Kelly takes us behind the scenes what happens when you arrive here in the UK, from boat to shore to holding room and beyond.
Tickets: £15 / £12 concessions (students, under 27s and unwaged) You can buy tickets here.
Event Information
💬 The event will include an audience Q&A session.
📚 Copies of the book will be available to purchase in advance via Chelmsford Cathedral Box Office and on the day
🖊️ After the event there will be an opportunity to get the book signed by the author.
🪑 Seats are unallocated.
☕ Refreshments will be available to buy at this event – cash and card payments taken
🚗 Chelmsford Cathedral is a 5 minute walk from the train station and bus station. The Cathedral does not have its own car park but there are a number of public car parks within a short walking distance: chelmsford.gov.uk/parking-and-travel/car-parks/.
♿ The venue is wheelchair accessible. There are disabled facilities on site.
📸 We will be filming and taking photos at this event.
Nicola Kelly
Photo of Nicola Kelly © Alice Zoo
Nicola Kelly is an award-winning investigative journalist and writer focused on UK immigration and asylum. Her reporting regularly appears in the Guardian, Observer, Independent, Open Democracy and elsewhere. Before moving into journalism, she worked as a diplomat for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, with postings in Brussels and Istanbul. Later, she moved to the Home Office, working in their press office, before leaving the civil service during the rollout of the hostile environment policy. Her reporting has been referenced in several legal challenges against Conservative Home Secretaries, as well as submissions and human rights reports.
Bluesky: @nicolakellywrites.bsky.social
X: @NicolaKelly
You can buy your book in advance - £10.99
Please show your ticket on arrival to collect your book. There will be an advance book sales queue for the Book Signing after the session.
From an award-winning journalist comes the hugely timely story of Britain’s broken asylum system and the search for belonging in Britain today.
Longlisted for the 2025 Moore Prize for Human Rights
What is it like to arrive on our shores with nothing and to be pushed to the margins?
‘Brilliant and hugely timely.’– Caroline Lucas, author of Another England‘Will ignite both your compassion and your rage.’– Grace Blakeley, author of Vulture Capitalism
Each year tens of thousands of people risk their lives to cross the Channel in small boats hoping to find safety in Britain. Yet the very system designed to protect them has all but collapsed.
With unique and unparalleled access, award-winning journalist and former Home Office insider Nicola Kelly takes us behind the scenes what happens when you arrive here in the UK, from boat to shore to holding room and beyond.
Here we meet the under-resourced coastguard overseeing search and rescue operations. The decision-makers hired from fast food outlets to conduct ‘life and death’ asylum interviews. The immigration barristers securing last-minute reprieves for deportees. The people rioting outside asylum hotels because ‘nobody is listening’. And we step inside the Home Office corridors as ministers and advisors respond to emerging crises and scandals, from Windrush and Rwanda to the ‘one in; one out’ policy.
Situated on the beaches and the ports, in the hotels, the courtrooms and the detention centres where futures unfold, these are the extraordinary stories of struggle, survival and hope that come in the search for belonging in Britain today.
‘Puts the stories of displaced people front and centre.’– The Herald
