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Sophie Calon talks to Tiffany Murray

Long Going: A Daughter’s Memoir of a Dad Who Drank

Hay Festival 2026, 

The story of one man’s alcoholism and his daughter’s struggle to make sense of it. Journalist Sophie Calon watched as her father went from high-flying lawyer to homelessness in just four years. After pinballing between tents, homeless shelters and prison cells, he was found dead in Cardiff city centre aged just 55.

In her moving memoir Long Going, Calon tries to come to terms with her and her family’s grief, combining her narrative with letters and messages from her father, mother and siblings. Calon, who lives near Hay-on-Wye, speaks with searing honesty.