Jo Hamilton: The Post Office Scandal and Me: My Extraordinary Fight for Justice

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Jo Hamilton was one of more than 700 sub-postmasters prosecuted between 2000 and 2014 based on information from the Post Office's faulty Horizon accounting system.

'My first big discrepancy came in the shape of a £2,000 shortfall that just made no sense at all. Of all the things that kept me awake once in the thick of the nightmare that unfolded, it was being stuck in that truly incomprehensible moment where the mere touch of a button suddenly turned £2,000 into £4,000 within three minutes on that cold December night in 2003.'

Jo was told to put right a wrong she hadn't committed and pushed to the very brink of her existence - remortgaging her house, borrowing from anyone she could in order to repay money that she hadn't taken, and questioning her own sanity.

Immortalised in ITV smash hit drama, Mr Bates v The Post Office, this is Jo Hamilton's extraordinary first-hand account of how she built a Post Office that was at the very heart of her community and lost it all through no fault of her own. 

For the first time, beyond the headlines and the corridors of the High Court and the UK's political institutions, we will finally hear Jo's full story and the human side of this scandal as well as the untold struggle she faced during the biggest miscarriages of justice in modern history. Ultimately, this is a story of hope and the strength of community and the ability of a few to fight back against the odds. 

Jo will be in conversation with Sue Wall, Festival Trustee.

*THE INSPIRATIONAL MEMOIR FROM JO HAMILTON, AND WINNER OF THE SPEAKIES AWARD FOR NON-FICTION*

WITH A FOREWORD FROM SIR ALAN BATES

'Jo is an inspiration', Monica Dolan, who played Jo in the ITV drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office