Proceeds from the Festival go to
King's Sutton
Parish Church Restoration Fund & other village causes
Festival Programme - 2010
The programme is correct at time of publication but is subject to alteration without notice.
Saturday
Session 1
11.30 Just
a Phrase I'm Going Through
Winifred
Robinson introduces
David Crystal, the renowned linguist and author of many books on the
English language, most notably the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English
Language; Pronouncing Shakespeare; Txting: the gr8 db8
and
The Fight for English - How
language pundits ate, shot and left..
Is
linguistics a peaceful way of life? Referring to his linguistic biography, Just
a Phrase I'm Going Through, David Crystal casts a humorous eye over a career of dangerous encounters
- kidnapping and
assassination, assault and murder, bribery and corruption, belly-dancers and
red-light districts, revolutions
and spies.
Session 2 1pm
The
Tortoise and the Hares
Lord Giles Radice joins us to discuss his most recent literary foray into the world of political personalities, The Tortoise and the Hares.
In this session Lord Radice will be talking to Sir Paul Hayter about the political careers of Clement Attlee and his gifted senior cabinet ministers - Cripps, Bevan, Dalton and Morrison. This was the post-1945 Labour Government that introduced the welfare state, gave us the NHS, gave independence to India, Pakistan and Ceylon and helped found NATO. Bringing to bear his own parliamentary experience Giles Radice throws light on the inner workings of cabinet government and the inevitable tension between caution and dynamism needed to run a country.
Session 3 2.30pm
To
Heaven by Water
Acclaimed
author of Promise of Happiness and The Song Before it is Sung, Justin
Cartwright talks to Peter Kyte about his latest novel. Retired TV
presenter, David Cross, has found guilty release with the death of his wife and
is consumed with the need to find meaning in the life he has left to live in
spite of the ‘messiness and contingencies’ of modern family life.
Justin Cartwright’s non-fiction work, The Secret Garden: Oxford Revisited explores his undergraduate experience of Oxford, the magical quality of which transformed his life.
SOLD OUT...
Session 4 4pm Breathing Fire Making Words Come Alive
What
makes a great script? How do you take the written word and breathe life into it?
Is there something an actor sees or hears which provides the key? What is the
difference between a ’great’ play and a ’great’ TV script?
Sir Derek Jacobi joins us to talk about the alchemy which an actor performs when he brings words on a page to life, and reads from some of his great theatre and film roles.
Chaired by Garry O’Connor
Session 5 7.30pm Supper and Jazz nearly all sold
With enigma jazz duo - Paul Thomas, Guitar, Hilary Cameron, Piano & Vocals
Doors open: 7.30pm Supper: 8pm
Tickets £15
If you wish to drink alcohol, please would you bring your own
|
|
Sunday
Session 6 11.30am The Criminal Mind SOLD OUT
Join Felix Francis and Colin Dexter in conversation with David Exham. Enjoy a wander through the highways and byways of some of the best-loved English crime writing of the last 50 years. For 25 years Colin Dexter’s Morse stories held us captive and since 1962 the Francis family have mined a rich seam of dodgy dealings in the world of world of racing. Even Money is their most recent novel.
Session 7 1pm Kitchen Sinks and Creative Juices
Winifred
Robinson talks to Lucy Cavendish and Miranda Glover, two of
the founder members of the Contemporary Women Writer’s Club (CWWC). Six women
from south Oxfordshire, in the creative chaos of raising families, paying the
mortgage and staying sane-ish, have found time to meet, write and produce a
collection of short stories they call The Leap Year.
We share their stories – real and imagined. If you have ever wanted to set up a writers’ group or publish a short story, come and be inspired.
Session 8 2.30pm
Women’s Lives: the Unmapped
Country
Lyndall
Gordon, one of Britain’s foremost literary biographers,
discusses some of our great women writers with Zoe Johnson. We look at
the lives of particular writers from 3 different centuries: MaryWollstonecraft
(18th), Charlotte Bronte (19th) and Virginia Woolf (20th). How do these lives
reflect the historical journey of women and how have these subjects influenced
the biographer’s own writing.? We also meet the American poet, Emily
Dickinson, through a new biography, Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson
and Her Family's Feuds.
Session 9 4pm Literary Lives - Sir Michael Holroyd
Michael
Holroyd
talks to Garry O’Connor about his most recent biography A
Strange Eventful History which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in
2009. He has described himself as a ‘time traveller’ and in over four
decades Michael Holroyd has ‘travelled’ far, notably through the lives of
Lytton Strachey, Augustus John and George Bernard Shaw. He is also a novelist,
essayist and editor and,
incidentally, claims to use paperclips ‘to fasten [his] thoughts
together’!
Enjoy an hour in the company of the President of the Royal Society of Literature.
|
|
Tickets for all daytime sessions are £6.00
Each session lasts about 1hr 15 mins
Booking Form (Word document) Booking Form (PDF)
Our sponsors for 2010
We are grateful to Savills who are sponsoring programme printing
Cherwell Valley Silos
We thank also:
Purely Plants, Middleton Cheney (floral decorations) www.purelyplants.co.uk
&
King's Sutton Scaffolding
Once again, we are supported by The Old Hall Bookshop in Brackley Old Hall Bookshop, Brackley