The Stratford Literary Festival’s Autumn Weekend featured stellar guests, including Rev Richard Coles who hinted at his I’m A Celebrity appearance…
LAST weekend was full of revelation, edification with umpteen highlights at a very buzzing Stratford Literary Festival.
Audiences poured in for the Autumn Weekend, which started Friday and finished Sunday evening, with over 6,000 tickets sold for the seasonal programme.
Photos: Rupert Barnes
“We loved being back at the Crowne Plaza,” said festival director Annie Ashworth, “and for the team to work with the hotel to make the whole thing such a success.”
With speakers including the TV dogfather Graeme Hall, the acclaimed actress – and festival ambassador – Dame Harriet Walter, the broadcasters Vanessa Feltz, Adrian Chiles and Ashley John-Baptiste (of The One Show), and the Strictly judge Anton Du Beke, audiences were treated to an extraordinary variety of topics – from the intelligence of Border Collies to the implications of China’s activities in the seas around Taiwan.
A particular stand-out moment for the Herald was when vicar-turned-presenter-turned-novelist Richard Coles exclusively revealed he “could neither confirm nor deny” that he is about to take part in I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. (Obviously this means he will be on our favourite pre-Christmas dose of reality telly in the jungle.)
Speaking of top TV, another of our highlights was hearing Friday Night Dinner comedy writer Robert Popper talk about his hilarious new book, The Elsie Drake Letters (aged 104), What a very funny man he is, he had us guffawing away.
The weekend kicked off with a special recording of Loose Ends for BBC Radio 4 with Stuart Maconie in the chair – a great show which you can now listen to on the iPlayer.
Political insights came from Baroness Warsi as well as Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips; both fascinated audiences with their thoughts on the challenging months ahead.
World affairs events were strongly represented, with conversations with BBC Eastern Europe correspondent Sarah Rainsford and former Chatham House CEO Sir Robin Niblett and, as usual, the festival featured leading experts in their fields including psychoanalyst Professor Josh Cohen and Shakespeare Scholars Darren Freebury-Jones and Will Tosh.
Great literary fiction was celebrated with writers including the award-winning Irish writers Donal Ryan and Ruth Gilligan, as well as the podcaster Hattie Crisell and the creative writing tutor and novelist Anna Metcalfe of the University of Birmingham, the festival’s education partner.
Other busy events included the government statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter, and historians Sonia Purnell and Ben Macintyre. Moving wartime stories were told by Guardian journalist Julian Borger and musician Roxanne de Bastion, whose has strong family connections with Stratford, and the weekend was rounded off with an exceptional performance of Dylan Thomas’ classic play for voices Under Milk Wood by Shakespeare’s Globe and RSC director Brendan O’Hea and actors Lynn Hunter and Steffan Cennydd. The Crowne Plaza ballroom was packed as the audience listened intently to the mellifluous Welsh voices telling of Captain Cat, Organ Morgan and Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard.
For families just starting half- term, there was spooky craft aplenty and the authors Christopher Edge and the Brothers McLeod entertained. Especially enjoyable was a session with children creating sound effects to the film My Neighbour Totoro with the Enchanted Cinema. Younger children settled down for the debut story of Bartie Bristle from BBC Repair Shop’s bear ladies Julie Tatchell and Amanda Middleditch.
The festival, which is a charity and runs outreach workshops to promote reading and writing in schools and prisons as well as operating a monthly community book group, was a casualty of the withdrawal of sponsorship of literary festivals by the investment company Baillie Gifford this summer.
“Seeing how much people value book festivals and all we do has been enormously rewarding,” said Annie Ashworth, “and we are very grateful to our supporters and sponsors. The festival is going from strength to strength and we look forward to building on those and other partnerships in the coming months.”
The Spring Festival will take place between 7th and 11th May.
