Autumn Stratford Literary Festival events offer rich feast
Stratford Literary Festival continues to celebrate its 10th anniversary festival with an exceptional non-fiction offering for its Autumn Series.
The short programme over the autumn months includes some of the most respected political and world affairs commentators, and one of the UK’s most admired award winning chefs.
On 22nd September the festival will welcome the award-winning food writer Yotam Ottolenghi. In an event in partnership with Stratford Town Centre Food Festival, the Guardian food columnist and deli owner will be talking with his recipe partner, Helen Goh, about their new collaboration, Sweet, a beautiful book packed with delicious characteristically signature Ottolenghi recipes.
The programme continues on 6th October with BBC North America Editor Jon Sopel who will be giving his unique view on American life and politics in the Trump era, detailed in his new book, If Only They Didn’t Speak English. Sopel, who has followed and reported on the Obama and Trump administrations closely and travelled widely across the US, is uniquely qualified to give a fascinating view of the country today.
This will be followed by more international affairs on 28th October with the leading Human Rights campaigner and former head of Liberty, Baroness Shami Chakrabarti CBE, who will be challenging the greatest human rights abuse of all time — gender inequality — which is explored in her new book Of Women.
She will be followed on the same evening by BBC Correspondent and multi-award-winning war reporter Fergal Keane OBE, who will share growing up in Ireland during the Troubles and, using his unequalled experience of reporting from some of the world’s greatest conflicts of recent times, try to answer the question he explores in his new book, Wounds: why do people hate and fight each other?.
The festival continues its popular half term activities with a day of events on 25th October celebrating the ever popular Moomins, the delightful characters created by the celebrated illustrator, Tove Janssen. Children from three to 11 can enjoy storytelling, workshops with Escape Arts, a beautiful puppet show called Mischief and Mysteries in Moominvalley and competitions to win Moomin merchandise.
On Wednesday, 8th November the festival programme welcomes the immensely popular chef, restaurateur and TV presenter Rick Stein OBE who’ll be taking the audience on a lunchtime culinary odyssey to Mexico and California, the subject of his latest book and accompanying TV series.
The Autumn Series will round off with an event on 16th November in partnership with the RSC in which the hugely best-selling writer Robert Harris will be in conversation with Mike Poulton about the challenges of adaptating his epic trilogy Imperium which will be premiered later the same evening at the RSC Theatre.
When and Where: The Stratford Literary Festival Autumn Series starts on 22nd September and runs through to November. All events, except Robert Harris, will take place at the Stratford ArtsHouse. Tickets are from £10 and on sale now from the box office 01789 207100, or online at www.stratfordartshouse.co.uk. A full programme is available at www.stratlitfest.co.uk.
