Sherborne Literary Festival Brochure 2016

12 - 16 October 2016

The Festival is an event organised under the auspices of the Sherborne Literary Society.

Patron: Lady Rachel Billington OBE

Main Sponsors

PETER HARDING WEAL WEALTH LTH MANA MANAGEMENT MAN GEMENT T T Principal Principall PPar Partner artner Pr Practice actice of St. James’s JJames’ ames’’s Place Wealth Wealth Mana Management aggement Established Established in 1993 40 High Str Street, eet, Shaftesbury, Shaftesbury, Dor Dorset, set, SP7 8JG T Tel: el: 01747 855554 Street, Sherborne, Sherborne, Dor set, DT9 3PY Tel: Tel: el 01935 315315 9 Cheap Street, Dorset, W

For full details and tickets go to:

www.sherborneliterarysociety.com Registered Charity No: 1168489

DESIGNER

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Peter Harding Wealth Management represents only St. James’s Place Wealth Management plc (which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority) for the purpose of advising solely on the Group’s wealth management products and services, more details of which are set out on the Group’s website www.sjp.co.uk/products. The title ‘Partner Practice’ is the marketing term used to describe St. James’s Place representatives.

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Event Locations 1 Digby Hall

2 Raleigh Hall

4

The Courtyard 3 CASTLE

2

SHERBORNE

(Macintosh Antiques)

4 Sherborne Abbey STATION

Festival Café

The ‘pop-up’ Festival Café, under the careful supervision of Sue Adams and manned by our wonderful volunteers, will provide a range of light meals, home-made soups, delicious cakes, teas and coffee in the Digby Hall from Wednesday to Saturday. We can cater for people following most special diets such as gluten-free or vegetarian. We can also provide festival-goers with a glass of wine and a choice of other drinks, on all days including the Sunday evening.

5 Castleton Church

Welcome

Welcome to the 5th Sherborne Literary Festival. Once more we have put together what we hope you will find to be an interesting and diverse programme of speakers and entertainers.

Many of these speakers will be well known to you but we have also used the festival as an opportunity to introduce some authors with debut novels. This is an important role of any literary festival and we very much hope you will support them to the full.

In these pages you will find the detail of all those in the main programme. But going on in parallel, and somewhat in the background, is the Schools’ Programme, which we hope will introduce and encourage the younger generation to enjoy the pleasures of reading.

Putting on a festival requires a lot of work and support from the community. We are most grateful to all our volunteers and to our sponsors who

provide the necessary financial support but in particular to our new main sponsor, Peter Harding Wealth Management. Our sponsors and their details are listed in this brochure – please repay their generosity with your custom.

We extend a huge welcome to all our supporters and in particular to our speakers and to our visitors from afar. Please enjoy all that our lovely town has to offer: the abbey, our bookshops (including the national Independent Bookshop of 2016) and our fine restaurants and shops, many of which are advertised in this brochure.

Above all, we welcome you to the Festival and we hope you enjoy the programme we have laid on for 2016.

Mavis Cheek

Writer in Residence (Thursday - Saturday)

This year we are incredibly lucky to have secured the services of Mavis Cheek. Mavis is the prize-winning, best-selling author of 15 novels and numerous short stories.

Mavis has served on the committees of both PEN and The Society of Authors and was for three years the judge of the McKitterick Prize for Fiction. She is a Fellow of MacDowell Colony, USA and has been the Royal Literature Fund Fellow at both Chichester University and the University of Reading. She is also the Founder and Patron of the Marlborough Literature Festival.

Since 1989 Mavis has run residential courses for the Arvon Foundation; for the Centre for Literature at Ty Newydd in Wales; at Dartington; at Stratford on Avon, Beverley and Charleston Festivals, among others, and at Marlborough College and various other venues and institutions at home and abroad from palaces to prisons.

For the Festival, Mavis will run 3 formal 90-minute workshops with a maximum attendance of 8 people each on the mornings of Thursday, Friday and Saturday. These are aimed at existing authors, at those considering their very first attempts at writing and everyone in between.

In addition on Saturday afternoon, Mavis will run a series of shorter one-to-ones for those who wish to discuss ideas or problems they have in their own work.

For timings, costs and to book a place on the workshops or at the one-to-ones please go to the website.

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Wednesday 12 October

Event 1

Event 2

Tim Moore

Peter Hennessy & James Jinks

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

11.30am

2.00pm

The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold

Silent Deep Lord Hennessy, one of Britain's best-known historians, is Attlee Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London. Amongst many other titles he is the author of Never Again: Britain 1945-51 (winner of the NCR and Duff Cooper Prizes), the bestselling The Prime Minister and The Secret State: Preparing For The Worst 1945-2010. He was made an independent crossbench life peer in 2010.

Dr James Jinks completed his PhD under Peter Hennessy at Queen Mary. His first book was 50 Years of the Polaris Sales Agreement, commissioned by Her Majesty's Government to mark 50 years of Polaris. He is now at work on A Very British Bomb, a history of the British nuclear deterrent.

In the very best traditions of travel writing, Tim Moore has found himself over the years in some very unlikely but amusing – in retrospect – situations about which he writes with a wonderful lightness of touch while still imparting both interesting facts and impressions about the people and places he encounters.

His latest book, due out in October, will relate his adventures on a 1970s East Germanbuilt bicycle as he travels the length of the old Iron Curtain, 10,400 kms of it from the north of Norway to the Black Sea on what has now been labelled the Iron Curtain Trail.

This is not his first foray on long distance bike trails; past adventures have included the entire route of the 2000 Tour de France and retracing the famously difficult 1914 Giro d’Italia, which he achieved on a bike of that year and in period costume. The resultant book, Gironimo! Riding the Very Terrible 1914 Tour of Italy, featured as Book of the Week on Radio 4.

Other adventures include: travelling the length and breadth of Great Britain in an Austin Maestro, called Craig, discovering the most boring and awful parts of the country; riding a very recalcitrant donkey across Spain on the pilgrims’ route to Santiago de Compostela and retracing the epic voyage of Lord Dufferin to Iceland and Spitzbergen, where Tim’s encounters and travails rather lacked the derring-do of his hero.

Like all good travel writers Tim has some wonderful anecdotes and is an amusing and gripping raconteur. He is bound to start the Festival off in great style.

Silent Deep 'The Ministry of Defence does not comment upon submarine operations' is the standard response of officialdom to enquiries about the most secretive and mysterious of Britain's armed forces, the Royal Navy Submarine Service.

Written with unprecedented cooperation from the Service itself and privileged access to documents and personnel, The Silent Deep is the first authoritative history of the Submarine Service from the end of the Second World War to the present. It gives the most complete account yet published of the development of Britain's submarine fleet, its capabilities, its weapons, its infrastructure, its operations and above all – from the testimony of many submariners and the first-hand witness of the authors – what life is like on board for the denizens of the silent deep.

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Wednesday 12 October Event 3

JS Law

Event 4

Elizabeth Buchan Digby Hall (Small Hall)

Digby Hall

4.30pm

4.30pm

Tenacity

Tea and Talk

J.S. Law joined the Royal Navy in 1993 as an apprentice and went on to serve for 20 years, the majority of that time spent in the Submarine Service. He rose through the ranks, taking a commission as an engineering officer in 2001, and serving as a Senior Engineer and Nuclear Reactor Plant Supervisor, where his responsibilities ranged from the safety and operation of the submarine's nuclear power plant to hydraulic plants, fridges and toilets; it was the last of these tasks that brought the majority of pressure. His final years in the Service were spent training future submariners in his role as Senior Lecturer in Nuclear Reactor Engineering.

Having written short stories and novels throughout his naval career, James completed an MA in Creative Writing at Portsmouth University shortly before leaving the Navy in 2013, completing his debut novel, Tenacity, shortly afterwards.

Elizabeth started her career working in the publishing world with Penguin and subsequently with Random House. But eventually she followed her true ambition from childhood, which was actually to write novels. Since then she has had numerous successes with novels and short stories based on many different locations around the world.

Her short stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She reviews for the Sunday Times and has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliott literary prizes, and has also been a judge for the Whitbread (now Costa) awards. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival and a past Chairman of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

Her new book The New Mrs Clifton, is based on a situation that happened in her own family after the war – only in reverse: As the Second World War draws to a close, Gus Clifton, having been working with the interrogation teams in Germany and out of touch with his family, surprises his sisters at their home. But an even greater shock is the woman he brings home, Krista – the German wife whom he has married secretly in Berlin.

Gus’s sisters can only see the enemy their brother has brought under their roof. And their friend Nella, Gus’s beautiful, loyal fiancée, cannot understand what made Gus change his mind about their marriage. What hold does Krista have over their honourable and upright Gus? And how can the three women get her out of their home, their future, their England?

Some reviews of his debut novel: An impressive debut. . . Law knows what he's writing about, and it shows. The sexist antagonism of the men coupled with the cramped conditions make for gripping, entertaining reading (The Times) J. S. Law is a powerful new voice, and his heroine Dan Lewis lives up to the title, Tenacity.

She is fearless and doesn't quit in the face of all odds. The murky world of submarines and murder make Tenacity addictively readable, and memories of it linger like dreams (Patricia Cornwell)

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Thursday 13 October

Event 5

Event 6

Joshua Levine

Noel (Razor) Smith

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

7.00pm

11.30am

The Secret History of the Blitz

Crime and Punishment

Noel (Razor) Smith was in prison on and off from the age of 14 years. By the time he was 17 he was a hardened criminal well used to the prison regime. During those periods when he was not in custody, he became a highly notorious armed robber of banks and other institutions all over London. He was a violent gangster who gave as good as he got.

His first book, written while in prison, A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun, was a graphic account of his life, living it up on the proceeds of his robberies in-between long stretches of incarceration, often in solitary confinement as punishment for his violence to both fellow-prisoners and to prison staff.

Then his eldest son died in HMP Feltham and he was forbidden from attending the funeral. This was the moment when he realised how much of his life he had wasted and how much his actions had impinged on his family.

From that moment on, he determined to prove to everyone that he could revert to being a responsible citizen.

Noel began a long period of rehabilitation helped through his writing and encouraged by the journalist Will Self. As a result he was eventually released and since then has been on the editorial board of Inside Times, the in-house journal for prisoners. He has also written three more books and is a well known and highly respected commentator on TV and radio about our judicial system. He is a brilliant speaker.

Joshua Levine has written six bestselling histories including titles in the hugely popular 'Forgotten Voices' series published by Ebury.

Beauty and Atrocity, his account of the Irish Troubles, was nominated for the Writers' Guild Book of the Year award. On a Wing and a Prayer, his history of the pilots of the First World War, has been turned into a major British television documentary. He has written and presented a number of programmes for BBC Radio 4.

His latest book The Secret History of the Blitz is a wonderfully researched account of some of the goings-on that occurred during those dreadful days of the Second World War. ‘The Blitz Spirit’ is a phrase much used today in times of adversity; this account demonstrates that not all was as we imagined it to be.

Certainly much of what went on would not be something we would wish to re-create today.

One element links all his books and his TV and radio work; the detail and depth of his research. In a previous life he was a criminal barrister, which perhaps explains the forensic detail of that research. It makes for fascinating reading.

EASTBURY HOUSE RESIDENTIAL HOME

Long Street, Sherborne DT9 3BZ Tel. 01935 812132 www.eastburyhouse.co.uk eastburyhouse@btinternet.com

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Thursday 13 October Event 7

Event 8 (Joint)

Artemis Cooper

Rebecca MacKenzie

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

2.00pm

4.30pm

A Dangerous Innocence

In a Land of Paper Gods

Artemis’s latest book is the biography of Elizabeth Jane Howard, A Dangerous Innocence.

Artemis Cooper has established a firm reputation as one of Britain’s most respected biographers and historians. She read English at St Hugh’s College Oxford, and has lived in Venice, Egypt and New Mexico. She is married to the historian Antony Beevor, with whom she cowrote Paris After the Liberation, 1945-1949.

Her other titles include: A Durable Fire: the Letters of Duff and Diana Cooper (1983) Cairo in the War, 1939-1945 (1989) Mr Wu and Mrs Stitch: The Letters of Evelyn Waugh and Diana Cooper (1991) Watching in the Dark: A Child’s Fight for Life (1994) Writing at the Kitchen Table: the authorized biography of Elizabeth David (1999) Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure (2012) After collaborating with Patrick Leigh Fermor over his biography she went on to edit, together with Colin Thubron, The Broken Road, the final book in Patrick’s great travel trilogy about his mammoth walk across Europe between the wars. Both make wonderful reading.

She says of writing biographies: “I have never done a biography which relied exclusively on the written record, as biographers must if their subject died a long time ago. So far, everyone I've written about lived in the recent past. It gives you the sense of living another life – and it makes you think a lot about memory, and how people remember.”

The daughter of missionaries, Rebecca grew up in 1980s Bangkok, in the Malaysian jungle and in the tea hills of southern India, before returning to Scotland to complete her education. At 17, she moved to London to study Religion, History and Thai at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Her debut novel In a Land of Paper Gods draws on her childhood experience in the Far East but takes the reader back to the 1940s, to a boarding school for children whose parents are away trying to convert the Chinese to Christianity.

The pupils of Lushan School know that their parents love them but they are just too busy saving the souls of the Chinese to have them at their side. At the top of a remote, fabled mountain, the teachers have attempted to create a little outpost of the British Empire. But once the mists descend, it is all too easy for their charges to retreat into a world of fantasy where right and wrong are easily muddled. Then the tide of history overwhelms the school and the pupils find themselves prisoners of war under the Japanese.

This debut novel has had some wonderful reviews from many national publications. It has been selected as an Observer Fiction Highlight for 2016, Independent's 2016 Debut Fiction Roundup, Elle's Best New Books for 2016, plus Red Magazine's book of the month for February 2016.

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Thursday 13 October

Event 8 (Joint)

Event 9

Terry Waite CBE

John Holliday

Sherborne Abbey

Digby Hall

7.00pm

4.30pm

Mission to China

Taken on Trust

The author was brought up by his grandfather, who told him wonderful stories of his own grandfather, Walter Henry Medhurst, who was a missionary in China. But it was not until many years later, and in his retirement, John Holliday started to research what has turned out to be a fascinating story.

At the age of only 20, Walter Medhurst set sail in August 1816 from London, aboard the General Graham, bound for Malacca (Malaysia) to establish a printing facility for the London Missionary Society. Thereby began a career as missionary, adventurer, printer, writer, translator, teacher and nineteenth century pioneer to China. The adventure begins in Madras, where Walter meets and falls in love with his wife Elizabeth and together they move on to Malacca, Penang and Batavia, preparing for the day when China opens up to the ‘foreign devils’ so that he can take the Christian message to the heart of the Celestial Empire. A true story of love, adventure, dedication and tragedy, set during a time of great turmoil and one which influenced the course of history between China and the West.

From the same mould as David Livingstone, facing an equal number of adversities, this man reached a level of achievement unmatched by any other missionary of his time.

John Holliday’s book, Mission to China, is due out in September.

For most of his life Terry Waite has worked in the area of international affairs and had worked in most of the world’s conflict zones. As a young man whilst living in Uganda he negotiated directly with the late General Amin for the release of hostages and, as a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s private staff, was successful in aiding the freeing of hostages in Iran, Libya and Beirut. It was in Beirut that he was captured and spent almost five years in solitary confinement.

In the apartheid years he worked closely with Bishop Desmond Tutu and has continued his work for the disadvantaged in South Africa.

He was a joint founder of Y-Care, an agency working for the development of young people throughout the world. He is Lifelong Patron of Emmaus for the Homeless and a joint founder of Hostage UK. He has written several books ranging from a serious account of his years in captivity to a comic novel, The Voyage of the Golden Handshake. He believes that it is vital that we retain our humour in the face of some of the grim realities of life and that laughter is therapeutic for all of us.

He is both an Anglican and a Member of the Society of Friends. He is not a pacifist but strongly believes that force should only be used as an absolute last resort. That, he says, has not been the case in recent years and has resulted in dreadful chaos right across the Middle East.

Taken on Trust is to be re-launched in a 25th anniversary edition on 8th September 2016 with a new foreword and chapter.

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Friday 14 October Event 10

Event 11

Ferdinand Mount

Sarah Morris

(daughter of the late Sue Lloyd-Roberts CBE)

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

2.00pm

11.30am

The Elusive English

The War on Women

Ferdinand Mount is a prize-winning novelist, essayist and political journalist. He was editor of the Times Literary Supplement for over a decade and, before that, Head of the Downing Street Policy Unit during Margaret Thatcher’s time. His political columns in the Spectator, the Daily Telegraph, and the Sunday Times were required reading in the 1980s and 1990s. Since then he has published a dazzling memoir, Cold Cream, the controversial polemic, The New Few, and a bestselling history of the British in India, The Tears of the Rajas. His latest book is English Voices.

Sue Lloyd-Roberts was a video-journalist and television reporter who worked for both ITN and the BBC. After graduating from Oxford, she joined ITN in 1973 as a news trainee and went on to become the UK’s first woman videojournalist, reporting as a one-person crew from many bleak outposts of the former Soviet Union, China and all over the world.

Sue won many awards, including the British Environment and Media Award in 1993 and, in 1995, the Royal Television Society International News Award and the Amnesty International’s Television News Award for her reports from the gulags of China. In 2002, Sue Lloyd-Roberts was appointed an MBE and, in 2013, a CBE for services to journalism.

The idea for her book The War on Women came to Sue when, on looking back on 30 years of human rights reporting, she realised that the majority of her attempts to draw attention to injustice and suffering from Texas to Tajikistan via Ireland and Pakistan involved women. She wanted to examine why women, who make up 51 per cent of the world’s population, are still campaigning for fair and humane treatment in the 21st-century, as if they are just another of the world’s persecuted minorities.

Sue died of leukemia in October 2015 with the book unfinished. Fortunately the vast majority of it had been written. Her daughter, Sarah Morris, who is also a BBC journalist, decided to finish her mother’s book earlier this year.

English Voices: Lives, Landscapes, Laments Ferdinand Mount has been delighting readers for the past 30 years with his long articles on everyone from Germaine Greer to Samuel Pepys. In English Voices he brings together a selection of his entertaining and insightful portraits, mostly from the Spectator and the London Review of Books. Beginning with the brilliant, acerbic post-war generation of Kingsley Amis, Muriel Spark and VS Naipaul, he reaches back to explore the strange minds of Rudyard Kipling and MR James, and the even stranger mind of Mr Gladstone. He revisits his favourite old masters, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens and John Keats. His intense feelings for English landscape and architecture have inspired unforgettable evocations of John Betjeman and Nikolaus Pevsner, while his rich political experience offers fresh perspectives on the great 20th-century figures from Asquith and Churchill to Harold Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher. This extraordinary collection is like a national portrait gallery of the English mind.

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RICHARD PIKESLEY R.W.S., P.N.E.A.C. October Exhibition

LOW TIDE MUD, LYME REGIS

THE JERRAM GALLERY Half Moon Street, Sherborne Dorset DT9 3LN

OIL

www.jerramgallery.com

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01935 815261 info@jerramgallery.com Monday to Saturday

Bellissima

WE HAVE MOVED AND ARE NOW NEXT TO WAITROSE

17 Cheap Street, Sherborne tel: 01935 813812 email: jane@bellissimalingerie.com

The Festival is an event organised under the auspices of the Sherborne Literary Society. Why not become a member of the Society and enjoy many more of its activities throughout the year? The costs of membership are kept at a level to cover the administration of the Society but are easily recovered through the various benefits described below.

Benefits of Membership

For only £10 per year as a member you can benefit from the following:

• Priority booking and information on all Sherborne Literary Society events.

• A 10% discount on all Sherborne Literary Society events.

• Priority booking on all Sherborne Literary Festival events.

• A 10% discount on books purchased at Sherborne’s Independent Bookshops.

(Abbey Bookshop, Chapter House Books & Winstone’s Bookshop) • A quarterly newsletter with information about forthcoming events.

Membership Registration Form

Name: (please print)……………......................................................................................………………………………..

Address: ……………………………………................................................................................……………..…………………

Postcode: …………….......……. E-mail: …………........................….……………….. Tel: ……….....................……………..

Please tick if you would be willing to be contacted should help be needed at events

Please return with the Standing Order Form below (preferred) or with a cheque for £10 made payable to Sherborne Literary Society together with a stamped addressed envelope to: SLS Membership, 22 Manor Close, Charlton Horethorne, Sherborne, Dorset, DT9 4PF

Standing Order Form (£9.00) Please fill in relevant boxes.

ACCOUNT DETAILS Bank:……………………………. Sort Code:…..................…....……………….

Account Name: …………………………........…………. Account Number:……………………………………..

Please complete below, sign and date

Beneficiary Details – Sherborne Literary Society Sort Code: 20-99-40 Account Number: 23133036 Beneficiary Name: Sherborne Literary Society Payment Details: Amount of first payment: £……..…..

Payable Annually in April, Date of first payment …………………….

Date of last payment……………………………… or please continue until further notice Signature………………….......…….......………..…Date………………........…..

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11.30am

1

EVENT

4.30pm

4.30pm

7.00pm

11.30am

4.30pm

3

4

5

6

8

Joshua Levine

Elizabeth Buchan

JS Law

Peter Hennessy & James Jinks

11.30am

2.00pm

10

11

Terry Waite CBE

with John Holliday

Rebecca MacKenzie

Artemis Cooper

12

4.30pm

The War on Women

Taken on Trust

and Mission to China

In a Land of Paper Gods

A Dangerous Innocence

Crime and Punishment

The Secret History of the Blitz

Tea and Talk

COMBINATION OF EVENT 2 & 3

Tenacity

Silent Deep

The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold

TITLE

Sophie Kinsella

Ferdinand Mount

Tea and Conversation with Kirsty Crawford

The Elusive English

(daughter of the late Sue Lloyd-Roberts CBE)

Sarah Morris

Friday 14 October 2016

7.00pm

2.00pm

9

7

Noel (Razor) Smith

Thursday 13 October 2016

2.00pm

2

Tim Moore

Wednesday 12 October 2016

TIME

No

(to be used in person or by post)

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

Sherborne Abbey

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

(Small Hall)

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

VENUE

BOOKING FORM - SHERBORNE LITERARY FESTIVAL 2016

£10

£10

£10

£15

£10

£10

£10

£10

£10

£15

£10

£10

£10

TICKET

QTY

TOTAL £

6.00pm

7.00pm

11.30am

14

15

16

Harry Parker

Mike Balfour

Lucinda Hawksley

7.00pm

Susie Dent

Gill Meller

Tom Fort

6.00pm

4.00pm

2.00pm Nautilus

Travel Stories from Rwanda

Postcode........................................ Tel No ...............................................................

..................................................................................................................................

..................................................................................................................................

Address.....................................................................................................................

10% discount for Group Bookings (6+ tickets)

£20

£7.50

£7.50

£15

£10

£10

£10

£10

£15

£10

£10

Cheques should be made payable to Sherborne Literary Society

SLF, 22 Manor Close, Charlton Horethorne, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 4PF

Please complete this form and send it together with your cheque for the full amount (incl postage if required) to

Sub-Total Discount GRAND TOTAL

OR

Digby Hall

Raleigh Hall

Raleigh Hall

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

(Macintosh Antiques, Newlands)

The Courtyard

(Macintosh Antiques, Newlands)

The Courtyard

A discount of 10% per ticket for Sherborne Literary Society Members

Pam Ayres MBE

Wolfgang Grulke

Janice Booth

In Conversation with Rachel Billington

Gather

Channel Shore

The Deverill Chronicles

In Conversation with Harry Bucknall

COMBINATION OF EVENT 13 & 14

Tour, Talk and Tipple

Charles Dickens and His Circle

Name .......................................................................................................................

22

21

20

Sunday 16 October 2016

4.30pm

19

18

2.00pm

17

Santa Montefiore

Saturday 15 October 2016

5.00pm

13

Booking Information: How to Book:

• Through the website at www.sherborneliterarysociety.com

• In person at the Sherborne Tourist Information Centre, Digby Road, Sherborne DT9 3NL (Opening hours Mon-Sat 9.30 am – 4 pm)

• By telephone to the above 01935 815341

• By post, using the booking form, to SLF, 22 Manor Close, Charlton Horethorne, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 4PF • During the Festival from the box office at the Digby Hall.

All cheques to be made out to ‘Sherborne Literary Society’

Returns

All tickets are non-refundable unless the organisers have to cancel a particular event. In this case, please contact the Festival using any of the booking methods outlined above. You will receive a full refund on the tickets purchased.

Disabled Access

Digby Hall, the Abbey and the Raleigh Hall are fully equipped for disabled access.

Other Information

• The organisers will make every effort to ensure that all events start punctually.

Please note that doors open 30 minutes before the event.

• If there is an event following immediately afterwards, it will be necessary fully to vacate the premises before individuals can take their seats for the subsequent performance.

• Please note that all information in this brochure was correct at the time of going to press. Both the programme and performers may be subject to change.

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SHERBORNE LITERARY FESTIVAL 2016 16

DINING OFFER FREE Dessert with every 3 tapas dishes ordered.

(Tickets required)

AUTHENTIC SPANISH TAPAS A OPEN 11am – 11pm EVERYDAY Vida Vid Comida at The Swan, Sherborne DT9 3AX 01935 816116 | www.vidacomida.co.uk

Experience for yourself...

L E W E STO N S HERBO RN E

Open Morning and Sixth Form Open Evening includes Pentathlon Academy Launch

Friday 7th October 10am and 5pm Co-educational Nursery and Junior Department All-girls Senior School and Sixth Form Day, flexi, weekly and full boarding packages available . Local transport available

L E W E STO N PENTATHLON GB ACADEMY

LEWESTON SCHOOL . SHERBORNE . www.leweston.co.uk . T: 01963 211 010

‘Gaudere Et Bene Facere – Rejoice And Do Well 22

Event 12

Event 13

Friday 14 October

Lucinda Hawksley

Sophie Kinsella Digby Hall

The Courtyard

4.30pm

(Macintosh Antiques, Newlands)

5.00pm

Tea and Conversation with Kirsty Crawford

Charles Dickens and His Circle

Sophie wrote her first novel under her real name, Madeleine Wickham, at the tender age of 24, whilst she was working as a financial journalist. The Tennis Party was immediately hailed as a success by critics and the public alike and became a top 10 best-seller. She went on to publish six more novels as Madeleine Wickham: A Desirable Residence, Swimming Pool Sunday, The Gatecrasher, The Wedding Girl, Cocktails for Three and Sleeping Arrangements.

In 2000 she submitted her first ‘Sophie Kinsella’ novel anonymously to her existing publishers and it was snapped up without her editors knowing that she was already one of their authors. It wasn’t until the appropriately titled Can You Keep a Secret? was published that Sophie revealed her true identity for the first time.

Since then she has had huge success with her Shopaholic series and numerous best-sellers with her stand-alone novels. Her latest book Finding Audrey is her first book aimed at the Young Adult market and is already a best-seller.

Sophie was born in London. She studied music at New College, Oxford, but after a year switched to Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

She now lives in London, UK, with her husband and family.

Lucinda Hawksley is a biographer, author and lecturer. She also happens to be the great-greatgreat-granddaughter of Charles Dickens. As such she is the ideal person to invite to Sherborne to speak about the great man and his friends.

Sherborne is closely linked to Dickens and the venue for Lucinda’s talk, The Courtyard (currently occupied by Macintosh Antiques), could not be more appropriate. This is the location, originally known as the Carriage House next door to Sherborne House, that served as the venue for meetings of the original Sherborne Literary Institute (run by Dickens and Macready).

Here took place the second-ever reading of A Christmas Carol by the author himself.

Lucinda started out as a teacher in inner London primary schools, aiming to write children’s books in the school holidays. However, fortunately for us, her love of writing forced her to reconsider her career path and she became an editor, writing books whenever time allowed.

Since then she has written, or co-written, 14 non-fiction books including the 19th- and early 20th-century sections of The Essential History of Art and An Encyclopedia of British History. Her Essential Pre-Raphaelites became a best-seller and led to many invitations to speak at prestigious venues including the Oxford Union, The National Portrait Gallery, The Fitzwilliam Museum and the Newberry Library in Chicago.

She has had numerous TV appearances in relation to her famous ancestor and her book Charles Dickens (2011) is the definitive illustrated guide to the man and his works.

Lucinda will talk about her latest book Charles Dickens and His Circle (March 2016).

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Friday 14 October Event 14

Event 15

Harry Parker

Mike Balfour

Digby Hall

The Courtyard

7.00pm

(Macintosh Antiques, Newlands)

6.00pm

In Conversation with Harry Bucknall

Tour, Talk and Tipple Mike Balfour is a huge enthusiast for Dickens and is very involved in the Dickens Pickwick Club. He organises and leads tours of the haunts and taverns of Dickensian London and he will lead a similarly veined, but virtual, tour in this most atmospheric of venues. His talk/tour will be very similar to one he gave to the Pickwick Club at their AGM last year.

It is based on Sketches by Boz (Dickens’ first book) and starts in old Covent Garden as it comes to life in the very early morning and proceeds around some well-known London sites, refreshing all participants with some tinctures appropriate to the day as he proceeds.

You will witness the creation of Trafalgar Square, pop in to and out of Newgate Prison and end up spotting the evening street-sellers such as the muffin boy and the pieman, ending up of course in a suitable tavern by the tap-room fire.

Dickens enthusiasts are very welcome to bring favourite passages or quotations and to be ready to explain their love of the great man’s works. It promises to be a very enjoyable and convivial early evening event. (Note that all drinks offered during the course of the tour are included in the ticket price.)

Harry Parker grew up in Wiltshire, the son of a serving soldier, and was educated at Radley and University College London. He joined The Rifles when he was 23 and served in Iraq in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2009. It was while he was serving in Afghanistan that he stood on an IED which changed the course of his life. Extraordinary medical care saved his life but he lost both his legs as a result. The main character of his first novel, Anatomy of a Soldier, reflects very much this experience.

He now lives in London with his wife and daughter. He is also a painter, attends art school, and has completed a postgrad degree at the Royal Drawing School. He sea-kayaks in his spare time.

Reviews for Anatomy of a Soldier: It is a novel of concentrated ferocity and chilling accomplishments, tense and unflinching but alive to every nuance of feeling. (Hilary Mantel) A riveting, evocative, brutally realistic read. It provides a vivid description of life as a soldier in Afghanistan and of life after being seriously wounded. What Harry Parker has written will enthrall, enlighten, and stay with readers. (General (Ret) David Petraeus, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, 2010-11) Harry Bucknall was also a soldier, spending 12 years in the Coldstream Guards and is now a travel writer. He was a speaker at the 2014 Festival when he regaled us with his amazing walk from Dorset to Rome on the Via Francigena, about which he wrote in his book Like a Tramp, Like A Pilgrim: On Foot, Across Europe to Rome.

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Saturday 15 October

Event 16

Event 17

Santa Montefiore

Tom Fort Digby Hall

Digby Hall

2.00pm

11.30am

Channel Shore

The Deverill Chronicles

Born in England in 1970, Santa Montefiore grew up on a farm in Hampshire and was educated at Hanford and Sherborne School for Girls. She read Spanish and Italian at Exeter University and spent much of the 90s in Buenos Aires, where her mother grew up.

Prior to publishing any novels, she worked in London, first in public relations for the outfitters Swaine Adeney and later for the jeweller Theo Fennell. She also worked in Farmacia Santa Maria Novella, the perfumery, and in events for Ralph Lauren.

She sent her first manuscript to several literary agents, using a nom de plume in order to distance herself from her sister, Tara PalmerTomkinson. Since 2002, she has published at least one novel each year. Four of her books are set in Argentina, a country with which she fell in love during her gap year teaching English.

She counts as her literary influences The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas; House of Mirth by Edith Wharton; Gabriel Garcia Mรกrquez, Mary Wesley, Eckhart Tolle, and Daphne du Maurier.

She converted to Judaism in 1998 and married historian Simon Sebag Montefiore in the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London. They live with their two children, Lily and Sasha, in London.

Her latest book, Daughters of Castle Deverill, is the second of a trilogy called the Deverill Chronicles, which is set in the ruggedly wild countryside of West Cork, Ireland, in the early part of the 20th-century.

Tom Fort was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. On leaving Oxford he went to work as a reporter at the Slough Observer and the Slough Evening Mail before joining the BBC in 1978 where he worked in the BBC Radio newsroom in London for 22 years. He took early retirement in 2000, just before the publication of his social history of lawns and lawn-mowing, The Grass is Greener.

Tom Fort lives in South Oxfordshire with his wife and two of his five children. He is particularly well known in Dorset for his book: A303 Highway to the Sun, his latest book is: Channel Shore The English Channel is the busiest waterway in the world. Ferries steam back and forth, trains thunder through the tunnel. The narrow sea has been crucial to our development and prosperity.

It helps define our notion of Englishness, as an island people, a nation of seafarers. It is also our nearest, dearest playground where people have sought sun, sin and bracing breezes.

Tom Fort takes us on a fascinating, discursive journey from east to west, to find out what this stretch of water means to us and what is so special about the English seaside, that edge between land and seawater. He dips his toe into Sandgate's waters, takes the air in Hastings and Bexhill, chews whelks in Brighton, builds a sandcastle in Sandbanks, sunbathes in sunny Sidmouth, catches prawns off the slipway at Salcombe and hunts a shark off Looe. Stories of smugglers and shipwreck robbers, of beachcombers and samphire gatherers, of gold diggers and fossil hunters abound.

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Saturday 15 October Event 18

Event 19

Gill Meller (with

Susie Dent

Andrew Montgomery)

Digby Hall

Digby Hall

7.00pm

4.30pm

In Conversation with Rachel Billington

Gather - the inspiration and the work behind the book

For those who watch Countdown on Channel 4 Susie will need no introduction. She has appeared regularly on the show over 2,500 times since her first appearance in 1992 and is their resident lexicographer and adjudicator. She is also a regular on the spin-off show 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown.

Words and language are her forte.

Educated at Somerville College, Oxford and at Princeton, she is also fluent in French and German. Susie has written many books for adults on the use of the English Language including being the latest editor of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. She has also written books aimed at the younger generation including Susie Dent’s Weird Words and What Made the Crocodile Cry? Her latest book Modern Tribes: The Secret Languages of Britain, due out in October, is all about the many different languages that exist within everyday English. Here you will learn how to understand anyone – cabbie, fashionista, Hell’s Angel, skateboarder or civil servant – all will be made clear in a unique and witty guide to Britain’s modern tribes.

Susie started her career at Oxford University Press from where she moved to represent the Oxford Dictionary on Countdown.

They still use that classic tome as the authority on the use of English although she now accesses the detail through her laptop rather than on paper. Her love, and knowledge, of words is infectious, which probably explains her longevity on such a very popular programme about language.

Gill Meller will be very familiar to many who watch the Channel 4 River Cottage series where he appears regularly, cooking alongside Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. He has been with the River Cottage team for 10 years and is now their Group Head Chef.

Having contributed to, and overseen the delivery of, the highly acclaimed River Cottage cookbooks and having been a regular writer for The Guardian, Waitrose Food, Delicious, BBC Countryfile Magazine and many others, last year he wrote his own River Cottage handbook Pigs and Pork. His new book, due out in September 2016 is Gather, in which he showcases 120 recipes inspired by the Dorset landscape in which he lives and works.

Lavishly illustrated by Andrew Montgomery, there are chapters on foods from the Farm (pork, dairy, honey), Seashore (crab, seaweed, oysters), Garden (tomatoes, salads, soft fruits), Orchard (apples, pears, quince), Field (rye, barley, wheat, oats), Woodland (mushrooms, damsons, blackberries), Moor (venison and trout) and Harbour (fish and seafood). Gather is a true celebration of British seasonal cooking at its best.

Gill will explain the inspiration behind his recipes, using the finest ingredients from the Dorset countryside. Then Andrew will tell us something of the work that goes into creating such a wonderful book.

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Sunday 16 October

Event 20

Event 21

Wolfgang Grulke

Janice Booth Raleigh Hall, Digby Road 2.30pm

Raleigh Hall, Digby Road

Travel Stories from Rwanda

Nautilus

4.00pm

Janice Booth’s career has encompassed professional stage management, amateur archaeology, charity work, writing, selling haberdashery in Harrods, translating documents about African agriculture, travelling whenever possible and compiling logic problems for puzzle magazines. She started editing Bradt Travel Guides after meeting Hilary Bradt on a bus in the Seychelles in 1996 and, since first visiting Rwanda in 2000 – and co-writing the first edition of the Rwanda Guide - has lectured on Rwanda (including to the Royal Geographic Society), led tours there, briefed MPs and contributed articles to various magazines and websites.

As a result she is credited with helping substantially to increase the tourist business for the country. As a result of this when President Kigame visited London he specifically asked to meet her.

She has also co-authored, with Hilary Bradt, a guide book to the Jurassic Coast about which they both spoke to the Society back in the spring. That talk was such a success that Janice has been invited to the Festival to speak about the amazing country, Rwanda, that has experienced such pain of late but more recently has become a shining example of economic regeneration and conciliation between adversaries. Rwanda has become one of Africa’s rare success stories.

As we discovered, Janice is a most entertaining speaker about her travels. She has had various ‘interesting’ experiences during her many visits there and she turns every travel disaster into a great story! Not least she will be talking about a country and its people for which she has great affection.

Those who have been lucky enough to hear Wolfgang speak before will need no encouragement to come to this talk. He has been invited to speak very much by popular demand.

Wolfgang Grulke is an author and businessman with an unbridled passion for the natural world. He is regarded as one of the world's top futurists, speakers and writers on this subject. Recently he has also applied his sense of wonder to the distant past, especially our fossil history. He has created a renowned collection (featured in his book Heteromorph: Nature at its most bizarre published October 2014) on which Sir David Attenborough remarked 'I am, truly, lost for words'. Ironic for someone who is widely regarded to have seen everything in nature. Wolfgang communicates about the future and the past with equal passion and insight.

Nautilus represents the longest living complex life form on our planet. Nautilus has survived whatever the world has thrown at it for more than 500 million years, when dinosaurs and other life forms could not. Now, some believe, it could become extinct within this generation. This book celebrates the long history of Nautilus, its impact on our culture and how it still inspires collectors and scientists today.

01935 815364 shelleystheprinters.com 27

Sunday 16 October Event 22

Pam Ayres MBE Digby Hall 6.00pm

Pam is one of the most popular female comedians performing in UK theatres today.

She first gained fame in 1975 when she won Opportunity Knocks, the TV Talent show of its day but, even before that, she had broadcast her poems for Radio Oxford and these had been selected for Radio 4’s Pick of the Week and subsequently Pick of the Year.

Funny and approachable, Pam Ayres’ poetry sounds simple, as though dashed off, but this is deceptive. Her hair-trigger timing, her eye for the detail of everyday life, and for the absurdity therein, makes for an art that hides art.

Since those early days, Pam has appeared on many major TV shows in the UK, has had her own TV series and filmed Christmas TV Specials in Hong Kong and Canada. Pam has been a regular on BBC Radio. She presented a two-hour music and chat show every Sunday afternoon for three years for Radio 2, followed by two series of Pam Ayres’ Open Road. More recently Pam has become a regular contributor to Radio 4, on such programmes as Just A Minute, Quote Unquote, Loose Ends, and five series of her own Ayres On The Air. She has entertained HM The Queen three times: at the London Palladium to celebrate the Silver Jubilee, at St James’s Palace for a Royal Gala Reception and also at the Sandringham WI Hall.

Now it is Sherborne’s turn!

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31

Programme Wednesday 12

1

11.30am

Tim Moore

Digby Hall

£10

3

4.30pm

JS Law

Digby Hall

£10

2 4

5

6

7 8

9

10

11 12

2.00pm 4.30pm 7.00pm

Thursday 13

Peter Hennessy & James Jinks Elizabeth Buchan

£10

Digby Hall

£10

Noel (Razor) Smith

Digby Hall

£10

4.30pm

Rebecca MacKenzie with John Holliday

Digby Hall Digby Hall

£10

2.00pm 7.00pm

Friday 14

Artemis Cooper

Digby Hall

Terry Waite CBE

£10

Sherborne Abbey

£15

11.30am

Sarah Morris (daughter of the late Sue Lloyd-Roberts CBE)

Digby Hall

£10

4.30pm

Sophie Kinsella

Digby Hall

£10

2.00pm

Ferdinand Mount

14

6.00pm

Mike Balfour

15

7.00pm

Harry Parker

Saturday 15

16

11.30am

18

4.30pm

19

(Small Hall)

£10

11.30am

Lucinda Hawksley

17

Digby Hall

Joshua Levine

5.00pm

13

Digby Hall

The Courtyard

(Macintosh Antiques, Newlands)

£10 £10

The Courtyard

£10

Digby Hall

£10

Santa Montefiore

Digby Hall

£10

Gill Meller

Digby Hall

£10

2.00pm

Tom Fort

7.00pm

Susie Dent

Sunday 16

Digby Hall

(Macintosh Antiques, Newlands)

Digby Hall Digby Hall

£10 £15

20

2.00pm

Janice Booth

Raleigh Hall

£7.50

22

6.00pm

Pam Ayres MBE

Digby Hall

£20

21

4.00pm

Wolfgang Grulke

Raleigh Hall

32

£7.50

Festival Events for Young People - 2016 Encouraging the young to develop a love of literature is one of the main aims of the Sherborne Literary Festival. To this end we have asked various authors to visit our schools and talk about the art of writing and their latest books.

This year Sherborne School have organised their biennial wide-ranging Sherborne Sessions aimed mainly at secondary school students so we have concentrated on the younger children in the area.

The events will be held in several local schools.

As it is the 10th anniversary of the publication of the Sir Charlie Stinky Socks series we look forward to helping the author and illustrator, Kristina Stephenson, to celebrate in words and music. David Solomons, whose book My Brother is a Super Hero has recently been voted Waterstone’s Best Children’s Book, will talk about that and his latest book, My Gym Teacher is an Alien Overlord.

There will also be Creative Writing Workshops and talks by other authors such as Ali Sparkes and Matt Dickinson.

We are delighted that Lesley Waters has agreed to give a Cookery Demonstration, using local produce and based on recipes used at her Lesley Waters Cookery School. Although primarily for the young, there will be a small number of tickets available for this event at Sherborne Girls.

CHURCH SERVICE

Everyone is invited to Festal Mattins at Castleton Church on Sunday 16th Oct at 11 am. A special service full of literary references and music in this lovely church, sitting beside the historic ruins of Sherborne’s Old Castle.

FESTIVAL TEAM

ACREMAN ST. ANTIQUES CENTRE

Chris MacAdie John Gaye

BREWERS GARAGE LTD

Sue Adams

Diana Buckley Sue Cameron

Sherborne Picture Framing

Wayne Winstone Pippa 33

Chairman/Treasurer

Programme Coordinator

Event Coordinator

Sponsorship, Advertising and Marketing Schools’ Programme

Programme Adviser Literary Critic

A huge thank you to: MAIN SPONSOR

Peter Harding Wealth Management SPONSORS

In-Tweed Ecco-Gelato Melbury Gallery The Eastbury House Residential Home SUPPORTERS

Acreman Street Antiques - Stage Dressing Beauhemia Promotions Consultants Conduit Magazine Dike & Sons Dorset Mac Man Computers - Website The Gardens Group - Plants Greenslade Taylor Hunt - Road Signs Gregg Stevens - Audio Visual Technician PS Mailing Services Reads Coffee Roger Rowe’s invaluable help at the Digby Hall Shelleys The Printers Sherborne Castle Estate The Sherborne Times Western Gazette All our advertisers - please support them

All our volunteers, whose help is invaluable

Friends of The Sherborne Literary Festival 2016 Brewers Garage Ltd The Eastbury Hotel Greenslade Taylor Hunt J & M Parsons Quality Butchers Shelleys The Printers Sherborne Picture Framing 34

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booksmatter...

Sherborne 01935 814488 symondsandsampson.co.uk