Matthew Bradley - SOLD OUT

THE CONTEXT OF SHERLOCK HOLMES: EXPLORING POPULAR CULTURE WITH THE GREAT DETECTIVE

EVENT FORMAT: WORKSHOP

WHEN: Sunday, 3rd September | 1pm - 2.30pm

An interactive workshop which takes as its starting point the continuing centrality of Arthur Conan Doyle’s best-known creation to popular culture. Consider everything from Holmes’s role in the formation of mass-audience fiction in the late Victorian period to the psychological angst (and very long coats) of Benedict Cumberbatch in the TV series. There’ll be a focus on the other writing that Sherlock appeared with in the original Strand magazine (complete with copies of the Strand to browse through), and participants will also be menaced by Nazis, kissed by Spider Women, and face the madness of Jeremy Brett while thinking about the various adaptations of Doyle’s stories over the years. Explore the continued appeal of detection, but also what ‘popular culture’ is, how we define it, and whether we even believe in it. There’ll also be an opportunity to plan your own Holmes adaptation!

BIOGRAPHY

Matthew Bradley is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool. He is a specialist in Victorian literature and publishes on reading history, late nineteenth-century culture and religion, and fin de siècle writing. He was postdoctoral research fellow on the project to catalogue William Gladstone’s books in the Library’s collection, has edited William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience for Oxford World’s Classics, recently published an edited collection on Victorian reading practices, and is currently writing a book charting literary imaginings of apocalypse in the Victorian period.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Matthew Bradley and Juliet John, eds., Reading and the Victorians (Ashgate, 2015)

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, ed. Matthew Bradley (Oxford Worlds’ Classics, 2013)

REVIEWS

'This timely collection substaintially advances our understanding of the practices of Victorian readers - Dr Mary Hammond, University of Southampton

'These path-breaking studies significantly enrich the history we've inherited both of books and readers' - Robert L. Patten, University of London

Joanna Cannon

THE TROUBLE WITH GOATS AND SHEEP

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Sunday, 3rd September | 4pm - 5pm

Joanna Cannon returned to education in her thirties and graduated as a qualified doctor. The book written in snatched moments between hospital jobs - The Trouble with Goats and Sheep - stormed the Sunday Times bestseller list in 2016. Joanna discusses her writing career so far...

BIOGRAPHY

Joanna Cannon was born in a small Derbyshire town, at the very edge of the Peak District National Park. As an only child, a great number of her friends lived within the pages of a book, and she soon discovered what would become a life-long fascination with words, stories and characters.

Jo left school at 15 with one O-level and worked her way through many different jobs: barmaid, kennel maid, pizza delivery expert, and although these experiences may not have felt useful at the time, they gave her a breadth of understanding about people which would later become invaluable.

Jo’s love of narrative had always drawn her towards her towards psychiatry, but it wasn’t until her thirties that she decided to go back to college and finally complete the A-levels she’d abandoned some 15 years earlier. She went on to study medicine at the University of Leicester and appeared on the other side with a cap and a gown, and a brand new title.

Before specialising in psychiatry, Joanna rotated through a series of hospital jobs, from the chaos of A&E to the handkerchief quiet of palliative care. It was around this time she began writing a blog, which she found helped to empty her head of all the suffering she saw during the day. From the blog developed an idea for a novel, and Jo spent the next few months attending workshops and classes, including Faber’s 'Writing A Novel' course, in order to learn more. In the spring of 2014, Jo took part in the Womentoring Programme, where aspiring female authors are mentored by women within the publishing industry, and it was through this scheme that she met Katie Espiner of The Borough Press. The following September, Jo attended the York Festival of Writing, where she won the Friday Night Live competition (a kind of literary X-factor) with her story about two little girls in the summer of ’76. Within 48 hours of leaving York, she had received offers of representation from a number of literary agents, and she went on to sign with Sue Armstrong of Conville and Walsh.

The Borough Press (HarperCollins) acquired Jo’s novel shortly afterwards, and The Trouble with Goats and Sheep was published in January 2016. Within a fortnight of publication, it reached number 3 in The Sunday Times bestsellers’ list.

Jo remains in the Peak District, with her family and her dog, where she continues to explore a fascination with words, stories and people. She is currently working on her second novel.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep (The Borough Press, 2016)

REVIEWS

‘Successfully capturing the claustrophobia of suburban life...Cannon paints a sympathetic and nuanced portrait of society’s misfits’ - The Independent

‘Cannon specialises, beautifully, in making concrete the abstract…a superior debut’ - The Sunday Times

‘A unique and unforgettable debut’ - Wall Street Journal

Lauren Elkin - CANCELLED

FLÂNEUSE: WOMEN WALK THE CITY

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Sunday, 3rd September | 11.30am - 12.30pm

The flâneur is the quintessentially masculine figure of privilege and leisure who strides the capitals of the world with abandon. But it is the flâneuse who captures the imagination of the cultural critic Lauren Elkin. In her wonderfully gender-bending new book, the flâneuse is a 'determined, resourceful individual keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city and the liberating possibilities of a good walk.'

Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she’s lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such flâneuses as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys.

BIOGRAPHY

Lauren Elkin’s essays have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times Book Review, the Guardian, frieze, and the Times Literary Supplement, and she is a contributing editor at The White Review. Her translation of Claude Arnaud’s biography of Jean Cocteau (co-translated with Charlotte Mandell) is a finalist for the French-American Foundation Translation Prize and was long-listed for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for biography. She lectures at the University of Liverpool, where she is co-director of the Centre for New and International Writing. A native New Yorker, she moved to Paris in 2004. Currently living on the Right Bank after years on the Left, she can generally be found ambling around Belleville.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The End of Oulipo? An Attempt to Exhaust a Movement, Lauren Elkin and Scott Esposito (Zer0 Books, 2013)

REVIEWS

'An uplifting, gender-bending critique of how women negotiate public space' - Guardian

'Deliciously spiky and seditious, she takes her readers on a rich, intelligent and lively meander through cultural history, biography, literary criticism, urban topography and memoir… I defy anyone to read this celebratory study and not feel inspired to take to the streets in one way or another' - Observer

'The thoughtful urban stroller Lauren Elkin is a self-appointed heir to Woolf's 'street haunter'. A memoir, a travelogue and an eminently likeable work of literary criticism, Flaneuse is more like a song sung under Elkin’s breath' - The Daily Telegraph

Please note this event has now been cancelled and ticket holders contacted. Please contact Reception on 01244 532350 with any queries.

Rebecca Farmer

LISTEN IF YOU DARE!

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 5.30pm - 6.30pm

Rebecca Farmer’s poetry is haunted by ghosts who own fridges and choose their mattresses with care, but it is also poetry that celebrates life in spite of its fragility. Rebecca will read poems from her pamphlet 'Not Really' and from her new collection 'Hold Your Breath'. Rebecca will also discuss the inspiration she has taken from the work of the Irish poet and radio writer and producer Louis MacNeice who died in 1963. With his poems MacNeice, in the words of the radio critic Gillian Reynolds, ‘channels his time into ours’. 

BIOGRAPHY

Rebecca Farmer has completed a PhD in creative writing at Goldsmiths on the Irish poet and radio writer and producer Louis MacNeice. Her work has appeared in The London Magazine, The North, The Rialto, Poetry Review, The Warwick Review, and other journals. In 2016 she was Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library, awarded for her first poetry pamphlet 'Not Really' (a winner of the Poetry Business Pamphlet and Book competition 2014). In 2017 she was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

'Not Really' (smith|doorstop, 2014)

REVIEWS

'This outstanding pamphlet is ultimately up-lifting because of the restrained energy in the poems and their openness to the world' - Carol Ann Duffy

'The poems are personal and engaging. Reviewers often overuse the phrase 'deceptively simple,' but I think in Farmer's case it's more a case of the poems being straightforward and honest. The ghosts in Farmer's poetry allow her to explore different elements of grief and bereavement' - Under the Radar

Liz Flanagan - SOLD OUT

WILD OR WELL-TRODDEN: A VITAL SENSE OF PLACE

EVENT FORMAT: WORKSHOP

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 1pm - 2.30pm

Whether you’re writing poetry or prose, favourite landscapes can be a source of creative inspiration, adding atmosphere, colour and detail, or even shaping plot and structure. In this interactive workshop, novelist Liz Flanagan will lead writers through accessible writing exercises.

Liz will describe how she used landscape in her work, and how she had to navigate around other writers’ well-known depictions of her home town, before finding an authentic voice with which to speak of a place she knew and loved. Moving through a series of exercises, writers will be invited to draw on memory and imagination, creating sensory impressions of places they know well, focusing on precision and detail to craft a new piece of writing. The session will conclude with a discussion of strategies for future creative work. 

BIOGRAPHY

Liz Flanagan writes for children and young adults. She lives in Hebden Bridge and is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University. She used to be Centre Director at the Ted Hughes Arvon Centre, and previously worked in children’s book publishing. Liz’s debut novel Eden Summer is published by David Fickling Books. It was nominated for the Carnegie Medal 2017; has been shortlisted for the Leeds Book Awards 2017; and longlisted for the Branford Boase Award 2017.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eden Summer (David Fickling Books, 2016) 

REVIEWS

'The rugged, awe-inspiring countryside of West Yorkshire plays a starring role in this tense, highly-charged journey through adolescent friendship, loss, betrayal, bullying, tragedy and self-discovery...A powerful, gripping debut from a talented new author' - Lancashire Evening Post 

'A powerful exploration of the extraordinary power of friendship, both truthful and intense. It's that rare and wonderful thing: a thriller of the heart, written from the heart, that hits home straight to the heart' - Melvin Burgess

Tara Guha - SOLD OUT

CHARACTER BUILDING

EVENT FORMAT: WORKSHOP

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 4pm - 5.30pm

‘The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them’ - Milan Kundera.

Where do characters in novels come from? Using magazines, photographs and a few other bits and pieces create characters you like (and some you don’t!) and see what happens when they’re put together in fictional spaces. Prepare for fireworks!

BIOGRAPHY

Tara Guha was the winner of the Luke Bitmead Bursary in 2014 and her debut novel, Untouchable Things, was released the following year. Tara is of dual Indian / British heritage and spent her childhood in the Ribble Valley, passing many a wet day writing poetry and music. After studying English at Cambridge she embarked on a career in the classical music industry in London, promoting artists including Placido Domingo, Paul McCartney and Dudley Moore. Over the years she has also been a freelance journalist, charity worker and has trained as a counsellor. Tara is a keen amateur pianist, singer and song-writer and lives in the hills of West Yorkshire with her partner and two daughters.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Untouchable Things, winner of the Luke Bitmead Bursary 2014, explores complex dynamics amongst a group of artistic friends in 1990s London. It is an Amazon Kindle bestseller and was shortlisted for the Dead Good Books Most Recommended Book 2016.

Tara is currently working on her second novel, a psychological thriller with a cross-cultural friendship set against a backdrop of post-9/11 Britain.

REVIEWS

'An intriguing group of characters draw you into an intoxicating world of tangled relationships and insecurities. Beautifully written with an outstanding ensemble cast' – Linda Green'

'Untouchable Things is a wild ride, a book that is a gripping psychological thriller but also a bruising examination of the limits of friendship and of the dangers of the seductive narcissist' – Stephen May.

Francesca Haig

1. THE FOREVER SHIP

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 11.30am - 12.30pm

We were privileged to hear the first-ever reading of The Fire Sermon at Gladfest 2014 and in 2016, Francesca chatted all things apocalypse in her discussion of The Map of Bones. In 2017, she’s back with the final book in the trilogy, The Forever Ship, released this summer.

2. HANDLE WITH CARE: THE POTENTIAL AND PITFALLS OF METAPHOR - SOLD OUT

EVENT FORMAT: WORKSHOP

WHEN: Sunday, 3rd September | 10am - 11.30am

Seeking ways to make your writing more striking and memorable? This relaxed, hands-on workshop explores metaphors and how writers can use them to create powerful, enduring images. Discuss what makes a successful and original metaphor, and play with imagery in unexpected ways. Leave with ideas and inspiration for harnessing the power of metaphor in your own poetry or prose.

BIOGRAPHY

Francesca Haig is an author and academic. Her Fire Sermon trilogy has been published since 2015 by Harper Voyager (UK) and Simon & Schuster (US), and translated into more than 20 languages. The Fire Sermon (2015), The Map of Bones (2016) and The Forever Ship (2017) have all been praised for their vividly-realised premise and Francesca’s lyrical writing style. The Fire Sermon was shortlisted for the 2016 David Gemmell Fantasy Morningstar Award (best debut novel); the 2015 Radio Times Book Reviews award (best science fiction novel); the 2016 Norma K Hemming Award; and the 2016 Aurealis Award (best young adult novel). Her first poetry collection, Bodies of Water (Five Islands Press, 2006) was Highly Commended in the Anne Elder Award for the best first book of poetry in Australia. Her poetry has also been published in various national and international journals and anthologies, including Motherlode: Australian Women's Poetry, 1986-2008 (Puncher & Wattman, 2009). In 2010 Francesca was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship. She gained her PhD from the University of Melbourne and was Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Creative Writing at the University of Chester, where she is now a Visiting Writing Fellow. Her published articles address subjects ranging from pseudoscience to Shakespeare, but her principal research area is Holocaust fiction.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Fire Sermon (HarperVoyager, 2015)

The Map of Bones (HarperVoyager, 2016)

The Forever Ship (HarperVoyager, 2017)

REVIEWS

'Set in a vividly realised world of elite Alphas and their ‘weaker’ Omega twins, it holds a mirror up to our obsession with perfection’ - Guardian 

‘This terrific set-up spools out into a high tension tale of mistrust and dependency, injustice and optimism, told with poetic intensity’ - Daily Mail

Kate Hamer

THE DOLL FUNERAL

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 1pm - 2pm

‘My name is Ruby. I live with Barbara and Mick. They’re not my real parents, but they tell me what to do, and what to say.’

The Doll Funeral, Kate Hamer’s second novel, grabs you by the hand and leads you into the forest. We’ll leave it to you to find what’s there. Kate’s first novel, The Girl in the Red Coat, was a hit at our micro-festival, Hearth, and we’re delighted to welcome Kate back to Gladfest. She tells us that Gladstone’s Library was an important part of The Doll Funeral’s journey, and we can’t wait to find out why! 

BIOGRAPHY

Kate grew up in Pembrokeshire and after studying art worked in television for over 10 years, mainly on documentaries. Her debut novel, The Girl in the Red Coat, was published by Faber & Faber in February 2015 and has sold in eight other territories. Kate also won the Rhys Davies short story prize in 2011 and the story One Summer was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She has also had work published in short story anthologies such as A Fiction Map of Wales and Seren’s New Welsh Short Stories. She lives in Cardiff with her husband.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Doll Funeral (Faber & Faber, 2017)

The Girl in the Red Coat (Faber & Faber, 2015)

REVIEWS

'Her fascination with the thresholds between childhood and adulthood, sanity and insanity, chosen and blood families, and her subtle understanding of the clean, often disturbing logic of childhood morality, evoke both Jeanette Winterson and Ian McEwan' - the Guardian 

'What holds the novel together is the tremendous momentum of the story itself, which gathers pace with every page, hooking you into its strangeness and keeping you hooked to the very last word. As an exploration of the hold exerted on us by the past, The Doll Funeral is entirely successful, and for Ruby, the call of the dead ultimately brings understanding' - The Financial Times

Melissa Harrison & Dan Richards

WRITING THE OUTSIDE

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 1pm - 2pm

We’re reading about the outside more than ever before. The New Statesman described this boom as one of the ‘most significant developments in British publishing this century’. Writers Melissa Harrison and Dan Richards discuss the nation’s new favourite genre.

BIOGRAPHIES

Melissa Harrison is an author, critic and occasional photographer who lives in South London. Her second novel, At Hawthorn Time (Bloomsbury) was shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year award and chosen as a ‘best summer read' by A.S. Byatt in The Observer. Her first novel, Clay (Bloomsbury, 2013), won the Portsmouth First Fiction award and was selected for Amazon’s Rising Stars programme, while her non-fiction book Rain: Four Walks in English Weather was published by Faber & Faber with The National Trust in 2016 and longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. Melissa was Series Editor on four anthologies of writing about the seasons, published by Elliott & Thompson in 2016 in support of The Wildlife Trusts. Melissa writes a monthly Nature Notebook column in The Times and reviews books for the Weekend FT, The Times, the Guardian, The Telegraph and Slightly Foxed. Melissa is currently working on her third novel.

Dan Richards was born in Wales in 1982. His first book, Holloway, was co-authored with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood in 2012. The Beechwood Airship Interviews, (HarperCollins, 2015) took a journey into the creative process and workplaces of some of Britain’s most unique artists and craftsman. Climbing Days, an exploration of the writing and climbing lives of Dan’s great-great-aunt and uncle – Dorothy Pilley & I.A. Richards – was published by Faber in June 2016. Dan is currently working on his fourth book, Outpost, which will be published by Canongate in spring 2019. Outpost will seek to answer the question of what draws people to wilderness? What can the spartan expedient architecture of such places tell us about the human condition? What compels us to go to the ends of the earth, and what future do such places have? 

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Melissa Harrison

Rain: Four Walks in English Weather (Little Toller, 2015)

At Hawthorn Time (Bloomsbury, 2015)

Clay (Bloomsbury, 2013)

Dan Richards

Dan’s first book, Holloway, was co-authored with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood. First published as a limited run of 277 letter pressed books in 2012, Holloway went on to become a Sunday Times bestseller when published in a general edition by Faber in 2013.

The Beechwood Airship Interviews, (HarperCollins, 2015) took a journey into the creative process, head-spaces and workplaces of some of Britain’s most unique artists, craftsman and technicians including Bill Drummond, Judi Dench, Jenny Saville and Stewart Lee.

Climbing Days, an exploration of the writing and climbing lives of Dan’s great-great-aunt and uncle – Dorothy Pilley & I.A. Richards – was published by Faber in June 2016.

REVIEWS

Melissa Harrison

'Rain has never been so interesting...or so beautifully described' - Countryfile Magazine

'How exhilarating to find that Melissa Harrison, a nature writer as well as a novelist...has both the specialist knowledge and knack of language to explain why water falling from the sky is such a pleasurable part of daily existence...Harrison marshals the many dialect words that describe rain into a wonderful appendix, which allows the reader to savour both their individual and cumulative richness' - the Guardian

'One of the pleasures of Harrison's writing is that you need not be in the country for her powers of inspection, precise and delicate, to take effect ... he real merit of the book is how deftly Harrison avoids the registers of piety and sentimentality in which the countryside is so often expressed. Her insights are always modest, sometimes hesitant. The world, as she sees it, telescopes into cobalt-coloured bluebells but it also opens up pathways into a more expansive sensibility' - The Financial Times

Dan Richards

'With its roots in the psychogeographical writing about landscape, this fascinating account of the life of the early twentieth-century pioneering mountaineer Dorothy Pilley eschews objectivity in favour of dramatising the relationship between writer and subject, melding personal reflection and the process of historical investigation' - Times Literary Supplement

‘A delightful portrait of an extraordinary woman. Dan Richards’s prose is a joy to read, and despite my lifelong aversion to heights, swept me happily along in the pioneering footsteps of the fascinating Dorothy Pilley’ - Nigel Slater

Kathryn Hughes - LAST FEW TICKETS

VICTORIANS UNDONE

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 5.30pm - 6.30pm

We tend to think of the Victorians as cut off from their bodies, keen to hide troublesome flesh under crinolines and fancy waistcoats. But our great great great grandparents were as obsessed with their physical selves as today’s ‘selfie’ generation. Come along to discover what Darwin really thought about his beard and why George Eliot was proud that her right hand was bigger than her left.

BIOGRAPHY

Kathryn Hughes is the author of major award-winning biographies of Mrs Beeton and George Eliot, both of which have been filmed for BBC television. For the past 15 years she has been a literary critic and columnist at the Guardian. Educated at Oxford, and with a PhD in Victorian Studies, she is Professor Life Writing at the University of East Anglia. She is a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Literary Society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Victorians Undone (Fourth Estate, 2017) 

The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton (Fourth Estate, 2007) 

George Eliot, The Last Victorian (Fourth Estate, 1998)

REVIEWS

'Hughes is a thoroughly engaging writer: serious-minded but lively, careful yet passionate' - the Guardian 

‘History so alive you can smell its reek…With her love of bodily detail, Hughes does indeed put the carnal back into biography’ - The Telegraph 

'Elegantly sidestepping the usual cliches of Victorian history, from foggy streets to whimpering urchins, each page becomes a window on to a world that is far stranger than we might expect. It is writing that takes the raw materials of everyday life, starting with the body’s “bulges, dips, hollows, oozes and itches”, and makes them live again' - the Guardian

David Loyn

BOOKS FROM THE FRONT LINE

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Sunday, 3rd September | 1pm - 2pm

David Loyn’s books are vivid depictions of life reported from some of the world’s most conflicted areas, including Afghanistan. David is one of Britain’s foremost foreign correspondents and when he joined us at Hearth, the questions came thick and fast. Join David for a second look!

BIOGRAPHY

David Loyn is a journalist, formerly with the BBC, and the author of Butcher and Bolt – Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan. He has reported from many parts of the world, particularly South Asia, and was based in Kabul for two years until July 2015. He was the only foreign journalist with the Taliban when they took Kabul in 1996. Among many awards he has been the Sony Radio Reporter of the Year, and Royal Television Society Journalist of the Year. His first book, Frontline, was shortlisted for the Orwell prize in 2005.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

REVIEWS

'David Loyn has offered a salutary overview of blunder and barbarism in foreign interventions' - The Independent

'Few Western journalists know Afghanistan better than Loyn' - Daily Telegraph

Diarmaid MacCulloch

1. ALL THINGS MADE NEW: THE REFORMATION - SOLD OUT

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 11.30am - 12.30pm

In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door at All Saints’ Church, Wittenberg. This one act sparked the Reformation which engulfed England and Europe in the 16th Century. It was one of the most highly charged, bloody and transformative periods in their history. Learned, far-seeing, sometimes subversive, and often witty, Diarmaid MacCulloch’s latest book gives a fascinating glimpse into a period that still shapes so much of our religious discourse.

2. A NEW REFORMATION: IN CONVERSATION WITH LINDA WOODHEAD

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 4pm - 5pm

Mainstream churches in the UK are in decline and the number of people who say they have no religion now outnumbers Christians. Funerals, weddings and naming ceremonies can all be conducted without the imprimatur of the Church and many people identify as spiritual but not necessarily religious. In Anglicanism, the failure to respond positively to LGBT people suggests that the Church is out of touch with the contemporary world. Diarmaid MacCulloch and Linda Woodhead express their hopes and fears for religion and culture in Britain.

BIOGRAPHY

Diarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. His Thomas Cranmer (1996) won the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize whilst Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490 – 1700 (2004) won the Wolfson Prize and the British Academy Prize. A History of Christianity (2010), which was adapted into a six-part BBC television series, was awarded the Cundill and Hessel-Tiltman Prizes. His Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh were published in 2013 as Silence: A Christian History. His most recent television series, Sex and the Church, was broadcast in 2015. He was knighted in 2012. Diarmaid is currently writing a biography of Thomas Cromwell.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

All Things Made New: The Reformation and its Legacy. London, Allen Lane (2016)

Silence: A Christian History. London, Allen Lane (2013)

A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. London, Allen Lane (2009) 

Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490–1700. London, Penguin (2003)

Thomas Cranmer: A Life. London, Yale University Press (1996)

REVIEWS

'A brilliant kaleidoscope on the Reformation from its leading scholar and one of the best historians writing in English today' - The Sunday Telegraph

'MacCulloch is an eminent professor of history at the University of Oxford, and not only brings a lifetime's learning to bear on his subject, but writes with vigour, empathy and wit...not narrowly about religion, but broadly about identity and memory, about the importance of myths and why historians need to challenge them' - The Financial Times

'All Things Made New is a serious book on a serious subject. It is written with elegance and sometimes donnish wit, but it is very far from being a book for specialists. As the author says, he aims to "reflect on scholarship and interpret it for a wider audience", and he wears his learning pretty lightly in a miscellany of essays covering the European and English Reformations' - The Times

Sally Magnusson - SOLD OUT

WHERE MEMORIES GO: WHY DEMENTIA CHANGES EVERYTHING

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 8.30pm - 9.30pm

Scottish broadcaster and author Sally Magnusson cared with her two sisters for her mother Mamie during many years of living with dementia. Sad and funny, wise and honest, this deeply intimate account of insidious losses and unexpected joys is also a call to arms that challenges us all to think differently. Alexander McCall Smith called it ‘an extraordinarily moving memoir’, and it was Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 and a Sunday Times bestseller. It is both inspiring memoir and a searing manifesto for social change.

BIOGRAPHY

Sally Magnusson is a journalist and broadcaster who has been a BBC news and current affairs presented for many years. She has written seven works of non-fiction and three children’s books. She is the recipient of the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award for Writing 2014 and was shortlisted for the Saltire Literary Book of the Year Award for Where Memories Go. Her first novel will be released in 2018.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Where Memories Go: Why Dementia Changes Everything (Two Roads, 2014)

Horace and the Christmas Mystery (Black and White Publishing, 2014)

Horace and the Haggis Hunter (Black and White Publishing, 2012)

Life of Pee: The Story of How Urine Got Everywhere (Aurum Press, 2010)

Dreaming of Iceland: The Lure of a Family Legend (Hodder & Stoughton, 2005)

Glorious Things: My Hymns for Life (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004)

Family Life (HarperCollins, 1999)

REVIEWS

'A wonderful book...Part memoir and part manifesto for how we should treat older people, it had me hooked from the moment I picked it up. It's pitch-perfect in the way it describes what sufferers' families go through... It helps that Magnusson is a journalist and tackles the subject with insight and perspicacity. It should be compulsory reading for every doctor and nurse, because it reminds us that behind every patient with dementia, there are friends and families who are grieving for the person that we will never know' - The Telegraph 

'Sally Magnusson set out to write a book about dementia and in this she has succeeded wonderfully. But Where Memories Go is also - perhaps primarily - a book about love...Although this book is full of interesting facts, with forays into laboratories, hospitals and care homes, tenderness is its most striking quality. It is a description of a terrible disease, but also of redemptive love' - Mail on Sunday

Sarah Perry - SOLD OUT

A SENSE OF PLACE

EVENT FORMAT: WORKSHOP

WHEN: Sunday, 3rd September | 10am - 11.30am

How important is a sense of place in writing? How can the ways we depict the natural and the built environment create atmosphere? Can place be as important to the narrative as character? Explore different approaches to creating a sense of place – including by taking a walk among the tombstones, and creating a piece of flash fiction.

BIOGRAPHY

Sarah Perry was born in Essex in 1979. She has a PhD in creative writing from Royal Holloway, and has been the Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library and the UNESCO World City of Literature Writer in Residence in Prague. Her first novel, After Me Comes the Flood, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Folio Prize, and won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award in 2014. The Essex Serpent was chosen as Waterstones Book of the Year 2016, and has been shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2017, and longlisted for the Bailey’s Prize 2017, the International Dylan Thomas Prize 2017, the Wellcome Book Prize 2017 and the New Angle Prize for Literature.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Essex Serpent (Serpent’s Tail, 2016)

After Me Comes the Flood (Serpent’s Tail, 2014)

REVIEWS

'An irresistible novel...Perry's Victoriana is the most fresh-feeling I can remember...Her prose is often beautiful...the tone is a masterstroke...You feel the influences of Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Hilary Mantel channelled by Perry in some sort of Victorian séance. This is the best new novel I've read in years' - Daily Telegraph

'A blissful novel of unapologetic appetites, where desire and faith mingle on the marshes, but friendship is the miracle. Sarah Perry has the rare gift of committing the uncommittable to prose - that is to say: here is a writer who understands life' - Jessie Burton

'A book to make you want to be a better person' - the Guardian

Natasha Pulley

1. FANTASTICAL PERU

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 10am - 11am

Fantasy writing needn’t be about wizards in imaginary worlds. It can take place in this one, in Victorian London or even unexplored Peru. This informal talk is about some of the real places and people behind the fantasy ideas in The Bedlam Stacks. Even today there are mysteries surrounding Inca culture. Did they really have no writing system? Did they really think that people could turn to stone? And how much of their history is proven, and how much was myth? The Bedlam Stacks follows the journey of real nineteenth-century expedition into the Amazon
heartlands on a quest for anti-malarial quinine. On the way the characters bump into the same mysteries that scholars are still trying to unravel today. Learn how you can weave together the real world and fantasy, and how sometimes, magic can be just as true as documented history.

2. PROCESS IN FANTASTY WRITING - SOLD OUT

EVENT FORMAT: WORKSHOP

WHEN: Sunday, 3rd September | 4pm - 5.30pm

There are plenty of methods for writing stories. Some writers plan extensively, doing all their research before they put a single word to paper; but those methods are easier in some genres than others. How do you plan fantasy? How can you research something imaginary? In this workshop, explore how you might develop a framework that helps. There will be lots of writing exercises, but no pressure to share what you produce, and lots of discussion — about where to start, just what fantasy is, and how other writers have tackled it. For anyone interested in adding a little magic to their stories.

BIOGRAPHY

Natasha Pulley studied English at Oxford and then Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. After working very briefly as a bookseller and then in academic publishing, she moved to Tokyo on a scholarship from the Daiwa Foundation, where she learned Japanese. Her first novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, was published in 2015; her second, The Bedlam Stacks, in 2017. As part of the research for the latter, she
spent three months learning Spanish in Peru, courtesy of a grant from the Society of Authors and a Betty Trask award. Now, she teaches sporadically at Bath Spa University, and worries about book three.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (Bloomsbury Circus, 2015)

The Bedlam Stacks (Bloomsbury Circus, 2017)

REVIEWS FOR THE WATCHMAKER OF FILIGREE STREET

'Humor, wit, mystery and danger are threaded through the book in musical measure. It dances between genres and makes partners of several: one could call it steampunk for its Victoriana and etheric experimentation, science fiction for its musings on determinism, historical fantasy for the ways in which those elements are seamlessly blended with late 19th century London..A delightful, relentlessly charming and deeply moving book' - Los Angeles Times

'Assured and absorbing...immensely pleasurable reading. Pulley's prose is strong and energetic, with a wry edge, and even the most minor characters are drawn precisely...Intricate, charming and altogether surprising' - The New York Times

'Elegant plotting, lashings of invention and jump-off-the-page characterization...How their stories combine, and how Pulley juggles the complex plot and throws in multiple surprises, are but two of the many delights...A charming and quietly profound disquisition on predestination, chance and fate' - the Guardian

Dan Richards

1. LUCKY DIP: INSPIRING YOUR WRITING THROUGH ARCHIVAL OBJECTS - SOLD OUT

EVENT FORMAT: WORKSHOP

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 10am - 11.30am

Delve into a lucky dip of archive boxes, diaries and conversation transcripts with Dan Richards (Climbing Days, The Beechwood Airship Interviews) to learn how to weave it all together to create compelling narrative non-fiction.

2. CLIMBING DAYS

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Sunday, 3rd September | 10am - 11am

Climbing Days sees Dan Richards set out on the trail of his great-great-aunt, Dorothy Pilley, a prominent and pioneering mountaineer of the early 20th Century. For years, Dorothy and her husband, I.A. Richards, had remained mysterious to Dan, but the chance discovery of Dorothy's 1935 memoir marked the beginning of a journey. Following in the pair's footholds, he travelled and climbed across Europe, using the memoir as a guide. Having learnt the ropes in Wales and Scotland, he scrambled in the Lake District and topped summits in Spain and Switzerland, ending with an ascent of the severe serrate pinnacle of Dorothy and Ivor's climbing lives, the mighty Dent Blanche in the high Alps of Valais.

BIOGRAPHY

Dan Richards was born in Wales in 1982. His first book, Holloway, was co-authored with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood in 2012. The Beechwood Airship Interviews, (HarperCollins, 2015) took a journey into the creative process and workplaces of some of Britain’s most unique artists and craftsman. Climbing Days, an exploration of the writing and climbing lives of Dan’s great-great-aunt and uncle – Dorothy Pilley & I.A. Richards – was published by Faber in June 2016. Dan is currently working on his fourth book, Outpost, which will be published by Canongate in spring 2019. Outpost will seek to answer the question of what draws people to wilderness? What can the spartan expedient architecture of such places tell us about the human condition? What compels us to go to the ends of the earth, and what future do such places have? 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dan’s first book, Holloway, was co-authored with Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood. First published as a limited run of 277 letter pressed books in 2012, Holloway went on to become a Sunday Times bestseller when published in a general edition by Faber in 2013.

The Beechwood Airship Interviews, (HarperCollins, 2015) took a journey into the creative process, head-spaces and workplaces of some of Britain’s most unique artists, craftsman and technicians including Bill Drummond, Judi Dench, Jenny Saville and Stewart Lee.

Climbing Days, an exploration of the writing and climbing lives of Dan’s great-great-aunt and uncle – Dorothy Pilley & I.A. Richards – was published by Faber in June 2016.

REVIEWS

'Climbing Days is the most enormous fun' - the Guardian

'With its roots in the psychogeographical writing about landscape, this fascinating account of the life of the early twentieth-century pioneering mountaineer Dorothy Pilley eschews objectivity in favour of dramatising the relationship between writer and subject, melding personal reflection and the process of historical investigation' - Times Literary Supplement

‘A delightful portrait of an extraordinary woman. Dan Richards’s prose is a joy to read, and despite my lifelong aversion to heights, swept me happily along in the pioneering footsteps of the fascinating Dorothy Pilley’ - Nigel Slater

Mike Scott - SOLD OUT

DEMYTHOLOGISING SHAKESPEARE

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 10am - 11am

Shakespeare has in the past been deified. But is everything we think we know about him true? Join Mike Scott to uncover the ‘real’ William Shakespeare, why he wrote and how he made his plays and poems work.

BIOGRAPHY

Mike Scott has taught Shakespeare for over 40 years in the UK and around the world including China, India and North America. He has lectured with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre as well as at many UK Universities. Mike has been an external examiner at the a Shakespeare Institute and the Open University and Chair or Vice Chair and member of theatre boards, cultural partnerships and major arts festivals / events.   

Mike was Founding Vice Chancellor of Wrexham Glyndwr University and prior to the Pro Vice Chancellor of De Montfort University. He holds academic honours from Universities in USA, Russia and China. He is Emeritus Professor of English and Theatre Studies at Wrexham Glyndwr University and Honorary Senior Provost of University of Wales Trinity St David and has recently accepted a contract with Georgetown University Washington DC. Mike is Director of Oxford-Scott Education Ltd and a proud Fellow of Gladstone's Library.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Shakespeare: A Complete Introduction (Hodder & Stoughton, 2016)

Shakespeare's Tragedies: All That Matters (Hodder & Stoughton, 2015)

Shakespeare's Comedies: All That Matters (Hodder & Stoughton, 2014)

Shakespeare and the Modern Dramatist (Palgrave Macmillan, 1998)

Renaissance Drama and the Modern Audience (Palgrave Macmillan, 1982)

Mike Scott's appears on the jackets as author, editor or general editor of 57 books.

REVIEWS

'A masterpiece of the genre, written as it is with passion, without condescension, without jargon, thoughtful and open to changing critical theories, but always returning to the plays themselves, plays that fully reveal themselves most in performance' - Martin Wine, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)

Jean Seaton - LAST FEW TICKETS

THE BBC AND POST-FACT POLITICS

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Sunday, 3rd September | 2.30pm - 3.30pm

What is the role of the BBC in a new world of online social media in which people talk only to those they agree with? What is the role of the BBC in a ‘post-truth society’ in which mere assertions and rumours are believed? What is the value of impartiality in the new world and how can reporting and all of the Corporation’s other outputs, from The Great British Bake Off to drama and documentaries, contribute to a wider sense of truth and national discussion? How does the past of the Corporation and its programmes give a perspective on the BBC’s role in the nation and in the world? What are the threats to the BBC? BBC Official Historian Jean Seaton ponders.

BIOGRAPHY

Jean Seaton is Professor of Media History at the University of Westminster, Official Historian of the BBC and Director of the Orwell Foundation which runs prizes for political writing, a Youth Prize working all over the country, events and lectures, and the Unreported Britain project. She has written widely on the role of the media in politics and society and the history especially of the BBC. Her books include Power Without Responsibility (which has been in print in new editions since 1981) and Carnage and the Media. She frequently broadcasts (most recently on BBC Radio 4 Archive Hour on Asa Briggs, the Channel 4 series on the monarchy, and an archive hour on Orwell and the BBC. She is on the board of The Political Quarterly and has been a founding member of the campaigning organisation Full Fact.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pinkoes and Traitors: the BBC and the Nation 1974-1987 (Profile Books, 2017)

1984: LIVE, the first ever continuous reading aloud of Orwell’s book in Senate House, 6th June

REVIEWS

'The best argument I have read in favour of the BBC' - The Observer

'Not the least of this very readable book's main virtues is that it tells us so much about the country that created the BBC as well as the public service broadcaster itself...a book that is both hugely entertaining and wise' - The Financial Times

Francis Spufford & Sarah Perry - SOLD OUT

ESSEX SERPENTS AND GOLDEN HILLS

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Friday, 1st September | 6pm - 7pm

The authors of two of 2016’s books of the year kick off the festival in style. Francis Spufford (winner of the 2016 Costa First Novel Award and the 2017 Ondaatje Prize for Golden Hill) and Sarah Perry (2016 Waterstones Book of the Year for The Essex Serpent) join Peter Francis to discuss the compulsive enthusiasm we have for historical fiction.

BIOGRAPHIES

Francis Spufford was born in 1964. He is the author of five highly-praised books of non-fiction, most frequently described by reviewers as either 'bizarre' or 'brilliant', and usually as both. Unapologetic, has been translated into three languages; the one before, Red Plenty, into nine. He has been longlisted or shortlisted for prizes in science writing, historical writing, political writing, theological writing, and writing 'evoking the spirit of place'. In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and lives near Cambridge. His latest book is his first novel, Golden Hill. 

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Francis Spufford

Golden Hill (Faber & Faber 2016)

Sarah Perry

The Essex Serpent (Serpent’s Tail, 2016)

After Me Comes the Flood (Serpent’s Tail, 2014)

REVIEWS

Francis Spufford

'Golden Hill stood out as a book with an astonishingly rich understanding of place. It’s a densely woven portrait of colonial New York, teeming with vitality and humanity' - Henry Hitchings, Ondaatje Prize judge

'Golden Hill is a novel of gloriously capacious humanity, thick-woven with life in all its oddness and familiarity, a novel of such joy it leaves you beaming, and such seriousness that it asks to be read again and again...this novel is verifiable gold' - The Sunday Telegraph

'Spufford has created a complete world, employing his archivist skills to the great advantage of his novel...This is a book born of patience, of knowledge accrued and distilled over decades, a style honed by practice. There are single scenes here more illuminating, more lovingly wrought, than entire books' - Financial Times

Sarah Perry

'An irresistible novel...Perry's Victoriana is the most fresh-feeling I can remember...Her prose is often beautiful...the tone is a masterstroke...You feel the influences of Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Hilary Mantel channelled by Perry in some sort of Victorian séance. This is the best new novel I've read in years' - Daily Telegraph

'A blissful novel of unapologetic appetites, where desire and faith mingle on the marshes, but friendship is the miracle. Sarah Perry has the rare gift of committing the uncommittable to prose - that is to say: here is a writer who understands life' - Jessie Burton

'A book to make you want to be a better person' - the Guardian

Angela Topping

THE FIVE PETALS OF ELDERFLOWER

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 2.30pm - 3.30pm

Hailed by poet David Morley as ‘a natural successor to Ursula Fanthorpe’, prize-winning poet Angela Topping reads from her latest book, The Five Petals of Elderflower. Angela will share insights about the craft, focusing on these poems, some of which were composed during her 2013 Residency at Gladstone’s Library. They explore our relationship with the natural world, alongside such themes as childhood, memory, music and the small pleasures of the everyday.

Elderflowers sing jazz, each petalled phrase

plays another variation on the last.

Its saxophone voice rises above twanged strings

of cello and double bass, holding the melody

as it flies high. Notes dance round our feet:

we wade in sound. It’s a five bar blues,

scrolls of baroque, rising like smoke, tasting champagne.

White is not white, is green and cream and ivory.

And it sings the blues.

BIOGRAPHY

Angela Topping began to publish her poems in prestigious magazines during her undergraduate studies at Liverpool University. She is the author of eight collections and five pamphlets of poetry, as well as three critical guides and several textbooks on poetry. Her work has been set for A level, has appeared in Poetry Review and The Dark Horse, among others, and found its way into over 70 anthologies. Topping has judged national competitions and edited several anthologies, including a festschrift for her friend, Bloodaxe poet Matt Simpson (1936-2009.) She gives readings and leads workshops all over the country and her poems have been featured on Poetry Please. Festival appearances include StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Lichfield Lit Fest, Wenlock Poetry Festival and Sefton Arts Fest. She also writes for children and her first solo collection appeared in 2010, with another in the pipeline. Her latest book of poetry is published by Red Squirrel Press. The title poem won first prize in Buzzwords competition in 2013, the same year as her Residency at Gladstone’s Library. A former teacher in several sectors, she now works freelance as a poet and author from her Cheshire home.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Five Petals of Elderflower (Red Squirrel Press, 2017)

Letting Go (Mother’s Milk Books, 2013)

Paper Patterns (Lapwing, 2012)

The Way We Came (bluechrome, 2007)

The Fiddle: New and Selected Poems (Stride, 1999)

REVIEWS

‘Angela Topping’s poems capture the magic of real life with a powerful precision, brilliant imagery, and a clear, spoken, enlivening voice. Her poetry is also open to the darkness and pain in our lives without yielding one ounce of her generosity of vision or spirit' - David Morley

Laura Wilkinson - SOLD OUT

AFTER THE FIRST DRAFT

EVENT FORMAT: WORKSHOP

WHEN: Sunday, 3rd September | 1pm - 2.30pm

You’ve finished the first draft of your novel but what next? Making your book as brilliant as it can be takes a whole new set of skills. Join Laura Wilkinson for an intensive workshop on how to refine and shape your manuscript into memorable fiction. Learn how to hook the reader and keep them reading; how to ensure your manuscript is structurally sound, and how to give the book a last spit and polish. Leave equipped with the tools and techniques to make your story sing.

BIOGRAPHY

Liverpool born, Laura is a taff at heart – she grew up a few miles from the Library. She has published six novels for adults (two under a pseudonym) and numerous short stories, some of which have made the short lists of international competitions. Public Battles, Private Wars, was a Welsh Books Council Book of the month; Redemption Song was a Kindle top 20. The Family Line is a family drama set in the near future, looking at identity and parenting. Her latest is Skin Deep. Alongside writing, Laura works as an editor & mentor for literary consultancies and runs workshops on aspects of craft. She’s spoken at festivals and events nationwide, including the Frome Festival, University of Kingston, The Women’s Library and Museum in Docklands. She lives in Brighton with her husband and sons.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Skin Deep (Accent Press, 2017)

The Family Line (Accent Press, 2016)

Redemption Song (Accent Press, 2016)

Public Battles, Private Wars (Accent Press, 2014)

BloodMining (Bridge House, 2011)

REVIEWS

'An engrossing, poignant and wise story that reminds us how we all crave to be seen for who we truly are. I raced through it' - Jo Bloom

'A truly compelling, page-turning and evocative novel...The story hooked me, the questions it raised about beauty and art gripped me, and the characters will stay with me for a long, long time. Highly recommended!' Kate Harrison

'This book will get under your skin' - Jules Grant

Linda Woodhead - SOLD OUT

THAT WAS THE CHURCH THAT WAS

EVENT FORMAT: TALK

WHEN: Saturday, 2nd September | 2.30pm - 3.30pm

As recently as 1979, the Church of England seemed an essential part of Englishness. The following decades have seen the loss of more than half of its members and much of its influence. How did it happen? Is there any way back? Find (some of) the answers here.

BIOGRAPHY

Linda Woodhead read Theology at Cambridge University before joining the staff of an Anglican training college. Astonished by what she saw, she retrained as a sociologist of religion to understand what was happening to the churches. Between 2007 and 2012 she directed the UK’s largest ever research programme on Religion and Society. She is currently Professor in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University and Director of the Institute of Social Futures. Linda is also a trustee of Gladstone’s Library.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

That Was the Church That Was (Bloomsbury, 2016)

Christianity: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2nd ed 2014)

Religion and Change in Modern Britain (Routledge, 2012)

A Sociology of Religious Emotions (OUP, 2010)

Religions in the Modern World (Routledge, 2009)

The Spiritual Revolution (Blackwell, 2005)

REVIEWS

'An honest portrait of the past four decades, surveying the Church of England's history, structures and organisation, identifying its weaknesses and failures, and apportioning blame' - Times Literary Supplement

'Devastating, witty and for anyone who has ever tried to love the C of E profoundly melancholy...well informed and stylish' - Prospect