Welcome

Welcome to the Lichfield Festival’s third lichfield literature weekend. A few things have changed. We have moved to September, we have events for families for the first time, and Lichfield Library and Beacon Park have been added as venues. We are also marking both the 2008 National Year of Reading and the Launch Weekend of the Cultural Olympiad. Open a book, open your mind, and join us as we keep Lichfield’s strong literary heritage very much alive.

Drinks 7pm, dinner 7.30pm. Garrick Room, The George Hotel
Friday 26 September 2008
lichfield literary dinner

The Remarkable Lives of Bill Deedes Stephen Robinson

Girl in a Blue Dress Gaynor Arnold

Bill Deedes reported alongside Evelyn Waugh from Abyssinia in the 1930s and was awarded the Military Cross for heroism in the Second World War; he was an MP and Cabinet Minister, and Margaret Thatcher made him a life peer; most enduring of all, his journalistic career spanned seven decades.

Charles Dickens provides the inspiration for Girl in a Blue Dress. It is an ambitious and sympathetic fictional account of a Victorian celebrity marriage told from the point of view of a famous author’s estranged wife, and is the third novel from the small Birmingham publisher Tindal Street Press to have made it on to the Man Booker Prize long list.

Stephen Robinson, a former Daily Telegraph journalist, is Deedes’ authorized biographer. Gaynor Arnold is a social worker by profession, and Girl in a Blue Dress is her first novel. They, and the remarkable characters they write about, should prove the most entertaining of dinner companions.

£32 (three-course dinner, excluding wine) 

10-11am, 12-1pm  Adults & Families Lichfield Library
2-3-pm Adults Lichfield Library
Saturday 27 September 2008
Stories from your Attic
Maria Whatton

Professional story-teller. Maria Whatton, invites adults and families to join her at Lichfield Library where she will be breathing life into the inanimate objects that are usually found loitering in loft spaces. Maria will be using artefactsthat relate to domestic life, childhood and holidays from collections owned by Staffordshire County Council's museum, archive and library services to inspire stories that are a unique opportunity to "hear" voices from the past. Visitors are also welcome to bring in their own attic relics, possibly a photograph of a grandparent or an item that has belonged to a family member.

FREE
To ensure a place, please contact Lichfield Library 01543 510700

12 - 1pm. Garrick Room, The George Hotel
Saturday 27 September 2008
The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England
Ian Mortimer

Ian Mortimer is a campaigner for history as a “living thing” and time as a space in which to travel. In this “guide book” you will interact with the medieval period in an entirely new way. What are the first things you see on arrival at a medieval town? What do you smell? How will the locals take to you as a man or as a woman? What will you eat and how will you find somewhere to stay?

Written with passion as well as historical accuracy and research, this is socialhistory at its most authentic.

Ian Mortimer was awarded the Alexander Prize (2004) by the Royal Historical Society for his work on the social history of medicine. He is the author of three medieval biographies. 

“A narrative historian of exceptional gifts”
BBC History Magazine

£5

2 - 3pm. Garrick Room, The George Hotel
Saturday 27 September 2008
Universe of Stone
Chartres Cathedral and the Triumph of the Medieval Mind
Philip Ball

In 12th-century Europe, Christian architects moved dramatically away from the claustrophobic and gloomy church buildings we now call Romanesque and began to build soaring, spacious monuments flooded with light from immense windows. The introduction of Gothic architecture had a profound effect, not just on the Church, but in the way some prominent Western intellectuals and theologians pictured the universe and humanity’s relationship with it. In Universe of Stone, Philip Ball illuminates the medieval mind through a fully-illustrated study of the greatest architectural masterpiece of the period – Chartres Cathedral.

Philip Ball is a freelance science write and Consultant Editor of Nature magazine. In addition to several books on science, he has also just published his first novel, The Sun and Moor Corrupted.

“One of our most versatile and gripping science writers"
John Carey, Sunday Times

£5

4 - 5pm. Garrick Room, The George Hotel
Saturday 27 September 2008

Creation or Evolution
Do We Have to Choose?
Denis Alexander

Some think intelligent design (ID) theory is merely the respectable face of Christian fundamentalism; others view evolution as the only sensible scientific world view. But ID has driven science for 500 years. It was responsible for the 17th century's scientific revolution and helped build modern histories of physics, mathematics, genetics and social science. ID's proponents take literally the Biblical idea that humans have been created in God's image. This view of humanity enabled the West to triumph in the modern era. Evolution, on the other hand, derives from ancient ideas about our rootedness in nature and the transience of all life forms. Until Darwin few evolutionists were scientists. What happened to reverse these two movements' fortunes?

With a double Darwin’s centenary on the horizon join us for this provocative discussion for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of science's most vociferous debate as we turn expectations on their head with a non-Christian, social epistemologist arguing the case for intelligent design theory on one side, and a scientist who believes passionately in both the biblical doctrine of creation and the coherence of evolutionary theory on the other.

Steve Fuller is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. Denis Alexander is Director of the Faraday Insitute of Science and Religion, Cambridge. 

£5

6 - 7pm. Garrick Room, The George Hotel
Saturday 27 September 2008

Inspired by Anya Seton’s famous novel, Katherine, acclaimed historian Alison Weir has written the first full biography of one of the most beguiling and mysterious women in history. Beloved mistress to the charismatic John of Gaunt, Katherine Swynford was a controversial figure of her day and many people distrusted and resented her position as "Royal Mistress". But she was a powerful figure in her own right, the sister-in-law of Chaucer and a thoroughly modern woman. Every British monarch since 1461 and no fewer than five American presidents are descended from her.

Alison Weir is one of Britain’s foremost popular historians. Her books include Britain’s RoyalFamilies, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Mary, Queen of Scots and, most recently, the novel Innocent Traitor.

£5

8 - 9.15pm. Garrick Room, The George Hotel
Saturday 27 September 2008
Downing Street Diaries
Volume Two: With James Callaghan in No. 10
Bernard Donoughue

 An increasingly isolated Prime Minister whose economic policies are disintegrating, his parliamentary party rebelling, cabinet colleagues maneuvering for succession, opinion polls slumping, and inflation surging… we could be mistaken for discussing 2008 and not 1978.
The second volume of Lord Donoughue’s Downing Street Diary covers the years 1976-79. This magisterial historic record gives an often minute by minute account of the tumultuous events unfolding within No. 10 as Britain plunged into the historic “Winter of Discontent”.Lord Donoughue taught at the London School of Economics from 1963 to 1974, when he became Senior Policy Advisor to Harold Wilson and then to James Callaghan

"This is a diary on a Pepys scale"
Times Literary Supplement

£5

12.30-1pm Beacon Park
2-2.30pm Beacon Park
Sunday 28 September 2008
Mr Toad’s Prison Break
Adapted by Philip Holyman from
The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Kenneth Grahame’s classic story, telling the timeless adventures of Toad and the creatures of the riverbank, has been delighting families for generations. In a new production celebrating the novel’s 100th anniversary, Toad’s passion for new toys leads to escapades and clashes with the not-so-nice residents of the Wild Wood, not to mention a few stern words from his trusted friends. Will Rat, Mole and Badger curb his behavior or will Toad triumph again? A specially commissioned adventure suitable for all ages.

FREE, but booking in advance necessary

Have a Wild weekend….
Saturday 27 September 9.30-10am and 11.30am-12noon Meet the characters, Lichfield Library.
Thursday 24 – Saturday 27 September Wind in the Willows Exhibition, Lichfield Library Gallery.
 

2 - 3pm. Garrick Room, The George Hotel
Sunday 28 September 2008
The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth
Frances Wilson

Often presented as a self-effacing virgin or sacrificial saint, Dorothy Wordsworth was a talented writer and an exceptional woman. Both William Wordsworth and Coleridge lifted phrases from her writing for their own use, and she was described by Thomas Quincey as the “very wildest... person I have ever known”. In her beautifully told biography, Frances Wilson brings Dorothy to life in all her complexity, uncovering the rich emotional life of a woman who suffered the jealousy of a discarded mistress and, eventually, insanity.

Frances Wilson is the author of Literary Seductions, which was praised by Alain de Botton as “psychologically rich and wise”, and The Courtesan’s Revenge.

“Frances Wilson is not only a first-rate scholar but also a wonderful storyteller”
Mail on Sunday

4 - 5pm. Garrick Room, The George Hotel
Sunday 28 September 2008
Churchill’s Wizards
The British Genius for Deception 1914-1945
Nicholas Rankin

Native cunning is the key that links Churchill’s wizards, creative people using their skills to help their country in a struggle for survival. The two World Wars recruited widely from the nation’s pool of artist and scientists, film and theatre people, novelists and naturalists, as well as daredevils, commandos and the Home Guard who disguised machine-gun posts as gentlemen’s toilets or genteel tea-rooms. Churchill’s Wizards is a thrilling work of popular military history which traces the four pillars of 20th-century British deception: camouflage, propaganda, secret intelligence and special forces.

Nicholas Rankin has tracked down the brave and high-spirited writers, producers and show-biz people who helped the armed forces to win what Churchill called “the war of the Unknown Warriors”.

£5

6 - 7pm. Garrick Room, The George Hotel
Sunday 28 September 2008
Secrets of the Sea

In Tasmania
Adventures at the End of the World
Nicholas Shakespeare

Tasmania has played a crucial role in both this author’s most recent works. In Secrets of the Sea it is the setting for a novel filled with beauty and danger. Young Alex Dove is torn away from Tasmania following the death of his parents, but on his return is drawn into the eccentric and often hilarious dynamics of island life.

In Tasmania is a fascinating history of two turbulent centuries in this apparently idyllic place. Shakespeare effortlessly weaves history with a kaleidoscope of stories featuring a cast of unlikely characters from Errol Flynn to the King of Iceland.

Nicholas Shakespeare is the author of The Vision of Elena Silves, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and The Dancer Upstairs, American Libraries Association best novel of 1997, as well as an acclaimed biography of Bruce Chatwin.

£5

Booking information

How & where to book

In person: Literature weekend box office, 7 The Close, Lichfield WS13 7LD (opening hours Monday to Friday 10am-4pm)

By phone:  01543 306276 (Monday to Friday 10am-4pm)

If not booking in person, your tickets will be sent to you for a 50p charge. All bookings are dealt with in order of receipt. Reserved tickets must be paid for within 5 working days or no later than 30 minutes before the start of an event, whichever is the sooner. There are on-the-door sales at each event, subject to availability.

How to pay

Cheques should be made payable to Lichfield Festival Ltd. We are pleased to accept credit card bookings by telephone or in person. We accept Visa, Mastercard, Solo, Switch, Electron, Maestro. NOT Amex. Please give your card number, issue number (Switch only), expiry date, name and address, and signature strip number (last three digits on back of card).

Refunds

Please check your tickets as soon as you receive them, as the Festival cannot refund money or exchange tickets except in the case of a cancelled performance.

Disabled

Free ticket for companion or support worker to disabled patrons.