Dorchester Literary Festival

Alan Titchmarsh – Chatsworth
2023-10-19 19:30 - 20:30 (Europe/London) | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Follow Alan into Chatsworth’s irresistible world of visionaries, pioneers, heroes, villains and English eccentrics, and celebrate the men and women who have shaped the history of the estate over five centuries. With his passionate knowledge of both the house and gardens, as well as his long-established relationship with the Cavendish family, Alan is the perfect guide with whom to explore the Palace of the Peaks.

Featuring stunning, specially commissioned photography of the gardens and parkland, alongside long-forgotten images and memorabilia newly unearthed in the estate archives, this vivid companion, crowded with character and colour, is a book to treasure and revisit over and over again.

Alan Titchmarsh MBE is known to millions through his career as a television presenter of shows including Love Your Weekend, Love Your Garden, Ground Force, Gardeners’ World, The Alan Titchmarsh Show and Spring Into Summer. He has written more than forty gardening books, as well as twelve novels and three volumes of memoirs. He was made MBE in the millennium New Year Honours list and holds the Victoria Medal of Honour, the Royal Horticultural Society’s highest award.

Alan Titchmarsh will be in conversation with Paul Atterbury

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

D J Taylor – George Orwell
2023-10-19 17:30 - 18:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
The definitive biography of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century from the award-winning writer and critic, D.J. Taylor.

Over seventy years since his premature death, George Orwell (1903-50) has become one of the most significant figures in western literature. His two dystopian masterpieces, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) have together sold over 100 million copies. Even now, he continues to exert a decisive influence on our understanding of international power-politics.

D.J. Taylor’s new biography, the first full- length study for 20 years, draws on a wide range of previously unseen material – newly-discovered letters to old girlfriends and professional colleagues; the recollections of the dwindling band of people who knew him, new information about his life in the early 1930s – to produce a definitive portrait of this complex, driven and self-mythologising man.

D.J. Taylor’s previous biography Orwell: The Life won the 2003 Whitbread Prize for Biography. His other works of non-fiction include Thackeray (1999), Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918-1940 (2007), The Prose Factory: Literary Life in England Since 1918 (2016) and Lost Girls: Love, War and Literature 1939–1951 (2019). He has written a dozen novels, including English Settlement (1996), which won a Grinzane Cavour Prize, Trespass (1998) and Derby Day (2011), both of which were longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His most recent books are the short story collection Stewkey Blues (2022) and Critic at Large: Essays and Reviews 2010-2022 (2023). His journalism appears in a variety of publications on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, the New Criterion, the Critic and Private Eye. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Norwich with his wife, the novelist Rachel Hore.

D J Taylor will be in conversation with Jason Goodwin.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Ferdinand Mount – Big Caesars and Little Caesars
2023-10-19 16:00 - 17:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
How They Rise and How They Fall: From Julius Caesar to Boris Johnson

Who said that dictatorship was dead? The world today is full of Strong Men and their imitators. Caesarism is alive and well. Yet in modern times it’s become a strangely neglected subject. Ferdinand Mount opens up a fascinating exploration of how and why Caesars seize power and why they fall.

There is a comforting illusion shared by historians and political commentators from Fukuyama back to Macaulay, Mill and Marx, that history progresses in a nice straight line towards liberal democracy or socialism, despite the odd hiccup.

In reality, every democracy, however sophisticated or stable it may look, has been attacked or actually destroyed by a would-be Caesar, from Ancient Greece to the present day. Marx was wrong. This Caesarism is not an absurd throwback, it is an ever-present danger.

There are Big Caesars who set out to achieve total social control and Little Caesars who merely want to run an agreeable kleptocracy without opposition: from Julius Caesar and Oliver Cromwell through Napoleon and Bolivar, to Mussolini, Salazar, De Gaulle and Trump. The saga of Boris Johnson and Brexit frequently crops up in this author’s narrative as a vivid, if Lilliputian instance of the same phenomenon.

The final part of this book describes how and why would-be Caesars come to grief, from the Gunpowder Plot to Trump’s march on the Capitol and the ejection of Boris Johnson by his own MPs, and ends with a defence of the grubby glories of parliamentary politics and a thought-provoking roadmap of the way back to constitutional government.

Ferdinand Mount was born in 1939, the son of a steeplechase jockey, and brought up on Salisbury Plain. After being educated at Eton and Oxford, he made various false starts as a children’s nanny, a gossip columnist, bagman to Selwyn Lloyd, and leader-writer on the doomed Daily Sketch. He later surfaced, slightly to his surprise and everyone else’s, as head of Margaret Thatcher’s Policy Unit and later editor of The Times Literary Supplement. He is married with three children and three grandchildren and has lived in Islington for half his life. Apart from political columns and essays, he has written a six-volume series of novels, A Chronicle of Modern Twilight, which began with The Man Who Rode Ampersand, based on his father’s racing life, and included Of Love And Asthma (he is a temporarily retired asthmatic), which won the Hawthornden Prize for 1992. He also writes what he calls Tales of History and Imagination, including Umbrella, which the historian Niall Ferguson called ‘quite simply the best historical novel in years’.

Sponsored by John and Jenny Patterson

Tickets £12.00/£6.00

Justine Picardie – Chanel The Legend and the Life
2023-10-19 14:00 - 15:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Justine Picardie spent years puzzling over the truth about Coco Chanel, peeling away the accretions of romance and lies. Since its publication in 2010, hers has become the definitive Chanel biography. To coincide with a major exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum her new edition delves even deeper into the life and legacy of this eternally alluring woman.

Coco Chanel was an extraordinary inventor – she conjured up the little black dress, bobbed hair, trousers for women, contemporary chic, best-selling perfumes, and the most successful fashion brand of all time – but she also invented herself, fashioning the myth of her own life with the same dexterity as her couture.

While Chanel was supreme innovator and vendor of all things elegant and beautiful, what lies beneath her own glossy myth is far darker. Throwing new light on her passionate and turbulent relationships, this beautifully constructed portrait gives a fresh and penetrating look at how Coco Chanel made herself into her own most powerful creation.

Justine Picardie brings the mysterious Gabrielle Chanel out of hiding, to celebrate her great achievements. She examines Chanel’s enduring afterlife, as well as her remarkable life, uncovering the consequences of what she covered up, unpicking the seams between truth and legend, yet keeping intact the real fabric of her past.

Justine Picardie is the author of six acclaimed books. She is a contributing editor to Harper’s Bazaar, having previously been its editor-in-chief. She was formerly an investigative journalist for the Sunday Times, a columnist for the Telegraph, editor of the Observer Magazine and features director of Vogue.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Stephen Anderton – The Lives of the Great Gardeners
2023-10-19 12:00 - 13:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
The lives of 40 men and women behind some of the world’s most exciting gardens. Throughout history great gardeners have risen from all walks of life. Some have been aristocratic amateur gardeners, others professional designers with an international practice. Some have come to garden-making from sister arts such as sculpture or painting; others have been hands-on nurserymen or botanists. What they all have in common is the ability to take an idea and develop it in a new manner relevant to their times.

The book contains four sections. ‘Gardens of Ideas’ moves from the politically allusive gardens of 18th-century England made by men such as William Kent, to Charles Jencks’s Scottish garden inspired by 21st-century cosmography. ‘Gardens of Straight Lines’ explores the lives of the great formalist gardeners, from Le Nôtre at Versailles to the rational English minimalism of contemporary designer Christopher BradleyHole. ‘Gardens of Curves’ begins with that great exponent of the English landscapegarden, ‘Capability’ Brown, and leads to the extraordinary Brazilian designer Roberto Burle Marx. Finally, ‘Gardens of Plantsmanship’ moves from the father of naturalistic planting, William Robinson, to the sweeping prairies of New York’s favourite Dutch designer, Piet Oudolf.

Author Stephen Anderton is a journalist, author, lecturer and broadcaster. Best known as The Times’s long-standing writer on gardens and gardening (for which he has three times won first prize in the Garden Writers’ Guild awards), he worked for many years on the care and restoration of historic gardens, latterly as National Gardens Manager for English Heritage. His books include Discovering Welsh Gardens and Christopher Lloyd: Great Dixter.

Stephen Anderton will be in conversation with Vanessa Berridge.

Sponsored by Monart Spa

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

James Naughtie – Desert Island Books
2023-10-18 18:00 - 19:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
**Event Cancelled** We regret to say that this event has been cancelled. If you have purchased tickets, please contact us for a refund.

One of our most treasured BBC broadcasters, a lover of literature, host of BBC Radio 4’s Book Club, and chair for the Man Booker Prize jury, James Naughtie chooses six books that have influenced him and inspired him through his life, in conversation with Paul Atterbury.

James Naughtie will also discuss his latest novel: The Spy Across The Water following Will Flemyng on a dangerous journey into his clandestine past, from conflict in Ireland to the long shadows of the Cold War, in an electric story of courage and betrayal.

James Naughtie was a popular presenter of Radio 4’s flagship Today programme. He is also a noted authority on classical music and opera. He fronted coverage of The Proms for more than a decade, and published The Making of Music – putting 1,000 years of composers and their works into proper historical context. His own publications include The Rivals, which exposed the truth about the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and his first novel, The Madness of July.

James Naughtie will be in conversation with Paul Atterbury.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Nigel Biggar – Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning
2023-10-18 16:00 - 17:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
A RIGOROUS EXAMINATION OF THE WEST’S COLONIAL RECORD WHICH SEEKS TO BRING BALANCE TO OUR PERSPECTIVE OF COLONIALISM’S IMPACT

In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1989, many believed that we had arrived at the ‘End of History’ – that the global dominance of liberal democracy had been secured forever. Now however, with Russia rattling its sabre on the borders of Europe and China rising to challenge the post-1945 world order, the liberal West faces major threats. These threats are not only external. Especially in the Anglosphere, the ‘decolonisation’ movement corrodes the West’s self-confidence by retelling the history of European and American colonial dominance as a litany of racism, exploitation, and massively murderous violence.

Nigel Biggar tests this indictment, addressing the crucial questions in eight chapters: Was the British Empire driven primarily by greed and the lust to dominate? Should we speak of ‘colonialism and slavery’ in the same breath, as if they were identical? Was the Empire essentially racist? How far was it based on the theft of land? Did it involve genocide? Was it driven fundamentally by the motive of economic exploitation? Was undemocratic colonial government necessarily illegitimate? and, Was the Empire essentially violent, and its violence pervasively racist and terroristic?

As encyclopaedic in historical breadth as it is penetrating in analytical depth, COLONIALISM offers a moral inquest into the colonial past, forensically contesting damaging falsehoods and thereby helping to rejuvenate faith in the West’s future.

NIGEL BIGGAR is Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, where he directs the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life. Before assuming his professorship at Oxford, he occupied chairs at the University of Leeds and at Trinity College, Dublin. His most recent publications include What’s Wrong with Rights?, Between Kin and Cosmopolis: An Ethic of the Nation, and In Defence of War. He was appointed CBE in 2021.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Tim Marshall – The Future of Geography
2023-10-18 14:00 - 15:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Space: the new frontier, a wild and lawless place. It is already central to communication, military strategy and international relations on Earth. Now, it is the latest arena for human exploration, exploitation – and, possibly, conquest. China, the USA and Russia are leading the way. The next fifty years will change the face of global politics.

With all the insight and wit that have made Tim Marshall the UK’s most popular writer on geopolitics, this gripping book shows that politics and geography are as important in the skies as on the ground, covering great-power rivalry; technology; commerce; combat in space; and what it all means for us down on Earth. This is essential reading on power, politics and the future of humanity. ‘Many of us still think of space as ‘out there’ and ‘in the future’. But it’s here and now – the border into the great beyond is well within our reach. Astropolitics is an integral part of international relations, especially for the major powers. I wanted to write a book putting space into its historical, political and military context, and to help us to imagine space as a place with geography which we need to understand. There’s also the sheer majesty and beauty of the universe, and in the book, from time to time, I stand aside, put aside the politics, and marvel.’

Tim Marshall is a leading authority on foreign affairs with more than 30 years of reporting experience. He was diplomatic editor at Sky News, and before that was working for the BBC and LBC/IRN radio. He has reported from 40 countries and covered conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Israel. He is the author of the No. 1 Sunday Times bestsellers Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics (which has sold over 2 million copies worldwide) and The Power of Geography: Ten Maps that Reveal the Future of Our World.

Tim Marshall will be in conversation with Michael MacCarthy.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Richard Cork – Encounters with Artists
2023-10-18 12:00 - 13:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
In Encounters with Artists, Richard Cork turns his impeccable skills as a critic and writer to tell the story of his encounters with some of the world’s most influential artists. From a serendipitous meeting with Pablo Picasso in Cannes in 1965 through his early days as a writer on the Evening Standard and his later role as chief art critic for The Times, Cork records the personal encounters that reveal the characters behind the art.

From individuals who can look back over a lifetime’s career, such as Louise Bourgeois, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns, to younger artists encountered at the beginning of their careers, such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, Cork reveals artists’ inner thoughts, anxieties, and creative ambitions. From a studio meeting with Lucian Freud to being driven through the Yorkshire countryside by David Hockney and given a tour of Soho drinking locations with Francis Bacon, Cork has found that “talking to artists can, in my experience, be surprising, revealing, salutary, testing, provocative, stimulating, and at times capable of overturning all my preconceptions about the individuals I encounter.”

Cork has played a significant role in popularizing late modern and contemporary art. In the words of art critic Louisa Buck, his “lucid, evenhanded and at times trenchantly critical judgement has been invaluable in helping to create the multiplicity of approach and vigorous debates of today’s artistic climate.”

Richard Cork is an award-winning art critic, historian, broadcaster, and curator. He has acted as a judge for the Turner Prize and curated major exhibitions at Tate, the Hayward Gallery, the Barbican Art Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts, and other European venues. Previously art critic for the Evening Standard, then chief art critic of The Times, he broadcasts regularly on BBC radio and TV and has written several books.

Richard Cork will be in conversation with Paul Atterbury

Sponsored by Duke’s

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

John Wright – The Observant Walker
2023-10-18 10:30 - 11:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
When we go for a walk, whether in the countryside or city, we pass through landscapes full of natural beauty and curiosities both visible and invisible – but though we might admire the view, or wonder idly about the name of a flower, we rarely have the knowledge to fully engage with what we see. When we do, our sense of place is expanded, our understanding deepened and we can discover richness in even the most everyday stroll.

John Wright has been leading forays around Britain for decades. As an expert forager, he shows people how to identify the edible species that abound – but he also reveals the natural history, stories and science behind our surroundings. Here, he takes us with him on eight walks: from verdant forests to wild coastlines, via city pavements, fields and rolling hills, he illuminates what can be found on a walk across any British terrain, and how you might observe and truly understand them, for yourself.

Warm, wise and endlessly informative, with helpful illustrations and suggested routes, this book will help you to see the world around you with new eyes: no walk will be the same again.

Sponsored by the Duchy of Cornwall

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Damien Lewis – SAS Great Escapes II
2023-10-17 18:00 - 19:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
Million-copy bestselling author Damien Lewis has established himself as one of the most popular WWII historians, and this book builds on the success of SAS Great Escapes which has sold more than 40,000 copies in just over a year. SAS Great Escapes II reveals how SAS men crossed deserts, evaded hunter forces and escaped through enemy lands, overcoming insurmountable odds in WWII.

He tells the stories of:

Legendary SAS figure Bill Fraser and his six-man patrol, listed as Missing in Action after failing to return from a desert raid. Nine weeks later they emerged from a death-defying trial, being greeted as if they were ‘back from the dead’.

The eccentric yet gifted SAS commander Lord George Jellicoe and his small band of piratical raiders who attacked the heavily guarded German aerodrome at Heraklion, Crete, blowing up dozens of warplanes.

Malcolm Pleydell, the SAS medic who undertook a 1000-mile Saharan escape, being hunted all the way, facing horrific decisions as to who to save and who to abandon.

SAS founder David Stirling who attempted one of the most audacious missions of the war – to drive across the war-torn expanse of North Africa, to link up with advancing American forces.

John Tonkin commander of Operation Bulbasket, a 40-strong party tasked to halt in its tracks the notorious SS Panzer Division Das Reich.

Herbert Castelow who parachuted into France, charged to sabotage a key airbase escaping on the local village butcher’s bike

Damien Lewis’s extensive research captures these never-before-told stories, relying upon the generous time, help, personal archives, memorabilia and collections of the family members of those portrayed, as well as individual interviews, and access to newly-released wartime files held in the National Archives and elsewhere.

Damien Lewis worked as a war and conflict reporter for the world’s major broadcasters, reporting from across Africa, South America, the Middle and Far East and winning numerous awards. His books include the World War Two classics The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Hunting the Nazi Bomb, SAS Nazi Hunters, SAS Ghost Patrol, SAS Italian Job, SAS Band of Brothers, SAS Brothers in Arms and SAS Great Escapes. Many of his books have been made, or are being made, into movies or TV drama series or adapted as plays for the stage. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is presently being filmed as a major movie directed by Guy Ritchie, and starring Henry Cavill, Alan Richson, Henry Golding, Eiza González, amongst others. He has raised tens of thousands of pounds for charitable concerns connected with his writing.

Sponsored by Grassby & Sons

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Peter Hart – Footsloggers
2023-10-17 16:00 - 17:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
The Ben Shephard Memorial Lecture

An Infantry Battalion at War, 1939

The only way to truly understand what it was like to fight in the Second World War is to listen to the experiences of those men who were there. And often, there was nowhere more dangerous than on the ground.

In Footsloggers, Peter Hart reconstructs one infantry battalion’s war in staggering detail. Based on his interviews with members of the 16th Durham Light Infantry, Hart bears witness not only to their comradeship, suffering, dreadful losses and individual tragedies, but also their courage and self-sacrifice as they fought their way across North Africa, Italy and Greece. It might be said that they were an ‘ordinary’ battalion, but there was nothing ordinary about the experiences they collectively faced in the war against fascism. Most of the men were civilians until the onset of war threw them into the maelstrom; few of them ever considered themselves as natural soldiers. They had to learn from scratch the fundamentals of military discipline and acquire the manifold skills required of the infantryman. Some learnt quickly and prospered; far more struggled in this harsh environment, enduring untold privations and humiliations. But most did in the end become effective soldiers, capable of facing their opponentsserving the Third Reich.

This is a human look at the inhuman nature of war from the acclaimed author of At Close Range and Burning Steel.

Peter Hart was the oral historian at the Imperial War Museum for nearly 40 years. A prolific military history author, he has appeared in various television programmes, acted as a guide for the army, runs his own battlefield tour company and has a successful weekly podcast series Pete & Gary’s Military History.

Ben Shephard (1948-2017) was a writer, historian, lecturer and TV producer – The World at War and The Nuclear Age. Ben had a lifelong interest in the history of psychiatry and he studied the psychological effects of war in a series of highly regarded books, A War of Nerves – about PTSD, After Daybreak – the liberation of Belsen and The Long Road Home – the resettlement of displaced persons after WW2. This lecture remembers Ben’s life and work.

Sponsored by Sue Shephard

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Her Honour Wendy Joseph KC – Unlawful Killings
2023-10-17 14:00 - 15:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
Detailing six high profile murder and manslaughter cases over which they have presided, an Old Bailey judge reveals the inner workings of a crown court and how we should all be invested in the judicial process that transforms so many ordinary lives.

Every day in the UK lives are suddenly, brutally, wickedly taken away. Victims are shot or stabbed. Less often they are strangled or suffocated or beaten to death. Rarely they are poisoned, pushed off high buildings, drowned or set alight. Then there are the many who are killed by dangerous drivers, or corporate gross negligence. There are a lot of ways you can kill someone. I know because I’ve seen most of them at close quarters.

As one of just a few judges licensed to try murder cases at the Old Bailey, the author has presided over many of the high-profile cases that all too often grab our attention in dramatic media headlines – for every unlawful death tells a story. But, unlike most of us, a judge doesn’t get to turn the page and move on. Nor does the defendant, or the family of the victim, nor the many other people who populate the court room.

Peeling apart six dramatic murder and manslaughter cases, Unlawful Killings removes this distinction between ‘them’ and ‘us’. By detailing the inner workings of the Old Bailey and UK law, the author makes clear that each of us has a vested interest in what happens in the court room – especially when it comes to the death of a fellow human being. Any one of us could end up in the witness-box or even in the dock. And yet most people have only the sketchiest idea of what happens inside a Crown Court.

When Wendy Joseph move to the Old Bailey in 2012 she was the only woman amongst 16 judges and the third woman ever to hold a permanent position at the Old Bailey.

Wendy Joseph will be in conversation with Jason Goodwin.

Sponsored by Michael and Eve Bonham Cozens

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Joanna Quinn – The Whalebone Theatre
2023-10-17 12:00 - 13:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
A ravishing coming-of-age story set in the shadow of an oncoming war, The Whalebone Theatre fizzes with invention and compassion as an ‘unmarriageable’ girl elects to defy convention and find her own path through life.

“Maudie, why are all the best characters men?”Maudie closes the book with a clllump. “We haven’t read all the books yet, Miss Cristabel. I can’t believe that every story is the same.”

Cristabel Seagrave has always wanted her life to be a story, but there are no girls in the books in her dusty family library. For an unwanted orphan who grows into an unmarriageable young woman, there is no place at all for her in a traditional English manor.

But from the day that a whale washes up on the beach at the Chilcombe estate in Dorset, and twelve-year-old Cristabel plants her flag and claims it as her own, she is determined to do things differently. With her step-parents blithely distracted by their endless party guests, Cristabel and her siblings, Flossie and Digby, scratch together an education from the plays they read in their freezing attic, drunken conversations eavesdropped through oak-panelled doors, and the esoteric lessons of Maudie their maid.

But as the children grow to adulthood and war approaches, jolting their lives on to very different tracks, it becomes clear that the roles they are expected to play are no longer those they want. As they find themselves drawn into the conflict, they must each find a way to write their own.

Joanna Quinn grew up in Dorset where the best-selling Whalebone Theatre is set. She has worked in the charity sector and journalism. The Whalebone Theatre is her first novel and was a book club pick from the Queen Consort’s Reading Room.

Joanna Quinn will be in conversation with Helen Stiles

Sponsored by the Thomas Hardy Society

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Anna Kent – Frontline Midwife
2023-10-17 10:30 - 11:30 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
Anna Kent has delivered babies in war zones, caring for the most vulnerable women in the most vulnerable places in the world. At twenty-six years old, not yet a fully-trained midwife, she delivered a baby in a tropical storm by the light of a headtorch; the following year, she would be responsible for the female health of 30,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. But returning to the UK to work for the NHS, she soon learned that even at home the right to a safe birth was impossible to take for granted.

In Frontline Midwife, Kent shares her extraordinary experiences as a nurse, midwife and mother, illuminating the lives of women that are irreparably affected by compromised access to healthcare. This is at once an astonishing story of the realities of frontline humanitarian work, and a powerful reminder of the critical, life-giving work of nurses and doctors at home and around the world.

Anna Kent will be in conversation with Dr Helen Thomas

Sponsored by Summer Lodge

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Poetry Slam with Angie Porter
2023-10-16 18:00 - 19:30 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
An open mic event for local writers and poets.

Join us to hear up to twenty poets and writers read and perform their work. To sign up to participate at this event please contact us directly via contact@dorchesterliteraryfestival.com or just come along listen and enjoy a glass of wine.

Angie Porter is a local poet, performer and painter who brings creativity to the fore in whatever she does. Her monthly “She Speaks” poetry slams are hugely popular and Angie is actively involved in promoting new poetry work. Originally from Melbourne Australia, Angie is currently researching her local roots and the immigration experience from rural Somerset to outback Australia in the early 1800’s.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Angus Waycott – How to Self Publish Your Book
2023-10-16 16:00 - 17:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
The Winterborne Journey

Angus Waycott is an author and narrator whose work has appeared in the UK, USA and elsewhere. During 15 years in Japan he wrote books about daily life and travel to remote areas, and was the voice of TV news, documentaries and characters in anime and video game productions. He has also worked as a script editor, copywriter, translator, lighting designer and staircase builder.

On 16th October he’ll be talking about his experiences in self-publishing. Is it worthwhile? What are the advantages? And the pitfalls? His own first attempt in 1981 did well enough to encourage further projects, some of which made more impact than others. But if success remains unpredictable, the digital age has at least made the how-to part of the job a lot easier than before.

His latest book, also self-published, is The Winterborne Journey, a lively and erudite account of the journey made by a small chalkstream just south of Dorchester. As well as insights into the placing of sarsens, long-ago medical treatments and the mystery of waters that vanish and then return, it uncovers a host of curiosities in geology, nature, farming, folklore, poetry, food, bats, lunatics, windmills, carving, fighting, fishing and dancing — all scattered along a few miles of streambank like scenes on a painted scroll. A tonic read for life’s quieter moments.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Cathy Rentzenbrink – Write It All Down
2023-10-16 14:00 - 15:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
Why do we want to write and what stops us?How does the urge to express ourselves fight with the worry that no-one will care or that we will get in trouble?How do we identify and overcome everything that gets in our way so we can start making work?

Sunday Times bestselling author Cathy Rentzenbrink shows you how to tackle all this and more in Write It All Down, a guide to putting your life on the page. This is a kind, encouraging and stimulating book that explores the nature of memoir writing and offers helpful guidance on how to write your life on paper. Rentzenbrink will help you to discover the pleasure and solace to be found in writing; the profound satisfaction of wrestling a story onto a page and seeing the events of your life transformed through the experience of writing the self.

Perfect for both seasoned writers as well as writing amateurs and everyone in between, this helpful handbook will steer you through the philosophical and practical challenges of writing the self. Intertwined with reflections, anecdotes and exercises, Write It All Down is at once an intimate and enjoyable narrative and an invitation to share your story.

Cathy Rentzenbrink is an acclaimed memoirist whose books include The Last Act of Love, How to Feel Better and Dear Reader. Her first novel is Everyone is Still Alive and Write It All Down is a friendly and down to earth guide to writing a memoir.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Julian Unthank – How To Be A Screen Writer
2023-10-16 12:00 - 13:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
**Event Cancelled** We regret to say that this event has been cancelled. If you have purchased tickets, please contact us for a refund.

The dumbest guy in the Room: How a dyslexic who never read a book until he was twenty-one made a career as a screenwriter.

Using examples from his television, feature and short film work, Julian will examine the few highs and many humorous lows of his career as a professional screenwriter.

Julian Unthank is the writer and creator of Acorn TV’s Emmy™ nominated Queens of Mystery, an off-beat, Amélie-esque style take on the traditional world of cosy crime, the second season of which was released in the United States in January 2022.

As well as developing and adapting several shows for Producers in the UK and US, Julian is currently writing Season 2 of Suspect for Channel 4 and has recently completed writing on his fifth season of ITV’s worldwide hit Doc Martin.

He is the writer of the multi-award winning Oscar™ short-listed short Love at First Sight starring John Hurt, as well as being the writer of the zero award winning, 13% on Rotten Tomatoes, medieval slasher-fest Sword of Vengeance starring no one in particular.

Julian has also written on the BBC’s New Tricks and Robin Hood, ITV’s The Bill and Channel 5’s Family Affairs.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Celia Brayfield – Becoming a Writer
2023-10-16 10:30 - 11:30 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
Becoming a Writer

A masterclass for those who are taking their first steps in writing fiction. If you want to start writing, this session will help you to explore your talent and strengthen your skills. With the help of a few short exercises you will learn how to develop a fresh, individual voice, create vivid characters, write spot-on dialogue and build an irresistible narrative. The session will also cover paths to publication for new writers and the practical support which can help you build writing into your life.

Celia Brayfield is an award-winning novelist, journalist and academic. She is the author of nine novels ranging from modern social fiction to international bestsellers, as well as two author biographies, Rebel Writers and the newly published Writing Black Beauty: Anna Sewell, the Creation of a Novel, and the Story of Animal Rights. Celia teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

A Walk Around Dorchester in the Footsteps of Thomas Hardy
2023-10-15 11:00 - 13:00 | The Town Pump, 1–7 Cornhill, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1BA, United Kingdom
Walking tour around Hardy’s Casterbridge (Dorchester) and Fordington (Durnover) reciting the poetry and prose of this great writer and discovering the places and buildings that inspired him to write The Mayor of Casterbridge. The walk will be guided by Mark Chutter, Chairman and Academic Director of the Thomas Hardy Society.

The tour will finish with an afternoon cream tea at The Old Tea House.

Meet at the Town Pump opposite the Corn Exchange at 11.00

Dogs welcome. Walking boots recommended.

Tickets £12.00 (not including cream tea)

Cream tea £10.00 cash payable at the restaurant.

Robert Peston – Crash
2023-10-14 18:00 - 19:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
London, 2007. It’s summer in the City: the economy is booming, profits are up and the stock market hits near record highs.

But journalist Gil Peck is a lone voice worrying it can’t last. Deep in the plumbing of the financial system, he has noticed strange things happening which could threaten the whole economy. But nobody wants to hear it: not the politicians taking credit for an end to boom and bust, not the bankers pocketing vast bonuses, not even Gil’s bosses at the BBC, who think it’s irrelevant.

When Gil gets a tip-off that a small northern bank has run out of money, everything changes. His report sparks the first run on a UK bank in 140 years. The next day, Marilyn Krol, a director of the Bank of England dies in an apparent suicide.

For Gil, it’s personal. Marilyn was his lover: was his scoop connected to her suicide? Or is there something more sinister in her death? Gil is determined to find out.

The more he investigates, the more he is drawn into the rotten heart of the financial system, where old school ties and secret Oxbridge societies lubricate vast and illegal conflicts of interest. The whole economy has been built on a house of cards, and Gil is threatening to bring it down.

When simply reporting the facts can make or break fortunes, Gil has to ask himself: is he crossing the line between journalist and participant? Are his own conflicts of interest making him reckless? And in a world ruled by greed where nothing and no-one is too big to fail, what price will he pay for uncovering the truth?

Robert Peston is ITV’s political editor, presenter of the politics show ‘Peston’, founder of the education charity, Speakers for Schools (www.speakers4schools.org), and vice president ofHospice UK. He has written four critically acclaimed non-fiction books, How Do We Fix This Mess?, Who Runs Britain?, Brown’s Britain and his latest, WTF?, which was described by the Financial Times as ‘mandatory reading’ for anyone seeking to understand Brexit, Trump and the collapse of confidence in western liberalism. For a decade until the end of 2015, he was at the BBC, as economics editor and business editor, and in the 1990s he was at the Financial Times, as political editor, financial editor and head of investigations. At the BBC he played a prominent role in exposing the causes and consequences of the credit crunch, banking crisis and Great Recession. Peston has won more than 30 awards for his journalism, including Journalist of the Year and Scoop of the Year from the British TV Awards.

Robert Peston will be in conversation with Kate Adie.

Sponsored by Humphries Kirk

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Ray Mears – British Woodland
2023-10-14 16:00 - 17:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Nobody sees and understands woodland better than Ray Mears.

With deep natural history knowledge and practical woodcraft skills, gained over a lifetime of learning from the world’s last remaining indigenous peoples, Ray offers a different way to experience our wooded landscapes. He challenges the old concepts. He looks to our ancestors and shows how man’s hand in shaping woodland is critical. We are not separate from nature, we just need to ensure that our interactions have a positive impact.

With the emphasis on interaction, British Woodland is structured by usage. We learn that sycamore and clematis are among the best woods for burning, pine and oak help us navigate, and hawthorn and beech have edible leaves. Rope can be made from willow, utensils and tools from hazel, and historically, weapons were made from yew and wych elm.

With Ray as our guide, encouraging this aboriginal sense of connection to individual trees, our appreciation of wooded landscapes will change. We can learn how to live inclusively in nature, for our own wellbeing and enjoyment, and also for the future of our planet.

Ray Mears has become recognised throughout the world as an authority on the subject of bushcraft and survival. TV series including Ray Mears’ Bushcraft, Ray Mears’ World of Survival, Extreme Survival and Ray Mears goes Walkabout have made him a household name over the past two decades, but he has spent his whole life learning.

Sponsored by Dorchester BID

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)
