Mike Brearley – Turning Over the Pebbles
2024-10-19 19:30 - 20:30 (Europe/London) | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Mike Brearley reviews his life with all its attendant emotions, tensions and moves, in what he calls ‘memoir of the mind’. This is book of his second thoughts and reassessments, allowing him to understand more fully things that were obscure to him earlier. After all, he says, ‘captaining ourselves, like captaining a team, requires a willingness to allow thoughts and feelings their space’.Deeply thoughtful, erudite and elegantly framed, this book seamlessly blends all aspects of Brearley’s life into a single integrated narrative. With wide-ranging meditations on sport, philosophy, literature, religion, leadership, psychoanalysis, music and more, Brearley delves into his private passions and candidly examines the various shifts, conflicts and triumphs of his extraordinary life and career, both on and off the field.

Mike Brearley was educated at Cambridge, where he read classics and moral sciences, and captained the university. He played for Middlesex County Cricket Club intermittently from 1961 to 1970, and regularly from 1971, captaining the side until his retirement in 1982. He first played for England in 1976 and captained the side from 1977 to 1980, winning seventeen test matches and losing only four. He was recalled to the captaincy in 1981 for the Ashes home series, leading England to one of their most famous victories. From 1981, he trained and continues to work as a psychoanalyst, and is a lecturer both on leadership and on psychoanalysis. He is the author of the bestselling The Art of Captaincy, On Form, On Cricket, Spirit of Cricket and has written on cricket and the psychology of sport for the Sunday Times, Observer, The Times and Prospect.

Mike Brearley will be in conversation with Paul Atterbury.

Tickets £12/£6 (Students)

The DLF Local Writers’ Forum – hosted by Don Nordberg
2025-10-16 14:00 - 16:00 | Shire Hall Museum Cafe, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1UY, United Kingdom
A gathering where writers with a local connection or subject can present their published work (fiction or non fiction) to other writers and anyone interested in writing. The event will be hosted by Don Nordberg. This is a great way to meet fellow authors and others with an interest in writing. Authors will be allocated a time slot and have an opportunity to sign and sell books.

Don Nordberg is a literary magpie, a journalist-turned-consultant-turned-academic, and the author of two books on corporate governance, with manuscripts of two novels edging towards publication. He’s published poems in small journals and research papers in prominent ones. He reads philosophy, political theory, and potboilers, too. A Chicago native, he’s lived in Britain, Germany, Switzerland, and the US while working for Reuters, and held professorial roles in management at Bournemouth University and in financial journalism at City University of London. He now writes two Substack publications: How to govern [not like that], and DonNordberg (is/on) writing, and he convenes the Dorset local group of the Society of Authors.

Please get in touch via contact@dorchesterliteraryfestival.com if you would like to present your book at this event.

Tickets £6.00 (free for writers presenting their work)

Tim Spector – Ferment – The life changing power of microbes
2025-10-18 10:30 - 11:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Tim Spector is on a mission to bring fermenting into our lives and kitchens. Drawing on the latest science and his own experiments, Ferment is an accessible introduction to the life-changing benefits of fermentation – for beginners and enthusiasts alike.

Fermenting is one of the most ancient, nutritious and cheap techniques for preparing and preserving food and drink. With little more than time, patience and basic equipment, the humblest of ingredients can be transformed into nutritious foods with an astonishing range of benefits for our gut health, immunity and daily mood. Including practical tips and some of his favourite recipes, Ferment cuts through myths and misunderstanding to help us navigate the fascinating world of ferments and shows how they can help improve our health, our meal times and our planet.Tim Spector is Professor of Epidemiology at King’s College London. He is the bestselling author of The Diet Myth, Spoon-Fed, Food for Life and The Food for Life Cookbook, and scientific co-founder of ZOE, the nutrition science company. With a focus on cutting-edge science and honoured with an OBE for his work in fighting Covid-19, Tim stands at the forefront of his field. The original pioneer of microbiome research, he is among the top 100 most cited scientists in the world.

Tim Spector will be in conversation with Jenny Devitt.

Please note there is an overlap between this event and the preceding one, so you will not be able to attend both.

Tickets £14.00 (£10.00 Students)

Quentin Letts – Nunc
2025-10-18 11:00 - 12:00 | The Brownsword Hall, Pummery Square, Poundbury, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 3GW, United Kingdom
Sunday Times bestselling author Quentin Letts pens a new novel: a modern twist on one of the greatest (yet underlooked) narratives in Christianity: The ‘Nunc Dimittis’, based on ten verses in St Luke’s Gospel. This is the story of Simeon, a man who was told he would not die before he saw the Messiah. He waited at the Temple in Jerusalem until he saw the infant Jesus.

But who was Simeon? Why did he wait? And how did the month-old Jesus escape King Herod’s infamous massacre of the infants?

Nunc! transports you to the Jerusalem of Herod the Great, where Simeon’s old army friend Reuben runs a tea stall selling heavenly honey cakes and fig bread in Deuteronomy Square. When Bildad the beekeeper’s hive goes missing, grocer’s boy Benjamin, owner of a mule and cart that might be a getaway vehicle, is a suspect. The drawlingly subversive Zillah, whose political salon lends her influence, and Simeon’s long-suffering landlady Noor intervene, enduring a power-mad Roman centurion, Lucilius, and the snivelling authoritarian Kedar, the city’s clerk of works. Quentin Letts brings first-century Jerusalem to life and helps an ailing 21st-century Englishman come to terms with his future.

QUENTIN LETTS is political sketch writer for the Daily Mail. A regular broadcaster on radio and television, he was formerly New York correspondent for The Times, gossip columnist for the Daily Telegraph, theatre critic for the Sunday Times and parliamentary sketch writer for The Times. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain. His hobbies are gossip, hymn-singing and cricket. He lives in rural Herefordshire.

Quentin Letts will be in conversation with Lulu Taylor.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Please note that there is an overlap between this event and the following one and you will not be able to attend both.

Dr Julie Smith – Open When
2025-10-18 12:30 - 13:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Million-copy bestselling psychologist Dr Julie Smith is back with the book for when being human starts to get complicated. When you feel overwhelmed, pressure to perform, are grieving, are making big decisions, when you get it wrong as a parent, when you want to win the argument, when you’re overthinking everything, when you want to fit in, and more.

Each chapter begins with a letter from Dr Julie to the reader offering comfort and perspective and follows with her trademark simple and straightforward advice to help you see clearly how best to respond and act.

Dr Julie Smith is the nation’s favourite psychologist. An author, online educator and Clinical Psychologist, Julie has a combined following of almost nine million. She shot to fame with viral videos on social media, and her drive to create accessible, good quality mental health resources, that were rooted in her decade of experience as a Clinical Psychologist led to her writing Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? A publishing phenomenon, the book spent over 100 weeks in the UK Sunday Times bestseller charts with 23 of those at #1.

Tickets £14.00 (£10.00 Students)

Max Hastings – Sword
2025-10-18 14:30 - 15:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
On 6 June 1944, when the Allied armies landed on D-Day, the Second World War had already lasted almost five years. Yet many of the British and American troops who invaded Normandy were virgin soldiers, never before committed to battle. They quit summer England to face, within hours, a storm of machine-gun and mortar fire. They witnessed scenes, above all of sudden death, such as no exercise had prepared them for.

In Sword, veteran chronicler of war Max Hastings explores with extraordinary vividness the actions of the Commando brigade, Montgomery’s 3rd Infantry and 6th Airborne divisions on and around a single British beach. He describes their frustrations, hopes, loves and fears through the apparently interminable years training and preparing in England, then their triumphs and tragedies on the beach and beyond. Here are the airborne assaults on the Caen Canal bridge and Merville Battery, the battles on the shoreline and against the German strongpoints inland, narrated and explained with all the insights that Hastings’ decades of study, veterans’ interviews and new archive research enable him to deploy.

The book offers a searching analysis of why British troops did not reach Caen on 6 June, as Montgomery had promised Churchill that they would – and the story of the brigadier who was sacked for that failure. There is also a host of personal portraits of key figures from commando leader Lord Lovat, famously brave but supremely arrogant, to tank colonel Jim Eadie, whose tanks of the Staffordshire Yeomanry repulsed a panzer division in the last hours of 6 June, and some of the humbler participants to whom extraordinary things happened. This is D-Day as you have never read the story told before.

Max Hastings is the author of more than thirty books, many of them about 20th Century wars, including All Hell Let Loose, Catastrophe, Vietnam and Abyss. In his early years as a correspondent, he reported on eleven conflicts including Vietnam, the 1973 Yom Kippur and 1982 Falklands wars for the BBC and various newspapers. A former editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, he has won many awards both for his journalism and books, including Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year, Editor of the Year, together with a Somerset Maugham Prize and two RUSI Westminster Medals. He contributes to The Times, reviews books for the Sunday Times and writes a column for Bloomberg Inc.

Tickets £14.00 (£10.00 Students)

Gordon Corera – The Spy in the Archive
2025-10-18 16:30 - 17:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
How do you steal a library? Not just any library but the most secret archive in the world. The answer is to be a librarian. To be so quiet, that no-one knows what you are up to as you toil undercover over decades and so low key, that even after your escape, aided by MI6, no-one even notices you are gone.

The Spy in the Archive is the remarkable story of how Vasili Mitrokhin – an introverted archivist who loved nothing more than dusty files – ended up changing the world.

As the in-house archivist for the KGB, the secrets he was exposed to inside its walls turned him first into a dissident and then a spy, a man determined to expose the truth about the dark forces that had subverted Russia, forces still at work in the country today.

This is the story of one man’s journey from the heart of the Soviet state to disillusion and then betrayal and his determination to take on the most powerful institution in the world.

Gordon Corera is a journalist and writer on intelligence and security issues. Since 2004 he has been a Security Correspondent for BBC News where he covers terrorism, cyber security, the work of intelligence agencies and other national security issues for the BBC. He co-hosts The Rest is Classified podcast with former CIA analyst and spy novelist, David McCloskey.

Gordon Corera will be in conversation with Kate Adie OBE.

Tickets £14.00 (£10.00 Students)

Daisy Goodwin – Diva
2025-10-18 18:30 - 19:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
In this remarkable novel, best-selling author Daisy Goodwin brings to life a woman whose extraordinary talent, unremitting drive and natural chic made her a legend. But it was only in confronting the heartbreak of losing the man she loved that Maria Callas found her true voice.

In the glittering and ruthlessly competitive world of opera, Maria Callas is known simply as La Divina: the divine one. With her glorious voice, instinctive flair for the dramatic and striking beauty, she’s the toast of the grandest opera houses in the world. Yet her fame has been hard won: raised in Nazi-occupied Greece by a mother who mercilessly exploited her, Maria learned early in life how to protect herself. When she meets the fabulously rich shipping magnate, Aristotle Onassis, her isolation melts away. For the first time in her life, she believes she’s found a man who sees Maria the woman rather than the legendary soprano. Desperately in love, Callas follows Onassis into the world of International Café Society, mixing with celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Princess Grace and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. And then, suddenly, it’s over. The international press announced that Onassis will marry the most famous woman in the world, former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, leaving Maria to pick up the pieces.

Daisy Goodwin will discuss Maria Callas’s colourful life, accompanied by live performances by Josephine Goddard, a celebrated soprano, and in conversation with Lulu Taylor.

Tickets £14.00 (£10.00 Students)

Have They Come For Me? A guided walk tracing Law and Literature in Dorchester with Mark Damon Chutter
2025-10-19 11:00 - 13:00 | Thomas Hardy Statue, The Grove, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1UT
Law and Literature in Dorchester: Meet at The Thomas Hardy Statue at the Top O’ Town

Join Mark Damon Chutter, Chairman and Academic Director of the Thomas Hardy Society, for a fascinating walk tracing the justice system in Dorchester, and some of the literary narratives surrounding it. These will include:

*‘Hanging’ Judge Jeffreys, who ordered the Monmouth Rebels’ execution during the Bloody Assizes and placed their heads on the spikes of St Peter’s Church.

*The Dorset Tolpuddle Martyrs, tried in the Shire Hall and sentenced for their religious beliefs at Galllows Hill ( Frink Statues).

* Thomas Hardy’s novels, including The Mayor of Casterbridge in which Henchard contravenes the moral code of the town and suffers from the lawlessness of the village of Durnover (Fordington); Mary Channing who it is suggested poisoned her husband in 1706 and was then burned at the stake in Maumbury Rings, and Martha Brown, the possible inspiration for the eponymous heroine Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

Meet at the Thomas Hardy Statue at the Top O’ Town at 11.00

At 1.00 pm the walk will end at the historic Old Tea House, formerly a prison and holding place, where there will be an optional cream tea ( £10.00 per person. Please book tea directly with the Old Tea House on 01305 263719)

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Mark Urban – Tank
2025-10-20 10:30 - 11:30 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
“Tanks are like dinner jackets”, an Australian general once commented – “you don’t need them very often, but when you do, nothing else will do.”An authoritative history of the tank and the remarkable individuals who designed them and fought in them, from a former officer and best-selling historian.Tanks are the ultimate embodiment of industrial age warfare. In the popular imagination, they represent both a terrifying beast of destruction and a potent symbol of liberation.The technology behind these war machines has evolved relentlessly, and yet the coming of the information age has led many to predict that drones, missiles, and Artificial Intelligence have made the tank obsolete. Time and again, however, tanks have continued to shape – and be shaped by – battles around the world, from their introduction in 1916, through the Second World War and tank-on-tank fights in 1990s Iraq, to the current conflict in Ukraine.In Tank, best-selling historian and former officer in the Royal Tank Regiment, Mark Urban draws on wide-ranging accounts from soldiers, designers, and politicians, from Winston Churchill to Volodymyr Zelensky, to tell the remarkable story of one of the most important developments in military history. Through the ten most important vehicles ever made, Urban chronicles the incredible advances in tank technology – starting with the Mark IV, the first British tank to be used in large numbers in WW1, and following the story through the T-34 and Tiger to the M1 Abrams, a product of huge American Cold War investment that is still used to this day.Officially supported by The Tank Museum and using never-before-seen archival sources, interviews and declassified documents, this is a fascinating history of the vehicle that changed conflict forever.

Mark Urban is a writer and columnist for the Sunday Times, specialising in defence and foreign affairs. Until 2024, he was the Diplomatic Editor of BBC’s Newsnight programme. He formerly served in the British Army, both in the Royal Tank Regiment and in the Territorial Army. He is the author of several books, including Red Devils, Task Force Black (his deep-dive look at the SAS in the Iraq War, which was a Sunday Times number one bestseller) and The Skripal Files, a Sunday Times Best Politics Book of 2018.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Barnaby Rogerson – The House Divided: Sunni, Shia and the Making of the Middle East
2025-10-20 12:00 - 13:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
At the heart of the Middle East, with its regional conflicts and proxy wars, is a 1400-year-old schism between Sunni and Shia. To understand this divide and its modern resonances, we need to revisit its origins: to become familiar with ‘The House’ of Prophet Muhammad, the accidental coup after his death that set aside the claims of his son Ali, and the slaughter of Ali’s son Husayn at Kerbala. These events, known to every Muslim, continue to influence Middle East politics.

The House Divided follows these narratives through the first caliphates and the medieval empires forged by Arabs, Persians and Turks, to the contemporary Middle East. It shows how a dynamic range of identities – fuelled as much by ethnic, dynastic and national rivalries as by religious differences – have shaped the region. In 1979 this already complex world was jolted by the seismic shift of three revolutions – in Iran, Mecca and Afghanistan – whose effects are still being played out. Rogerson’s original and intimate approach takes the modern chessboard of nation states and looks at each through its particular perspective: of empires and occupiers, minorities and resources, sheikhs and imams. The result is a book of wide-ranging empathy, understanding and insights.Barnaby Rogerson has been travelling the Islamic world for the last forty years, first as a young man writing guidebooks, then as a journalist, and finally as a writer of histories. He is publisher of the acclaimed travel list, Eland Books. His books include The Prophet Muhammad: a Biography,The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad and The Last Crusaders.

Barnaby Rogerson will be in conversation with Allan Mallinson.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Geoffrey Guy – Quantum Biology
2025-10-20 14:00 - 15:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
Drawing on the latest international research, leading physician and healthcare expert Professor Geoffrey Guy examines how quantum phenomena affect processes as diverse as the functioning of the brain and the body’s approach to combating inflammation and disease. He shows how we may need to rethink the ways in which energy and information are carried round our nervous system.

This groundbreaking book assesses the implications for cancer treatment and mental disorders and reopens discussion of areas such as light therapy. It also raises questions about the potentially damaging effects of space travel on astronauts’ health and how they might have to be mitigated.Key to the author’s approach is his ability to explain lucidly our current knowledge while drawing in cutting-edge research. Written for the general reader, but with a scope and depth that will satisfy medical professionals, Quantum Biology reveals the latest findings from this most fascinating medical frontier.Professor Geoffrey Guy has 40 years’ experience in medical research. As chairman of GW Pharmaceuticals plc, he was physician in charge of over 300 clinical studies. The author of more than 70 scientific publications and of A Worthwhile Medicine, he is Visiting Professor at the Universities of Buckingham and Westminster and chairman of The Guy Foundation.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Meg Clothier – The Shipping Forecast
2025-10-20 16:00 - 17:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
There’s a sea lover in every Brit. The Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio 4 has been keeping people up to date with the latest changes to British weather for a century – seafarers and armchair travellers alike. Since its first broadcast, the programme has captured the hearts and imaginations of this island nation, as well as providing a real and important service for those who might otherwise fall prey to storms and gales.The only official book celebrating the centenary, The Shipping Forecast takes you to the heart of what this enduring programme means to the nation. Meg Clothier, journalist and sailor, brings you on a fascinating exploration of our British maritime history, taking you from stormy weather up above to the seabed far below and from fishing boats to the art, songs and poems inspired by the forecast.

Whether you’re a long-time fan of this universally beloved British institution or a newer weather enthusiast, this joyous book invites you to sail away into the enchanting world of the forecast and is the perfect companion for anyone curious about our great British skies and seas.Meg Clothier studied Classics at Cambridge, sailed from England to Alaska, and worked as a journalist in London and Moscow. She has published three historical novels and also Sea Fever: A Seaside Companion, a book full of marine lore and seaside charm, with her brother, Chris. She lives on the sunny side of the Quantock Hills with her husband, two children and an improbable amount of vegetables.

Meg Clothier will be in conversation with Jenny Devitt.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Natasha Solomons – Cleopatra
2025-10-20 18:00 - 19:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
From the international bestselling author, an unmissable new retelling of the life of one of the most captivating and misrepresented female figures in history. A story of female power and vulnerability, of love and loss, fierce friendship and terrible betrayal. It’s time to meet the real Cleopatra.Cleopatra, Egyptian Princess, grows up the favoured daughter of the Pharoah, hiding amongst the scrolls in the great library of Alexandria with her beloved slave Charmian, longing for the chance one day to write her own story. Then, when her father dies, willing that Cleopatra rule with her selfish brother Ptolemy, danger stirs. As the young Egyptian Queen sails the Nile to greet her people, he plots todestroy her and take the throne for himself. But while Ptolemy has the power of Egypt behind him, Cleopatra has her wits. And when the great Caesar arrives from Rome, she realises he could be the key to her salvation – though courting this powerful man could cost her everything. Can Cleopatra save her life, her throne, her beloved Egypt and finally command her own history?

Natasha Solomons is the author of seven internationally bestselling novels, including Mr Rosenblum’s List, The Novel in the Viola, which was chosen for the Richard & Judy Book Club, and I, Mona Lisa. Her work has been translated into seventeen languages. She lives in Dorset with her family.

Natasha Solomons will be in conversation with Lulu Taylor.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Terri Apter – Grandparenting: On Love and Relationships Across Generations
2025-10-21 10:30 - 11:30 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
One in three people over the age of 50 has grandchildren. These grandparents are the first generation to be both psychologically aware and very hands on, playing an integral role in their grandchildren’s lives. When a child becomes a parent themselves, existing family structures are radically altered. Old tensions between parents and their adult children may come into sharp relief while new relationships with in-laws must be navigated carefully.

Grandparenting is the book for grandparenting in the modern age. In this warm, wise guide to being a modern grandparent, leading psychologist Terri Apter builds on cutting edge research as well as her own experience of being a grandparent. Drawing on case studies from across the world, the personal stories of so many different individuals give a real insight into the many problems that can arise in families. With an increase in divorce and in different family configurations, Apter’s book addresses many of the issues that can arise in more complicated family situations, exploring the psychological forces that bring generations together and set barriers between them. This innovative book is for grandparents and their adult children to help them become the best grandparents and parents that they can be.

Terri Apter is a psychologist, writer and Fellow Emerita of Newnham College. She is the author of many critically acclaimed books on family dynamics, including Altered Loves: Mothers and Daughters During Adolescence (a NYT Book of the Year), and The Confident Child (winner of the Delta Kappa Gamma International Educator’s Prize). Her reviews and articles have appeared in the Guardian, TLS, Financial Times, New York Times Book Review, and Psychologist and she is a regular blogger for Psychology Today.

Terri Apter will be in conversation with Dr Helen Thomas.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Simon Bradley – Bradley’s Railway Guide
2025-10-21 12:00 - 13:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
A Journey Through Two Centuries of British Railway History 1825–2025.In 1825 the Stockton & Darlington company strode into history with the opening of the world’s first public steam railway. What the S&DR had pioneered soon picked up speed, transforming lives and landscapes, connecting far-flung corners of the nation and creating its own distinctive environments and working worlds.

This ambitious and lavishly illustrated volume brings the story of Britain’s railways to life, spanning two centuries of achievement and change. Full of colour and incident, it is an exhilarating journey through time and space, revisiting favourite themes and introducing unfamiliar stories and places.

Simon Bradley is joint editor of the celebrated Pevsner Architectural Guides, to which he has contributed a number of notable revised volumes. He started trainspotting aged eleven, and his interest in railways has broadened and endured. He is also the bestselling author of The Railways: Nation, Network and People and St Pancras Station.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Minette Walters – The Players
2025-10-21 14:00 - 15:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
A bold and brilliantly inventive historical novel, set in the reign of James II at a time of rebellion and unrest, from a 25-million-copy bestselling author.

England, 1685. Decades after the end of the civil war, the country is once again divided when Charles II’s illegitimate son, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, arrives in Dorset to incite rebellion against his Catholic uncle.Armed only with pitchforks, Monmouth’s army is quickly defeated by King James II’s superior forces and charged with high treason. Those found guilty will be hanged, drawn and quartered.As Dorset braces for carnage, the redoubtable Lady Jayne Harrier and a small group of trusted allies – including her courageous son and the independent-minded daughter of a local lawyer – contrive ways to save men from the gallows.Compelling and powerful, The Players is a story of guile, deceit and compassion during the dark days of The Bloody Assizes. Secrets are kept and surprising friendships formed in a dangerous gamble to thwart a brutal king’s thirst for vengeance…

Minette Walters is one of the world’s bestselling crime writers and has sold over 25 million copies of her books worldwide. She has won the CWA John Creasey Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award in America and two CWA Gold Daggers. The Players is her fourth historical novel. She lives in Dorset with her husband.

Minette Walters will be in conversation with Lulu Taylor.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Peter Ross – Upon a White Horse
2025-10-21 16:00 - 17:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
Beautiful and strange, ancient monuments have long captured our attention and curiosity. We stand in awe before them, asking who created the Uffington White Horse – and why? What was it like to live in the shadow of Hadrian’s Wall? What stories would the towering megaliths of Stonehenge and Avebury tell if they could speak?

Uncovering the enduring mystery of ancient sites, award-winning writer Peter Ross once again invites readers to sit beside him as he celebrates their influence on art, culture and society, explores the way their meaning has evolved over time and simply delights in their magic.

Combining historical research and archaeological insights with stories from people to whom these sites are particularly important, Upon A White Horse journeys into the deep past of Britain and Ireland’s ancient landscapes.

Peter Ross is an Orwell journalism fellow. His writing has appeared in national newspapers and magazines in the UK and US. He won the non-fiction prize at Scotland’s National Book Awards with A Tomb With A View: The Stories & Glories of Graveyards, and his most recent book, Steeple Chasing, was a Sunday Times bestseller and was selected as Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month. He is also author of the collections Daunderlust and The Passion Of Harry Bingo. He lives in Glasgow.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Damien Lewis – SAS: The Great Train Raid
2025-10-21 18:00 - 19:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
So secret was this mission, the SAS seizure of a train to raid deep into enemy territory to liberate a concentration camp, that it wasn’t until 1968 – twenty-seven years after the formation of the SAS – that a short mention of it was made in the Rover and Wizard annual, under the headline ‘Who Dares Wins’. No further published record exists.

Best-selling author Damien Lewis has unearthed the full incredible story from long-hidden files and first hand-testimony, his latest elite forces narrative delivering a scintillating tale of bravery, daring and determination which simply beggars belief. This is the SAS at their very finest; there is no other mission like it from the Second World War.Damien Lewis is a number one bestselling author whose books have been translated into over forty languages worldwide. For decades he 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, SAS Nazi Hunters, SAS Ghost Patrol, SAS Band of Brothers and SAS Forged in Hell. A dozen of his books have been made, or are being made, into movies or TV drama series and several have been adapted as plays for the stage. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare has recently been released as a Guy Ritchie movie of the same name. He has raised tens of thousands of pounds for charitable concerns connected with his writings.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Monica Macias – Black Girl from Pyongyang
2025-10-22 10:30 - 11:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
In 1979, aged only seven, Monica Macias was sent from West Africa to the unfamiliar surroundings of North Korea by her father, the President of Equatorial Guinea, to be educated under the guardianship of his ally, Kim Il Sung.

Within months, her father was executed in a military coup led by her cousin (the still reigning leader), while her mother became unreachable. Effectively orphaned, she and two siblings had to make their lifein Pyongyang. At military boarding school, Monica learned to mix with older children, speak fluent Korean and handle weapons in training exercises.

Reaching adulthood, she went in search of her roots. Spending time in Madrid, Malabo, New York, Seoul and finally London, at every step she had to reckon with others’ perceptions of her and her adoptive homeland. Optimistic yet unflinching, Monica’s astonishing and unique story challenges us to see the world through different eyes.

Monica Macias has lived in many countries around the world in search of her identity as a global citizen, including: Equatorial Guinea, Pyongyang, Seoul, Beijing, Madrid, New York City, and now resides in south London. Black Girl from Pyongyang is her first book to be published in English, and she will be the subject of a forthcoming documentary film.

Monica Macias will be in conversation with Lulu Taylor.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Sonia Purnell – Kingmaker: Pamela Churchill Harriman’s astonishing life of seduction, intrigue and power
2025-10-22 12:00 - 13:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Born into an impoverished aristocratic family, and raised on the family’s Minterne estate near Dorchester, Pamela Churchill Harriman became Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law and trusted confidante, and American ambassador to Paris under Bill Clinton, one of the most influential women in twentieth century politics, dismissed by many as the greatest courtesan of the age. Bestselling author Sonia Purnell reclaims Pamela’s legacy and inserts her back into her rightful place in history. Full of sex, intrigue, scandal, glamour and some of the biggest names in the second half of the twentieth century (from Hitler to JFK to Prince Aly Khan, Jackie Onassis and Elie de Rothschild), this is a brilliant record of the power that women could – and couldn’t – wield. Sonia Purnell is a biographer and journalist who has written for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, and the Sunday Times. Her biography of Virginia Hall, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of Virginia Hall, WWII’s Most Dangerous Spy, won the Plutarch Award for Best Biography and was a New York Times bestseller. Her book First Lady: The Life and Wars of Clementine Churchill was a book of the year in the Daily Telegraph, the Independent and shortlisted for the Plutarch Award for Best Biography. Her first book, Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition, was longlisted for the Orwell prize.

Sonia Purnell will be in conversation with Allan Mallinson.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Adam Nicolson – Bird School
2025-10-22 14:00 - 15:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Close to Adam Nicolson’s home in Sussex, there is a forgotten field overrun by bracken and thicketed by brambles. It is the haunt of deer and many birds – nightingales, the occasional cuckoo, ravens, robins, owls and in summer the sweet-singing warblers that come north from Africa to breed in English woods.

Adam Nicolson wanted to look and listen, to return to ‘bird school’ and see what it might teach him. He built a small shed amongst the trees with nesting boxes and bird feeders. Cocooned inside, season after season, he got to know the birds: where they nest, how they sing, how they mate and fight, what preys on them, what they are like as living things.

Beautifully written and woven through with philosophy, literature, science and a sense of wonder, always conscious that that this is an age in which the natural world is under siege, Bird School pulls back thecurtain on seemingly ordinary birds, taking a long, careful and concerned look at our relationship with the wild.

ADAM NICOLSON is the prize-winning author of many books on history, landscape, and great literature. He is the winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, the W. H. Heinemann Award, the Ondaatje Prize, the Wainwright Prize for nature writing and the Richard Jefferies Award. His books include Life Between the Tides and The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters. He lives on a farm in Sussex.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Adam Nicolson will be in conversation with Mike McCarthy

This event is kindly sponsored by Lulworth Estate, Dorset

Ray Mears – Outdoor Tracking Handbook
2025-10-22 16:00 - 17:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Ray Mears has accumulated his tracking skills over 35 years of practice in the field, all over the world, and this book will be the first authoritative but accessible and practical manual.

An essential guide for enthusiasts who want to discover the outdoors in a new way, and read the secret stories of animals and birds in the tracks they leave behind as well as a go-to reference for professionals, from naturalists to police and military operatives, the hand book is illustrated with clear instructions, interlaced with Ray’s own inspiring first-hand experiences.

In ITV’s landmark 2021 series Wild China, Ray tracked the rare and elusive snow leopard, enabling his film crew to capture in groundbreaking new footage. His work with the military and police, meanwhile, is often highly confidential. In this book, he draws deeply from every avenue of an extraordinary life’s work, and passes on his hard-earned expertise.

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 these skills, and founded Woodlore School of Wilderness Bushcraft over 35 years ago. He lives in Sussex with his family.

Ray Mears will be in conversation with Jenny Devitt.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

David Walsh and Pippa York – The Escape: The Tour, The Cyclist and Me
2025-10-22 18:00 - 19:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
The first memoir from one of British cycling’s most enigmatic characters.

In the summer of 2020 sportswriter David Walsh asked Pippa York if she’d be his travelling companion for the Tour de France. The deal was that he would sort out the logistics beforehand, the hotels, the transport details and she would do the day-to-day tasks of getting them about and adding her insight occasionally. It would also mean she would return to the race she had ridden eleven times as Robert Millar.

This is the resulting book: a unique and entertaining sporting odyssey, using the minutiae of Pippa and David’s trip, and the iconic landmarks of the Tour de France, to explore her early life growing up in working class Glasgow; her entry into racing; the psychological aspects of the sport and how that manifested itself in her personality; her ups and downs as a competitor; her post-career and her eventual transition from male to female in her 40s.

Touching on doping, gender in sport and the unique wonders and day-to-day challenges of the Tour, The Escape is both an unforgettable travelogue through the world’s greatest cycling event and a one-of-a-kind memoir from arguably the sport’s most enigmatic and fascinating competitors.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Christopher Somerville – Britain’s Best Walks
2025-10-23 11:00 - 12:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Christopoher Somerville has covered the length and breadth of the UK on foot, and has written and broadcast about its history, landscape, wildlife and people for over 25 years. In this extensive new volume, he selects his top 200 routes from his hugely popular Times column, A Good Walk.

More than just a basic guidebook, this is a meditation on our relationship with the landscape and a celebration of all that Britain has to offer. From Cornwall to Shetland via Pembrokeshire and Barrowdale, this is the most comprehensive collection of walks in the United Kingdom available in one book, and features trails to suit all skill levels and references, whether you want a gentle ramble to the pub or something much more challenging.

Featuring stunning photography and using Christopher’s trademark wit and lyricism, this is the perfect book for ramblers anywhere.

Christopher Somerville is a Times journalist with 25 years’ experience of writing and broadcasting about country walks (and tougher hikes). He is the author of Somerville’s 100 Best British Walks, Where to See Wildlife in Britain and Ireland and Best Wild Places.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Helen Carr – Sceptred Isle – A New History of the Fourteenth Century
2025-10-23 12:30 - 13:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
In a thrilling narrative account, Helen Carr sheds new light on a pivotal period of English history in the first book to cover the whole of the fourteenth century in over thirty years. Beginning with the death of Edward I in 1307, and ending with the deposition of Richard II in 1399, Sceptred Isle is the story of the last Plantagenets. Through the epic drama of regicide, war, the prolonged spectre of the Black Death, religious antagonism, revolt and the end of a royal dynasty, we encounter the human stories behind a fractured monarchy, the birth of the struggle between Europeanism and nationalism, social rebellion and a global pandemic.Helen Carr is a historian and writer specialising in medieval history and public history. Her bestselling first book, The Red Prince, was a Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her second book, an edited volume of essays titled What is History, Now? has become primary reading for history students and enthusiasts globally. Helen also works in podcasting, television and journalism and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a postgraduate researcher at Queen Mary University of London.

Helen Carr will be in conversation with Jenny Devitt

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Chris Chibnall – Death at the White Hart
2025-10-23 14:00 - 15:00 | The Brownsword Hall, Pummery Square, Poundbury, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 3GW, United Kingdom
The villagers of Fleetcombe like to think of it as one of the most picturesque spots in Dorset: two pubs, a small playground, enough gorgeous cottages to keep a thatcher in business. It’s the last place you’d expect a grisly murder. But a body is discovered, tied to a chair in the middle of a nearby road, a stag’s antlers on his head. The victim is soon identified: Jim Tiernan, landlord of the White Hart pub. Detective Nicola Bridge is not short of suspects: in a small village, the pub landlord knows everyone’s business. And beneath the idyllic surface, the residents of Fleetcombe have plenty they want to keep hidden. Someone knows what happened to Jim Tiernan. Someone who drank with him in the busy pub the night he died. Someone who might just be dangerous enough to kill again. As the village’s many dark secrets come to the surface, can Nicola catch the killer before it’s too late?

Chris Chibnall is a BAFTA, Royal Television Society, Broadcasting Press Guild and Peabody award-winning screenwriter, executive producer, and playwright whose work has been seen, translated and remade all around the world. He is the recipient of the prestigious FIPA Prix D’Honneur, and honorary doctorates from Edge Hill University and Sheffield Hallam University. His television work includes Broadchurch,The Great Train Robbery, Doctor Who, Torchwood and Life on Mars.

Chris Chibnall will be in conversation with Roger Metha

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Sir Tony Robinson – The House of Wolf
2025-10-23 14:30 - 15:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
In Rome Father Asser is waiting to die. His idealism has landed him in a papal prison on false charges of heresy, but then salvation arrives in an unexpected form. Cardinal Balotelli also dreams of a better Europe, free from the ravages of the Norlanders. He has an important job for Asser, one that will take him home to Wessex, where King Aethelwolf’s power is fading, but none of his feckless children are fit to rule.

His eldest sons would rather fight each other than the blood-thirsty Norlander invaders. His daughter, Swift, is clever and cunning, but sometimes blinded by her ambition. Finally there’s Alfred, his once promising younger son, whom nobody has seen in years. Then Wolf meets a young priest with a proposition from Rome that could change everything.

Meanwhile in Lindisfarne Rhiannon is a slave who wants to see her Saxon captors punished for their crimes. So when she meets Guthrum, a Norlander hell-bent on wiping Wessex from the map, she sets out on a journey of destruction. So begins an epic struggle between greed and idealism, ambition and betrayal, freedom and tyranny. Because change always meets with resistance and, on the path to power, nobody can be trusted.

Sir Tony Robinson, actor, presenter, historical expert and star of Blackadder and Time Team, makes his adult fiction debut with this earthy, entertaining and gloriously witty recreation of the Anglo-Saxons, Alfred the Great, and the making of England.Sir Tony Robinson is one of Britain’s foremost faces of popular history through presenting 20 seasons of Channel 4’s archaeology series Time Team and as the creator of the worldwide icon Baldrick in Blackadder. In a varied and international career, he has won two RTS awards, a BAFTA and the International Prix Jeunesse. He started out at the age of 13 in Oliver! and has gone on to enjoy a long acting career in theatre, TV drama and sitcom, and an acclaimed presenting career of documentary and factual television. He is the author of over 30 children’s books and several adult non-fiction books, including an autobiography, No Cunning Plan. An ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Society since2008, Sir Tony received a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2013. The House of Wolf is his first novel.

Tickets £14.00 (£10.00 Students)

The Oldie Event: When Harry met Andrew – Harry Mount in conversation with A N Wilson
2025-10-23 16:30 - 17:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Harry Mount, the Editor of The Oldie, will be talking to AN Wilson the award winning author of 60 histories, novels and biographies on subjects ranging from Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin and Jesus to John Betjeman, Leo Tolstoy and Adolf Hitler, and one of The Oldie’s regular columnists. His latest book, Goethe: His Faustian Life, reveals Goethe as a true polymath: the inventor of the psychological novel, a pioneer scientist, a great man of the theatre and a leading politician.

Andrew and Harry are great conversationalists, so you can be sure of a very lively hour.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)

Sir Graham Brady – Kingmaker – Secrets, Lies and the Truth about Five Prime Ministers
2025-10-23 18:30 - 19:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
An explosive memoir from the heart of Westminster, lifting the lid on some of the leadership battles that have defined British politics for a decade and a half during the eras of five Conservative prime ministers – Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak. From coalition to Brexit, Covid to Partygate, Trussonomics to the 2024 election, prime ministers came and went, while one man was at the heart of every leadership challenge, seeing all, saying nothing. Until now.

Sir Graham Brady became Chairman of the 1922 Committee in 2010. As leader of the group with power to choose a new leader of the Conservative Party, his hand held the axe over five Conservative prime ministers’ heads. Elected to parliament in 1997 as the youngest Conservative MP in the house, Brady comes from a lower middle-class background and fell into politics age 16 when he joined a campaign to save his grammar school. This book is the story of how a boy from Salford came to be the definitive Tory insider, offering insights into the character and choices of successive Prime Ministers and the administrations they led. Ultimately, it reveals where our most recent leadership failures originate, and asks hard questions about who will be fit to lead us tomorrow.Born in Salford in 1967, Sir Graham Brady served as a Shadow Minister under four Conservative leaders before resigning in 2007 in protest at David Cameron’s opposition to grammar schools. He has been Chairman of the 1922 Committee, the group which selects the leader of the Conservative Party, since 2010. During his tenure, Brady has overseen the election of three Prime Ministers – Theresa May, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak – as well as votes of no confidence in May and Boris Johnson.

Tickets £12.00 (£8.00 Students)
