Dorchester Literary Festival

Anne Somerset – Queen Victoria and her Prime Ministers
2024-10-16 12:00 - 13:00 (Europe/London) | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Anne Somerset masterfully traces Victoria’s political evolution, from headstrong teenager to seasoned octogenarian. This book demonstrates her passionate involvement in state affairs, and casts fresh light on her relationships with her ten prime ministers.

Victoria herself acknowledged that when it came to ‘likes and dislikes’ of her prime ministers, ‘she had them very strongly’. She showed girlish adoration for her first Prime Minister, the worldly-wise Lord Melbourne, whose delightful conversation and kindly guidance enchanted her. Later in her reign, Benjamin Disraeli – who flattered her shamelessly, tirelessly praising her sagacity and judgement and filling her life with ‘poetry, romance and chivalry’ – became her favourite. While she developed a powerful bond with several of her Prime Ministers, in other cases the relationship fell little short of mutual detestation. Victoria’s keenest antipathy was reserved for Disraeli’s great rival, the Liberal William Gladstone. When he became prime minister for a fourth time at the age of 82, Victoria declared it ‘a bad joke’ that this ‘dangerous old fanatic’ should be ‘thrust down her throat’. Queen Victoria and Her Prime Ministers charts the bitter clashes and affectionate interactions Victoria had with her ten premiers in often hilarious detail. Drawing extensively on unpublished sources such as material from the Royal Archives and never-before-seen prime ministerial papers, it casts a fresh and highly illuminating perspective not just on Victoria, but on the exceptionally able politicians who served her in government.

Anne Somerset was born in 1955 and read History at King’s College, London. Her first book, ‘The ‘Ladies-in-Waiting: From the Tudors to the Present Day’, an acclaimed biography of Elizabeth I in 1991, then ‘Unnatural Murder: Poison in the Court of James I: The Overbury Murder’ in 1998 and ‘The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV’. Her most recent work is Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Christina Hart Davies and Vanessa Berridge – A Herbal Year and Garden Heaven
2024-10-16 10:30 - 11:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Drawing on writers, storytellers and poets through the centuries, botanical illustrator Christina Hart-Davies examines the long history of herbal remedies, how plants have been used for healing and the beliefs that surround them, including simple recipes for use at home, in an enchanting, illustrated guide to the seasonal plants used as herbal remedies over the ages fully illustrated by the author.

This is a joint panel event with Vanessa Berridge, who will discuss her latest book that takes us on a unique tour of thirty of Britain’s most beautiful gardens, classic and modern. Packed with photographs, many specially commissioned, and evocative and entertaining text, telling the stories of the gardens and the people who created them. The gardens range from legendary romantic gardens like Sissinghurst and Great Dixter to dramatic locations like Bodnant and Overbecks. The book includes information on visiting all the gardens, and suggestions for the best times of year.

Christina Hart-Davies is a renowned botanical illustrator and writer. Her watercolours have featured in prestigious collections worldwide and have won many awards, including six RHS Gold Medals. She has illustrated many books and field guides most notably The Collins Wild Flower Guide, and is the author of A Wild PLant Year, The Greenwood Trees and The Whole Story.

Vanessa Berridge is an acclaimed garden writer. She launched The English Garden magazine in 1997, and her books include The Princess’s Garden: Royal Intrigue and the Untold Story of Kew, Great British Gardeners and Kiftsgate Court Gardens: Three Generations of Women Gardeners, which won the 2019 Garden Media Guild’s Garden Book of the Year.

Christina Hart-Davies and Vanessa Berridge will be in conversation with Paul Atterbury.

This event is kindly sponsored by Hall & Woodhouse.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Tracy Chevalier – The Glassmaker
2024-10-15 18:00 - 19:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
A vivid, inventive, spellbinding virtuoso portrait of a woman, a family and a city that are as everlasting as their glass by a master of her craft.

Venice, 1486. Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here – like the glass the island’s maestros spend their lives learning to handle.

Women are not meant to work with glass, but Orsola Rosso flouts convention to save her family from ruin. She works in secret, knowing her creations must be perfect to be accepted by men. But perfection may take a lifetime.

Skipping like a stone through the centuries, we follow Orsola as she hones her craft through war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss.

The beads she creates will adorn the necks of empresses and courtesans from Paris to Vienna – but will she ever earn the respect of those closest to her?

Tracy Chevalier is the author of 10 novels, including the international bestseller Girl with a Pearl Earring, which has sold over 5 million copies and been made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth. American by birth, British by geography, she lives in London with her husband and son. Tracy is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has honorary doctorates from her alma maters Oberlin College and the University of East Anglia.

Tracy Chevalier will be in conversation with Lulu Taylor

This event is kindly sponsored by Blanchards Bailey

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Sir Robin Niblett – The New Cold War
2024-10-15 16:00 - 17:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
How the contest between the US and China will shape our century

An urgent and essential assessment of the global contest between the US and China, and how looking to history will help us to navigate it, from former Director of Chatham House

We have entered a new Cold War, even if most people choose not to admit it. The contest between America and China is global and unbridgeable, and it encompasses all major instruments of statecraft: diplomacy, technology, military power, intelligence, trade and investment. It has its tinder box: Taiwan. And both protagonists are working hard to draw allies and friends to their side from east and west, north and south.

We stand at its beginning. But this Cold War is nothing like the last, which defined the second half of the twentieth century. We need new ideas to navigate its risks and to avoid a globally devastating war.

In this short, urgent book, Robin Niblett argues that only by looking back can we heed the warnings and learn the necessary lessons to guide us through this new reality: he goes through the ten ways in which the new cold war is different, and offers five new rules for navigating it. How we manage this contest will determine not only whether there is still space for international cooperation to deal with our many global challenges, from the climate emergency to the technological revolution, but also who gets to dominate the twenty-first century and, quite simply, the course of all our futures.

Sir Robin Niblett is a leading expert on international relations. He is a distinguished fellow at Chatham House, after spending 15 years as its director and chief executive until 2022, and senior adviser at Hakluyt, the British strategic advisory firm. He is also engaged by the Asia Society Policy Institute and the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC, where he was Executive Vice President for ten years. He has served as chair of several World Economic Forum councils, and advises governments and private institutions. His writing has appeared in many publications and books, but this is his first solo book.

Sir Robin Niblett will be in conversation with Jo Durrant

This event is kindly sponsored by Michael and Eve Bonham Cozens

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Tim Spicer – A Suspicion of Spies
2024-10-15 14:00 - 15:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
The compelling first biography of Wilfred ‘Biffy’ Dunderdale – a ruthless and effective spymaster whose career spanned the Russian Revolution to the Cold War and beyond. A Suspicion of Spies is filled with stories of adventure, bravery,and glamour, revealing the complicated intrigues of the world of British intelligence. A lifelong friend of Ian Fleming,Biffy is considered to be the blueprint for James Bond.

1916, Russia. A 16-year-old Wilfred ‘Biffy’ Dunderdale is working for his father, taking submarines from Vladivostok to St Petersburg for the Russian Imperial Navy. He takes a submarine out for sea trials along with a naval dockyard crew he’d never met before. Spotting a group of German ships, he gives the order to attack and sinks four of them. On returning to Kronstadt, breaking free from an anti-submarine net with just 30 minutes of oxygen left, he opens the hatch to find every gun in the port facing him and his crew. Fluent in Russian, he quickly defuses the situation. For this action he is awarded by Tsar Nicholas II the Order of St. Stanislav and the Order of St. Anne, imperial Russia’s highest knighthood for military valour and ‘bravery in battle’.

Biffy, born and raised in Odessa, soon learnt to operate at all levels of Odessan society. Clearly highly intelligent, by 16 he was studying Naval Architecture and Naval Engineering in St Petersburg-broadening his education further in the waterfront barsof both Odessa and St. Petersburg.

Aged 18,he was engaged by Naval Intelligence as an interpreter on account of his language skills,English, Russian, French, Polish and German. He would soon grow into a buccaneering member of the British Secret Intelligence Service in a career spanning forty years which Biffy described as ‘40 years of licensed thuggery.’ Biffy appears in over 60 books and websites and yet no one has ever written the story of his life. As Tim Spicer says,‘He was rather like a ghost one knew was there but the apparition never stood still long enough for a clear view.’ Biffy was a lifelong friend of Ian Fleming and many attribute his influence to the creation of Bond.The tales of action and intrigue found in this comprehensive biography could be taken straight fromthe pages of From Russia with Love, for which Biffy acted as consultant.

Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer OBE has led a life filled with action and adventure. During his twenty years in the British Army, he saw active service in NorthernIreland, the Falklands campaign, the Gulf War and the Balkans, as well as serving in the Far East, Cyprus and Germany. Key appointments have included Chief of Staff of an Armoured Brigade, Staff Officer at the Directorate of Special Forces and Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, among many others.Over the course of his illustrious military career, Spicer has developed extensive knowledge of intelligence, counter terrorism, complex relations and protective security. In 2001 he founded the private security company Aegis, which has counted the UK, US and Italian governments among its clients. He is the author of An Unorthodox Soldier: Peace and War and the Sandline Affair, a fast-moving account of his military life, including the events surrounding his time in Papua New Guinea when he was captured and held at gunpoint, as well as the notorious ‘Sandline Affair’ of 1996, and A Dangerous Enterprise that charts the history of the little-known, yet remarkable 15th Motor Gunboat Flotilla, commanded directly by the Secret Intelligence Service.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Jim Down – Life in the Balance
2024-10-15 12:00 - 13:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
A Doctor’s Stories of Intensive Care

Dr Jim Down brings us to the very heart of the intensive care unit – the section of the hospital where the sickest patients are brought to be cared for until their condition improves. With honesty, humility and a streak of dark humour, Dr Down describes the quietly heroic work of doctors and nurses on the ICU, a place which sits at the cutting edge of medical technology and where a split-second decision can make the difference between life and death.

From headline-grabbing cases like that of Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned by Russian agents and admitted to Down’s ward, to the appalling aftermath of a train crash, and the mundane daily struggle to simply find enough beds, Jim Down provides a unique insight into life on The Unit, and the critical medicine doctors and nurses perform there.

Life in the Balance offers the first real glimpse of intensive care medicine, its immense challenges, deleterious effects on doctors’ mental health and enormous rewards. Its profundity will make you reconsider the fragility of life and reframe your understanding of what it means to care.

Dr Jim Down is a consultant in critical care and anaesthesia at University College London Hospitals. He chairs the ICU consultants’ group, the department of anaesthesia weekly scientific meetings, and the UCLH Trust guideline committee. During the Covid-19 pandemic he worked on UCLH’s busy ICU ward, and was interviewed by the BBC for a groundbreaking report depicting medics on the frontline. His account of that period, Life Support, was published in 2021.

Dr Jim Down will be in conversation with Dr Helen Thomas

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Nigel Toon – How AI Thinks
2024-10-15 10:30 - 11:30 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
Those who understand how AI thinks are about to win big. Leading British AI entrepreneur Nigel Toon explains why it’s so exciting and how it can be controlled.

How AI Thinks shows us how we can harness the electrifying intelligence of machines. Unlike other books on AI which often scare us, through storytelling that shows us how we think, Nigel Toon helps us understand AI and its incredible possibilities. He explains that AI is a tool that we can control and how it will augment our own amazing human intelligence. ‘In my role running an AI company,’ says Nigel Toon, ‘I am often asked about artificial intelligence, but people are prone to say that they don’t understand it and fear it. AI is complex and so, like other powerful tools that have come before, our lack of understanding can easily lead us to think that it might present a threat to humanity. We need to learn more, not just about the risks but also about the benefits that this important new technology can deliver, because it will end up changing our lives and, perhaps more importantly, the lives of the next generation.‘Over the course of a career spent at the forefront of technology, I have been directly involved in developing the underlying technology that makes AI work, and I understand how this story will play out. I want to help you learn how AI thinks’.

Nigel Toon is a leading figure in AI and is often called upon to speak at major industry events. He has been recognized with numerous industry awards including, ranked #1 on Business Insiders ‘100 most influential people shaping British technology’ and as one of the ‘Top 100 entrepreneurs in the UK’ by the Financial Times.

Nigel has a background as a technology business leader, entrepreneur, and engineer having been CEO at three successful VC-backed processor companies, including Graphcore which he co-founded and which developed a new type of microprocessor to accelerate Artificial Intelligence. He was previously a senior executive at a major Silicon Valley, publicly listed semiconductor company. He has served as a Board Member and Chairman for several technology businesses and currently sits as a Non-Executive Director on the board of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) which is a non-departmental UK public body that directs over £8bn per year into research and innovation funding. He has also been a member of the UK Prime Minster’s Business Council.

This event is kindly sponsored by C P Fry

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Jack Cornish – The Lost Paths
2024-10-14 18:00 - 19:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
A History of How we Walk From Here to There

A journey across Britain’s millennia-old network of pathways, revealing key moments throughout our history.

Hundreds of thousands of miles of paths reach into, and connect, communities across England and Wales. By 2026, 10,000 miles of undiscovered footpaths around Britain stand to be lost. Jack Cornish has dedicated the last five years of his life to walking these forgotten routes, and this book, The Lost Paths, is the result.

Footpaths, tracks, country lanes and urban streets illuminate how our ancestors interacted with and shaped their landscapes in the pursuit of commerce, salvation, escape, war, and leisure. Paths are an often overlooked part of our everyday life and our country’s history, crucial to understanding the cultural and environmental history of us in the landscape.

After dedicating his time and energy to fighting for their survival, The Lost Paths is Jack’s personal journey and exploration of the deep history of English and Welsh footways. This narrative history takes us through ancient forests, exposed mountainsides, urban back streets and coastal vistas to reveal how this millennia-old network was created and has been transformed.

This is a celebration of an ancient network and a rallying cry to reclaim what has been lost and preserve it for future generations.

Jack Cornish is head of paths at the Ramblers, Britain’s largest walking charity, withover 100,000 members. In 2017, he walked across the country from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and is ten years into a (probably futile) attempt to walk every street in London.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Gavin Pretor-Pinney – Cloud Spotting For Beginners
2024-10-14 16:00 - 17:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
An introduction to the wondrous world of clouds, by the internationally bestselling founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society and a prize-winning children’s book author and illustrator.Have you ever watched a cloud being born?Clouds come in all manner of shapes and sizes, from low-lying Stratus to high-flying Cirrus via roll clouds, banner clouds and tornados. This beautifully illustrated guide reveals the facts, secrets and stories of all the major cloud types, and how they shape the weather around them. We learn their fancy Latin names, explore the parts of the sky where they like to hang out, marvel at the ways they play with sunlight – and even visit them on other planets, where they are sometimes made of acid.Cloudspotting for Beginners will inspire curious minds with a lifelong sense of meteorological wonder.

Gavin Pretor-Pinney is founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, which has more than 47,000 members in 120 countries. He is the author of the internationally bestselling Cloudspotter’s Guide and Cloud Collector’s Handbook. His third book, The Wavewatcher’s Companion, won the prestigious Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. Gavin is a TED Global speaker with over 1.2 million views. He has presented television documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4 and is a Visiting Fellow at the Meteorology Department of Reading University and winner of the Royal Meteorological Society’s Michael Hunt award.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Michael Peppiatt - Francis Bacon: a Self-Portrait in Words
2024-10-14 14:00 - 15:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
A new collection of letters, statements, studio notes and interviews reveals the innermost thoughts of Francis Bacon, one of the 20th century’s most influential artists. Expertly annotated by Michael Peppiatt, the documents selected for Francis Bacon: A Self-Portrait in Words illustrate Bacon’s sharp wit and ability to express complex ideas in highly personal, memorable language. Split into four sections – Statements, Letters, Studio Notes and Selected Interviews – the book includes a large selection of letters to friends, patrons and fellow artists, as well as Bacon’s artist statements, lists of paintings under way, intriguing notes and interviews, many of which have only come to light since his death. Bacon’s letters mirror and reveal his dominant preoccupations at different points throughout his long career, with most of them having never been published before. Recipients range from Lucian Freud to Graham Sutherland, and collectors Robert and Lisa Sainsbury to gangster Ronnie Kray, as well as to many close friends and Peppiatt himself. Together with photographs, archive material and works by the artist are numerous reproductions of Bacon’s characteristic handwriting, from the briefest jottings and notes to more extensive letters and statements. Bacon frequently came up with memorable epithets and definitions. He delighted in doing with words what he set out to do in painting: ‘I like phrases that cut me.’ Michael Peppiatt explores the personal legacy of one of the 20th century’s most important painters, presenting a compelling verbal self-portrait that reveals both man and artist.

Michael Peppiatt is a well-known writer and curator, who began his career as an art critic in London and Paris in the 1960s. Described by The Art Newspaper as ‘the best art writer of his generation’, his previous books include Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma, Francis Bacon in Your Blood and Francis Bacon: Studies for a Portrait.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Martin Gayford – How Painting Happens (and why it matters)
2024-10-14 12:00 - 13:00 | Dorset Museum, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1XA, United Kingdom
In the words of the late Gillian Ayres, this is a book about “what can be done with painting.” Drawing on decades of conversations with practicing painters, acclaimed author Martin Gayford offers intimate insight into the practice, meaning, and potential of this timeless medium.

As a way of making images, pigment applied to any surface from cave wall to canvas, painting has been around for tens of thousands of years. Yet it has proved capable of endless renewal. Now in the third decade of the twenty-first century it is once more at the forefront of contemporary art. How Painting Happens will consider how and why this is so, examining this perennial medium through the eyes of its exponents past and present.

Martin Gayford will draw on interviews carried out over more than two decades with, among many others, Frank Auerbach, Gillian Ayres, Georg Baselitz, Frank Bowling, Richard Estes, Lucian Freud, Katharina Fritsch, Rebecca Horn, Shirazeh Houshiary, Lee Ufan, Paula Rego, Bridget Riley, Jenny Saville, Frank Stella, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Wayne Thiebaud, Luc Tuymans, and Zeng Fanzhi.

These diverse artists talk about how they work, the different routes by which they came to be painters, their contemporaries, and predecessors. With painters’ insight they discuss such previous exponents of the brush as Titian, El Greco, Edward Hopper, Suzanne Valadon, Petrus Christus, Van Gogh, Degas, Klee, and Delacroix.

Altogether, this book presents a fresh, multidimensional perspective on the medium—so ancient and yet simultaneously so modern, and still capable of doing things no other art form can.

Praise for How Painting Happens:Critic and art historian Martin Gayford’s How Painting Happens (And Why it Matters) (Thames & Hudson) was hailed by Stephen Smith at the Financial Times: “Stimulating and sumptuously illustrated, How Painting Happens is really two books in one, a double-sided canvas. The ‘recto’, as art world types would dub the ‘front’ side, depicts humankind’s steady upward progress, from scratches on a cave wall to the glorious, inexhaustible possibilities of paint and beyond.” The Irish Times’ Gemma Tipton wrote that “How Painting Happens succeeds in providing keys to unlocking the puzzles of painting”, as both a “erudite and insightful” read. Writing for the New Statesman, Andrew Marr noted: “This is as clear a piece of writing about the experience of looking at a great painting as I have ever read.’

Martin Gayford is a writer and art critic. His books include Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud; Modernists and Mavericks: Bacon, Freud, Hockney and the London Painters; A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer Screen and Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy, both with David Hockney; Shaping the World: Sculpture from Prehistory to Now, with Antony Gormley; Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud, 1939-1954, with David Dawson; and Venice: City of Pictures.

Kindly sponsored by Duke’s Auctioneers

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Wessex Writers – A Literary Walk
2024-10-13 12:00 - 14:00 | Thomas Hardy Statue, The Grove, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1UT
12 Midday Sunday 13 October 2024

During this walk the Chairman and Academic Director of the Thomas Hardy Society, Mark Damon Chutter, will guide you through Dorchester and Fordington to explore the world of architect, writer and poet Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), the Dorset dialect poet and philologist, William Barnes (1801–1886), and the LGBT pioneer Sylvia Townsend Warner (1883–1978). All of these writers feature Dorchester in different ways from The Mayor of Casterbridge to The Geate A Vallen-To -alongside the Diaries and Journals of Sylvia Townsend Warner.

Mark Damon Chutter is a Drama and English specialist. He is a Head of Performing Arts and has been teaching for 30 years. Mark was shortlisted as one of the top six teachers in the country by The Times in 2014 and 2015. He is a member of the committee of the Dorchester Civic Society and also of the Dorchester Town Council Heritage Committee and STAND. Come and join Mark for a fascinating walk and tour around the literary aspects of Dorchester.

Meet at the Thomas Hardy Statue at the Top 0’ Town. The walk will be from 12 midday until 2pm. At 2pm there will be a cream tea at a cost of £10 per person. Please book separately and directly with The Old Tea House for this on 01305 263719.

This event is kindly sponsored by The Duchy of Cornwall

Ben Macintyre – The Siege
2024-10-12 19:30 - 20:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Britain’s best-selling historian writes the first definitive account of the famous televised SAS storming of the Iranian embassy in London in 1980

On April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy on Princes Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. There they took 26 hostages, including embassy staff, visitors, and three British citizens. A tense six-day siege ensued as millions gathered around screens across the country to witness the longest news flash in British television history, in which police negotiators and psychiatrists sought a bloodless end to the standoff, while the SAS – hitherto an organisation shrouded in secrecy – laid plans for a daring rescue mission: Operation Nimrod.

Drawing on unpublished source material, exclusive interviews with the SAS, and testimony from witnesses including hostages, negotiators, intelligence officers and the on-site psychiatrist, bestselling historian Ben Macintyre takes readers in his inimitably cinematic style from the years and weeks of build-up on both sides, to the gripping minute-by-minute account of the siege and rescue.

Featuring individuals from Margaret Thatcher to Abu Nidal, The Siege recreates the dramatic conversations between negotiators and hostages, the cutting-edge intelligence work happening behind-the-scenes, and the media frenzy around this moment of international significance. This is the fast-paced story of what really happened on those fateful six days, and the first full account of a moment that forever changed the way the nation thought about the SAS – and itself.

Ben Macintyre is the multimillion-copy bestselling author of books including Colditz, Agent Sonya, SAS: Rogue Heroes, The Spy and the Traitor, Agent Zigzag, Operation Mincemeat and A Spy Among Friends. He is a columnist and Associate Editor at The Times, and has worked as the newspaper’s correspondent in New York, Paris and Washington. Several of his books have been made into films and television series, including Operation Mincemeat, A Spy Among Friends and SAS: Rogue Heroes.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Kate Mosse – The Map of Bones
2024-10-12 17:30 - 18:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
A sweeping and epic story of adventure and courage, injustice and triumph, The Map of Bones by Kate Mosse is the sequel to the number one bestselling The Ghost Ship.Olifantshoek, Southern Africa, 1688. When the violent Cape wind blows from the south-east, they say the voices of the unquiet dead can be heard whispering through the deserted valley. Suzanne Joubert, a Huguenot refugee from war-torn France, is here to walk in her cousin’s footsteps. Louise Reydon-Joubert, the notorious she-captain and pirate commander, landed at the Cape of Good Hope more than sixty years ago, then disappeared from the record as if she had never existed. Suzanne has come to find her — to lay the stories to rest. But all is not as it seems…

Franschhoek, Southern Africa, 1862. Nearly one hundred and eighty years after Suzanne’s perilous journey, another intrepid and courageous woman of the Joubert family — Isabelle Lepard — has journeyed to the small frontier town once known as Oliftantshoek in search of her long-lost relations. A journalist and travel writer, intent on putting the women of her family back into the history books, she quickly discovers that the tragedies and crimes of the past are far from over. Isabelle faces a race against time if she is not only going to discover the truth but escape with her life…

Painstakingly researched and beautifully told, The Map of Bones is the fourth — and final — novel of The Joubert Family Chronicles, following the bestselling The Burning Chambers, The City of Tears and The Ghost Ship.

Kate Mosse CBE FRSL is an award-winning novelist, playwright, performer, campaigner, interviewer and non-fiction writer. The author of ten novels and short-story collections, her books have been translated into thirty-eight languages and published in more than forty countries. Fiction includes the multimillion-selling Languedoc Trilogy (Labyrinth, Sepulchre, Citadel), The Joubert Family Chronicles (The Burning Chambers, The City of Tears, The Ghost Ship, The Map of Bones) and No 1 bestselling Gothic fiction including The Taxidermist’s Daughter and The Winter Ghosts. Her highly-acclaimed non-fiction includes An Extra Pair of Hands: A Story of Caring & Everyday Acts of Love and Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries: How Women (Also) Built the World, which inspired her one-woman theatre touring show.

A regular guest on radio and television for literature, Kate hosts the pre-show interview series at Chichester Festival Theatre and is a regular interviewer for literary and arts festivals including Letters Live, the Hay Festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the British Library and the Royal National Theatre. Her new podcast, The Matilda Effect, will be launched in summer 2024.

The Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction – the world’s largest annual literary awards celebrating writing by woman – she is the founder of the global #WomanInHistory campaign and has her own monthly YouTube book show, Mosse on a Monday. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Kate is also an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Authors, a Visiting Professor of Contemporary Fiction and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester and President of the Festival of Chichester. In the broader arts, Kate is President of the Festival of Chichester, Patron of the Chichester Cathedral Festival of Flowers 2024, Vice-Patron of the Chichester Cathedral Platinum Music Trust and Patron of the Chichester Festival of Music, Dance and Speech. She is also an Ambassador for Parkinsons UK.

Kindly sponsored by the Thomas Hardy Society

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Saul David – Sky Warriors
2024-10-12 16:00 - 17:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
The legendary ‘Red Devils’ were among the finest combat troops of the Second World War.

Created at Churchill’s instigation in June 1940, they began as a single parachute battalion of 500 men and grew into three 10,000-strong airborne divisions: the 1st, 6th and 44th Indian, each composed of parachutists and glider-borne troops.

Wearing their distinctive maroon berets, steel helmets and Dennison smocks, they served with distinction in every major theatre of the conflict – including North Africa, Sicily, mainland Europe and the Far East. They played a starring role in some most iconic airborne operations in history: the Bruneval Raid of February 1942; the capture of the Primasole, Pegasus and Arnhem Bridges in July 1943, June 1944 and September 1944 respectively; and Operation Varsity, the biggest parachute drop in history, near Wesel in Germany in March 1945.

This is a stunning and gripping new history of the British airborne experience across the Second World War.

SAUL DAVID is a historian, broadcaster and the author of several critically acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction, including most recently Silent Warriors and Devil Dogs. His history books have been shortlisted for the Westminster Medal for Military Literature and variously named a Waterstones Military History Book of the Year and an Amazon History Book of the Year. He is Professor of Military History at the University of Buckingham.

This event is kindly sponsored by Dorchester Town Council

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

John Suchet – In Search of Beethoven: A Personal Journey
2024-10-12 14:00 - 15:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
John Suchet, previously well-known TV news reporter and newscaster and now regular presenter on Classic FM, is an acknowledged authority on Ludwig van Beethoven. He has written seven books on the subject and sold over 23,000 copies of Beethoven: The Man Revealed. His latest release, In Search of Beethoven, stands apart as a deeply personal account of Suchet’s relationship with the great composer. Suchet charts a journey from Beethoven’s early years in Bonn to his life in Vienna, following in the composer’s footsteps and interweaving his story with Suchet’s own. Suchet’s witty and insightful narrative offers a candid portrayal of Beethoven. “It’s not always easy to reconcile the genius with the deeply flawed individual,” Suchet reflects. “Beethoven’s music has been my companion through the best and worst of times, yet I find it difficult to forgive him for the pain he caused those around him. This book includes some truly surprising, and not altogether welcome, discoveries.”The book also sheds light on groundbreaking information about Beethoven’s health and ancestry. Drawing on the latest research from Cambridge University and the Max Planck Institute, Suchet offers fresh insights into Beethoven’s heritage, health struggles, and pivotal life events, such as his interactions with Mozart. “Beethoven scholarship does not stand still,” remarks Suchet, “and each new finding brings us closer to understanding the man behind the music.”

John Suchet OBE is a bestselling author, journalist, radio and TV presenter. He was the voice of morning radio on Classic FM for almost a decade and before that, he was one of the UK’s best-known television journalists and newscasters, regularly presenting ITN’s flagship News at Ten for nearly 20 years. A recognised authority on Beethoven, he is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling Beethoven: The Man Revealed (2020), as well as biographies of Mozart, Strauss, Verdi and Tchaikovsky. To date John has written seven books on Beethoven. In Search of Beethoven will be his eighth.

Kindly sponsored by Battens Solicitors

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Rory Cellan-Jones – Sophie From Romania
2024-10-12 12:00 - 13:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
How do you welcome someone new into your home and heart? A week before Christmas 2022, former BBC journalist and award-nominated podcaster Rory Cellan-Jones received a special delivery that changed the course of his life. This is the story of #SophieFromRomania, told in full for the first time.In January 2022, the Cellan-Jones-Coyle family said goodbye to their beloved elderly Collie Cross, Cabbage. Newly retired, Rory had become inseparable from her during daily pandemic walks which alleviated his Parkinson’s Disease symptoms. After a grief-stricken year, Rory and his wife Diane contemplated opening up their hearts again and came across a dog listing for ‘a kind girl who loves everybody and is just looking for her forever home’.Bright-eyed, big-eared and trembling, Sophie arrives in London in a van from Central Europe on 17th December. Rory holds the Romanian rescue in his arms, excited for their first walk together – unaware it is more than a year ahead. Sophie from Romania follows the journey of her adoption – from her battles with anxiety, to the joys of play and her first foray outside – as Rory and Diane work with expert dog trainer Si to win Sophie’s trust, and navigate Rory’s Parkinson’s diagnosis.This is a moving story of growing together through love, kindness and a lot of patience, revealing how adopting pets can be challenging but also full of rewarding moments. It’s also a celebration of rescue dogs, and community as Rory uplifts fellow Romanian dog owners and his new friends from the #SophieFromRomania hashtag.

Rory Cellan-Jones is a journalist and former BBC News technology correspondent and has appeared on many programmes including Breakfast Time, Money Programme, Newsnight, and BBC News. He is the author of Dot Bomb, The Secret History of Social Networking and Ruskin Park: Syliva, Me and the BBC. He is also a member of Movers and Shakers a podcast discussion about life with Parkinson’s.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Poetry Slam with Angie Porter
2024-10-02 19:00 - 21:00 | Shire Hall Museum Cafe, High West Street, Dorchester, DT1 1UY, United Kingdom
An open mic event for local writers and poets

Join us to hear local poets and writers read and perform their work. To sign up to participate please contact us directly via contact@dorchesterliteraryfestival.com or just come along to listen.

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 1800s.

This event is sponsored by The Occasional Poetry Magazine (TOPM) a free publication produced by The Occasional Bookshop (Nangle Rare Books), 16 Durngate Street, Dorchester DT1 1JP

Lemn Sissay – Let The Light Pour In
2023-10-21 19:30 - 20:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
For the past decade, Lemn Sissay has composed a short poem as dawn breaks each morning. Life-affirming, witty and full of wonder, these poems chronicle his own battle with the dark and are fuelled by resilience and defiant joy. Let the Light Pour In is a collection of the best of these poems, and a book celebrating this morning practice. ‘How do you do it?’ said night ‘How do you wake up and shine?’ ‘I keep it simple,’ said light ‘One day at a time.’

Lemn Sissay OBE is a poet playwright, memoirist performer and broadcaster. He has read on stage throughout the world, from The Library of Congress in The United States to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, from the Opera House of Dubai to London Palladium. Lemn was awarded The Pen Pinter Prize in 2019 when his memoir ‘My name Is Why’ reached number one in The Sunday Times bestseller list.

Lemn was Chancellor of The University of Manchester until 2022 and is now Honorary Chair of Creative Writing. His Landmark Poems in public spaces can be seen throughout Manchester and London at venues such as The Royal Festival Hall as well as at The British Council in Addis Ababa.

Lemn was the first poet commissioned to write for the London Olympics 2012. He has judged many literary competitions including 2020 Booker Prize, The Gold Man Booker Awards, and The National Poetry Competition.

Lemn was named MBE for services to literature by The Queen in 2014 and in 2021 he received an OBE for services to Literature and Charity.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (student)

Cat Jarman – The Bone Chests
2023-10-21 17:30 - 18:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
In 1642, William Waller and his Parliamentarian army came to Winchester with destruction on their minds. They forced entry to the magnificent cathedral that had stood on the site for over 600 years and began to smash things.

In the cathedral’s holiest place, ten beautiful mortuary chests rested as they’d done since the 7th century. In search for treasure, the soldiers ripped open the lids and when all they found were bones, they flung them at the great West Window, destroying the 14th-century-stained glass with its sacred images of the Virgin Mary and St Peter. The desecration was total – blood, glass, bayonets, bones all scattered underfoot. The chests housed the mortal remains of West Saxon kings, saints and bishops; of Queen Emma of Normandy, William Rufus, Harthacnut, Edmund Ironside and Edward the Confessor. As the soldiers left, local people picked through the damage, gathering the glass and hiding the bone chests for safekeeping.

Six chests remain today – with a jumble of the original bones. In 2014 they were opened for the first time to anthropologists and archaeologist, photographed and catalogued so that the exact position of each individual item is a matter of record. Since then, cutting edge science, including isotope analysis, carbon dating and DNA analysis has revealed astonishing new insights. In Bone Chests, bestselling author of River Kings, Cat Jarman builds on evidence from these bones of the men and women who witnessed and orchestrated the creation of England, fuelled and fortified by the actions of invading and settling Vikings, to tell an unforgettable new account of this early period of history. This is Anglo-Saxon history in technicolour, with an important revisionist take on the role of women.

Dr Cat Jarman is a bioarchaeologist and field archaeologist specialising in the Viking Age, Viking women, and Rapa Nui. She uses forensic techniques like isotope analysis, carbon dating, and DNA analysis on human remains to untangle the experiences of past people from broader historical narratives.

Dr Jarman has contributed to numerous TV documentaries as both an on-screen expert and historical consultant, including programmes for the BBC, Channel 4, History, Discovery, and more.

Dr Cat Jarman will be in conversation with Allan Mallinson.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (student)

Adam Sisman – The Secret Life of John Le Carré
2023-10-21 16:00 - 17:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Adam Sisman’s biography of John le Carré, published in 2015, provided a revealing portrait of this fascinating man; yet some aspects of his subject remained hidden. Nowhere was this more so than in his private life. Apparently content in his marriage, the novelist conducted a string of love affairs over five decades. To these relationships he brought much of the tradecraft that he had learned as a spy – cover stories, cut-outs and dead letter boxes. These clandestine operations brought an element of danger to his life, but they also meant deceiving those closest to him. Small wonder that betrayal became a running theme in his work.

In trying to manage his biography, the novelist engaged in a succession of skirmishes with his biographer. While he could control what Sisman wrote about him in his lifetime, he accepted that the truth would eventually become known. Following his death in 2020, what had been withheld can now be revealed.

Adam Sisman said: ‘There was much that I was obliged to withhold from my biography of John le Carré, published in 2015 while my subject was very much alive and looking over my shoulder. I came to realise that his turbulent personal life, which he wanted to keep private in his lifetime, was key to an understanding of his work. His son Simon urged me to keep a secret annexe for publication after his father’s death. The Secret Life of John le Carré is based on that annexe. It shows how le Carré conducted his affairs like espionage operations, running women as if they were agents. The tension involved became a necessary drug to his writing. The book illuminates a hidden life of secrecy, passion and betrayal. In the process it reveals a different John le Carré. Now that he is dead, we can know him better.’

Adam Sisman is the author of Boswell’s Presumptuous Task, winner of the US National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, and the biographer of John le Carré, A. J. P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper. Among his other works are two volumes of letters by Patrick Leigh Fermor. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Professor at the University of St Andrews.

Adam Sisman will be in conversation with Danny Danziger.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (student)

Edward Stourton – Confessions
2023-10-21 14:00 - 15:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
The son of ex-pat parents in colonial Nigeria, Edward Stourton was sent back to Britain to be educated by Benedictine monks at Ampleforth, at the time when, it was later revealed, the school and monastery were the setting for serial abuse cases. He then went up to Cambridge, where his life as an undergraduate gave him access to a network of future ministers, judges and newspaper editors. As a young journalist, he reported first from party conferences and picket lines and then from war zones, witnessing the events making international headlines, from Haiti to Hong Kong, before returning home to join the infighting on BBC Radio 4’s Today.

During this time, the Empire has given way to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, men-only clubs have been replaced by Me Too, and instead of a choice selection of voices on a handful of radio and television channels, we have millions of voices on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok.The world has changed, and so has Ed. Brought face to face with the author of his obituary and his own inevitable mortality, Ed is prompted to reflect on the life he has led and the events that have shaped him.

In Confessions, he describes this remarkable journey with candour, humour and the insight that only forty years’ experience of writing and reporting can provide.

Edward Stourton has worked in broadcasting for over forty years, and regularly presents BBC Radio Four programmes such as The World at One, The World This Weekend, Sunday and Analysis. He has been a foreign correspondent for Channel Four, ITN and the BBC and for ten years he was one of the main presenters of the Today programme.

Edward Stourton will be in conversation with Kate Adie.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (student)

Anna Murphy – Destination Fabulous
2023-10-21 12:00 - 13:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
From the Fashion Director of The Times comes a wise, inspiring and invigorating guide to making the most of life as a grown-up woman – from the practical (how to dress your best) to the existential (how to feel your best).

At 50, Anna Murphy feels more visible than at any point in her life to date. Her new book, Destination Fabulous, is the toolkit you need to embrace your age and celebrate the wisdom and inner beauty that comes with it.

It’s not about impossible goals. It’s not about running a marathon (unless you want it to be). It’s not about denying the ageing process, nor attempting to erase its signs. It’s not about letting everything go, either. It’s about balance. It’s about the possible and the present. And it’s about the future you want.How do you lift and smooth your face naturally? Should you go grey, and, if so, how? How do you deal with menopause?

Anna combines her knowledge from years of writing about fashion and beauty with her openness to the alternative ways of thinking found in disciplines such as yoga and Chinese medicine. For her natural is always best.

As a leading fashion editor, Anna knows that clothing can be the ultimate route into surfacing the true you. She shares all her tricks for finding your way to a wardrobe that will transform not just the way you look but the way you feel. And she shares the highlights of her conversations over the years with super-stylish agers such as Iris Apfel and Miuccia Prada.

How have they got it right?

Drawing on the wisdom of writers as diverse as Pema Chodron and Eckhart Tolle, Dorothy Rowe and Osho, Nora Ephron and Mary Oliver, she writes about saying goodbye to what doesn’t serve you and welcoming what does; about forging relationships that work for you as well as others; and about finding your purpose, whether in your personal or professional life. Discover how the bumps on her road havehelped her find her way to her true path. Her hope is that this book will help you to find yours, too.As Fashion Director of The Times, it goes without saying that Anna Murphy is passionate about what we wear. The author of How Not to Wear Black believes strongly that the supposedly superficial act of choosing what to put on every morning can have a profound impact not just on how we look, but how we feel. Her years of writing and research, plus her own life experience, have also opened Anna upto fresh thinking around beauty, diet and exercise, and – overarching all of it – the best ways to live a life that is contented and fulfilled, especially as you grow old.

Anna Murphy joined The Times as fashion director in 2015, having been the launch editor of Stella at The Sunday Telegraph. She has interviewed the industry’s biggest names and done everything from wearing a frock made of bin bags to attempting the Angelina leg pop.

Anna Murphy will be in conversation with Lulu Taylor

Sponsored by Domvs

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (student)

Miles Johnson – Chasing Shadows
2023-10-21 10:30 - 11:30 | 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.

A true story of drugs, war and the secret world of international crime. McMafia meets Narcos and the dark side of globalisation set in the US, Italy, Colombia and the Middle East.A compulsive true crime thriller about modern-day international drugs trafficking, terrorism and geopolitical intrigue following an investigation driven by one DEA agent, Jack Kelly.

Three very different men battle to control their destinies as they hurtle through the hall of mirrors of the global shadow economy.

Jack Kelly, a veteran US Drug Enforcement Administration agent, tasked with following a trail of dirty money across continents from a top-secret investigative unit based in Virginia.

Salvatore Pititto is an ambitious Mafia capo working on a vast cocaine shipment who becomes unexpectedly pulled into an arms-smuggling conspiracy.

Mustafa Badreddine is a ghost-like master terrorist wanted by governments across the world who has been secretly dispatched to Syria for his final mission.

Each man, born in radically different circumstances in the 1960s, is in his own way grappling with the powerful and unstoppable forces that shape the world around us; forces which topple governments, send refugees fleeing across borders, and put guns in the hands of mercenaries and militias. Each has devoted his whole life to an institution-the DEA, the Mafia and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah-and each will eventually be destroyed or betrayed by the thing they believe in the most.

Set during 2015 and 2016, as the global order began to implode under the pressures of the Syrian civil war and the European refugee crisis, CHASING SHADOWS looks back over the historical conflicts, events and personal histories that have shaped the lives of these three men. It’s a book that shows the betrayals, the disillusionment and the violence as Jack Kelly hunts down his targets.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (student)

Louise Minchin – Fearless
2023-10-20 19:30 - 20:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Louise Minchin went from presenting BBC Breakfast to competing for the GB Team in Triathlon in World and European Championship. In Fearless she sets out to push herself even further. Over 17 chapters, Louise embarks on terrifying, exhilarating adventures across the UK and the world to tell extraordinary women’s stories and to test herself. She free dives under the ice in the dark in Finland with the first female to swim a mile in the Antarctic Circle; she cycles across Argentina with one of the world’s most famous female endurance runners; she swims the shark infested water of Alcatraz with two teenage sisters; she explores the dark and wild caves deep under the earth in Somerset, and more in the name of exploring what drives these incredible women, their motivation, resilience and determination.The book is not only a celebration of the bravery of these women, Louise is determined to bust the myth that only certain people can do incredible things and have their own adventures. In Fearless you will find women spanning all backgrounds, religions, ages, body shapes and sizes; older women, younger women, women with disabilities and more – all doing remarkable things that Louise wants to tell the world about. Fearless is a roller coaster of highs and lows, with fascinating and thrilling momentsincluding ones when Louise fears for her life. It will leave you feeling empowered and inspired to get out there yourself – fearless, in fact!

Louise Minchin is a much-loved TV presenter, journalist, author and athlete. She presented the UK’s most successful morning television programme BBC Breakfast for two decades. She is the host of the toprated podcasts, Push Your Peak and Her Spirit. Louise is Chair of the 2023 judging panel for the prestigious The Women’s Prize for Fiction. Throughout her career, she has used her profile and voice to champion women’s stories and to push for change raising awareness of the menopause, mental health, women’s safety and more. A lover of adventure herself, at the age of 45, Louise was inspired to take up triathlon after a BBC Breakfast challenge. Three years later she represented her age-group in the World and European Championships.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Julia Bradbury – Walk Yourself Happy
2023-10-20 17:30 - 18:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Part self-help and part-memoir, this is the ultimate guide to walking yourself happy physically and mentally, by one of the UK’s favourite TV personalities.

There’s a lot of talk about how we all must connect more with nature. But what does that mean? How do you do it? And what does it do for you in return? Can something as simple as going for a walk really improve your life? The simple answer is: YES.Walk Yourself Happy will explain the elemental link between our own health – both physical and mental – and the natural world.Julia knows first-hand the profound impact of nature: it has helped her survive breast cancer, overcome infertility and continue through failed IVF treatments; it balances the soul and acts as a confidante and therapist. Through science-backed information, practical tips and Julia’s own story, Walk Yourself Happy will explore how nature can soothe anxiety and stress, how a mountain or a tree can keep you company in times of grief, and the importance of building nature into your everyday life, so you eat well, sleep better and move more.Walking, one of the most accessible activities for most of us, is the fastest and easiest way to embed yourself in nature. You don’t need expertise or equipment; you just need to put one foot in front of another. You don’t need an epic landscape either, you can walk down the street or in your local green space. Though, as you will learn from this book, a walk in the park is rarely just that.We all have shocks and surprises that stop us in our tracks, make us question who we are and why we are here. In walking, we have the power to change our pace. And when we do that, we can find union with nature, camaraderie with friends and a form of intimacy with self.We can walk ourselves happy and we can walk ourselves healthy, and we can rekindle the innate bonds, all-but extinguished by modern living, that we have always had to our natural environment. We can start today.

Julia Bradbury is credited with revamping Sunday night primetime television on BBC One’s Countryfile, where she was a co-presenter for five years. She has an impressive career which has seen her launch three television channels and present numerous significant long term series including Watchdog, Top Gear and Countryfile. Outside her television life Julia is an ambassador for Keep Britain Tidy, The National Trust and a champion for Ordnance Survey. She co-founded The Outdoor Guide, which is an online resource and space for outdoor inspiration.

Her passion is the outdoors and more recently following her cancer diagnosis and surgery, she is dedicating her time supporting the benefits of healthy living and the virtues of nature therapy.

Julia Bradbury will be in conversation with Steve Harris

Polly Toynbee – An Uneasy Inheritance
2023-10-20 16:00 - 17:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
One of the most respected, prolific and razor-sharp voices in social commentary uses the prism of her extraordinary family to examine the true state of class in Britain.

While for generations Polly Toynbee’s ancestors have been committed left-wing rabble-rousers railing against injustice, they could never claim to be working class, settling instead for the prosperous life of academia or journalism enjoyed by their own forebears. So where does that leave their ideals of class equality?

Through a colourful, entertaining examination of her own family – which in addition to her writer father Philip and her historian grandfather Arnold contains everyone from the Glenconners to Jessica Mitford to Bertrand Russell and features ancestral home Castle Howard as a backdrop – Toynbee explores the myth of mobility, the guilt of privilege, and asks for a truly honest conversation about class in Britain.

Polly Toynbee is a journalist, author, and broadcaster. A Guardian columnist and broadcaster, she was formerly the BBC’s social affairs editor. She has written for the Observer, the Independent and Radio Times and has been an editor at the Washington Monthly. She has won numerous awards including a National Press Award and the Orwell Prize for Journalism.

Polly Toynbee will be in conversation with Kate Adie.

Sponsored by Porter Dodson

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Tim Spector – Food for Life
2023-10-20 14:00 - 15:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Food is our greatest ally for good health, but the question of what to eat has never seemed so complicated. Bestselling author and top 100 most-cited scientist Tim Spector has the answers in this definitive, easy-to-follow guide to the new science of eating well.

Tim Spector has pioneered a new approach to nutrition, encouraging us to forget misleading calorie counts and nutritional breakdowns. In Food for Life he draws on over a decade of cutting-edge scientific research, along with his own personal insights, to deliver a new and comprehensive approach to what we should all know about food today.

Investigating everything from environmental impact and food fraud to allergies and deceptive labelling, Spector also shows us the many wondrous and surprising properties of everyday foods, which scientists are only just beginning to understand.

Empowering and practical, Food for Life is nothing less than a new approach to how to eat – for our health and the health of the planet.

Tim Spector is a Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College London, director of the Twins UK study, Scientific co-founder at ZOE, and one of the world’s leading researchers. Food for Life, his latest book focusing on nutrition and health was a Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year.

Sponsored by Poundbury Clinic

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Daniel Finkelstein – Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad
2023-10-20 12:00 - 13:00 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival

From longstanding political columnist and commentator Daniel Finkelstein, a powerful memoir exploring both his mother and his father’s devastating experiences of persecution, resistance and survival during the Second World War.

Danny’s mother Mirjam Weiner was the youngest of three daughters born in Germany to Alfred and Margarethe Weiner. Alfred, a decorated hero from the Great War, is now widely acknowledged to have been the first person to recognise the existential danger Hitler posed to the Jews and began, in 1933, to catalogue in detail Nazi crimes. After moving his family to Amsterdam, he relocated his library to London and was preparing to bring over his wife and children when Germany invaded Holland. Before long, the family was rounded up, robbed, humiliated and sent to Bergen-Belsen.

Danny’s father Ludwik was born in Lwow, the only child of a prosperous Jewish family. In 1939, after Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland, the family was rounded up by the communists and sent to do hard labour in a Siberian gulag. Working as slave labourers on a collective farm, his father survived the freezing winters in a tiny house they built from cow dung.

Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad is a deeply moving, personal and at times horrifying memoir about his parents’ experiences at the hands of the two genocidal dictators of the 20th century. It is a story of persecution and survival; and the consequences of totalitarianism told with the almost unimaginable bravery of two ordinary families shining through.

Daniel Finkelstein is a British journalist and opinion writer. A former executive editor of The Times, he continues to write for the paper. He has been Political Columnist of the Year four times and recently joined the board of Chelsea Football Club. He was appointed to the House of Lords in 2013.

Daniel Finkelstein will be in conversation with Danny Danziger

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)

Sponsored by Bound by Books

(Julian Bunkall, Simon Conibear, James Emson, Nick Harland, Anthony Parson, Kim Slowe, Jonathan Walsh)

Jade McGlynn – Russia’s War
2023-10-20 10:30 - 11:30 | The Dorford Centre, 2 Bridport Road, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1RR, United Kingdom
Russia’s brutal assault on Ukraine has horrified the world. But many Russians appear to be watching an entirely different war—one in which they are the courageous underdogs and kind-hearted heroes successfully battling a malign Ukraine foe. Russia’s War takes us on a journey into this parallel military and political universe. Through interviews with dozens of officials, elites, and ordinary citizens from Russia and Ukraine, as well as detailed analysis of Russian social media, Jade McGlynn reveals the sometimes monstrous, sometimes misconstrued attitudes behind Russian majority backing for the invasion. Treating Putin as the symptom rather than cause of Russia’s many ills, Russia’s War illuminates the myths, memories and myopia fueling the country’s war on Ukrainians and descent into self-destruction.

Dr Jade McGlynn is a specialist in Russian media, memory and foreign policy at the Monterey Initiative in Russian Studies and Kings College London. She is the author of The Kremlin’s Memory Makers and frequently writes and comments for the media, including CNN, BBC, The Times, The Spectator, Telegraph, MSNBC, The Diplomat, and Foreign Policy.

Dr Jade McGlynn will be in conversation with Allan Mallinson.

Tickets £12.00/£6.00 (students)
