What’s On

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 ... The DLF Local Writers’ Forum – hosted by Don Nordberg

An open mic event for local writers and poets. Join us to hear poets read and perform their work. To sign up to participate at this event please contact us directly via contact@dorchesterliteraryfestival.com or just come along and listen. Angie Porter is a local poet, performer and painter who brings creativity to the fore in ... Poetry Slam with Angie Porter

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 ... Tim Spector – Ferment – The life changing power of microbes

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 ... Quentin Letts – Nunc

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 ... Dr Julie Smith – Open When

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 ... Have They Come For Me? A guided walk tracing Law and Literature in Dorchester with Mark Damon Chutter

“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 ... Mark Urban – Tank

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 ... Barnaby Rogerson – The House Divided: Sunni, Shia and the Making of the Middle East

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 ... Geoffrey Guy – Quantum Biology

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 ... Terri Apter – Grandparenting: On Love and Relationships Across Generations

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 ... Simon Bradley – Bradley’s Railway Guide

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 ... Minette Walters – The Players

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 ... Monica Macias – Black Girl from Pyongyang

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 – Kingmaker: Pamela Churchill Harriman’s astonishing life of seduction, intrigue and power

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 ... Adam Nicolson – Bird School

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, ... Christopher Somerville – Britain’s Best Walks

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 ... Helen Carr – Sceptred Isle – A New History of the Fourteenth Century

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 ... Chris Chibnall – Death at the White Hart

Today, we are living longer lives, and have choices now as never before about how we will age. What will make us happy? What are we frightened of? What might allay those fears? What changes, made right now, will help us to flourish as we age? This book contains lessons learned from thirty years of ... Dr Lucy Pollock – The Golden Rule – Lessons in Living

In 1943, German SS officers in charge of Auschwitz-Birkenau ordered that an orchestra should be formed among the female prisoners. Almost fifty women and girls from eleven nations were drafted into a hurriedly assembled band that would play marching music to other inmates, forced labourers who left each morning and returned, exhausted and often broken, ... Anne Sebba – The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz

In the spring of 1990, we return to Champton, where the characters we’ve come to love are all aflutter as a glamorous Hollywood movie takes over Champton House as its set location. As the actors and extras hired from the village don their farthingales, gowns and crowns for a masque set in the 1600s, a murder interrupts filming on ... Rev Richard Coles – A Death on Location

Independent sellers will be offering antiquarian & second hand books, modern firsts, signed editions, prints, maps and ephemera at the Dorchester book fair, in the stunning Victorian Hall of the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery. Coinciding with the final day of the Dorchester Literary Festival – this is a new addition to a week packed with author talks ... PBFA Dorchester Book Fair

In the first authoritative book to explain how AI works and what it means, the Research Director at the UK government's AI Safety Institute explains how advances in digital technology have given us a new wave of disarmingly human-like AI systems, set to upturn our economies, challenge democracies, and refashion society in unpredictable ways. These ... Christopher Summerfield – These Strange New Minds

Next year marks the centenary of the publication of Winnie-the-Pooh, one of the best-selling children’s books of all time. Best-selling biographer Gyles Brandreth knew the real Christopher Robin and his new book is both an intimate and revealing biography of A A Milne (to whom there was so much more than Pooh) and a fascinating exploration ... Gyles Brandreth – Somewhere a Boy and a Bear – A Biography of A A Milne and Winnie-the- Pooh