Anthony Wilson is a poet, writing tutor, blogger and Senior Lecturer at the Graduate School of Education, University of Exeter. His books of poetry are Riddance (Worple Press, 2012), Full Stretch: Poems 1996-2006 (Worple Press, 2006), Nowhere Better Than This (Worple Press, 2002) and How Far From Here is Home? (Stride, 1996). His prose memoir of cancer, Love for Now (Impress Books), was published in 2012, while The Afterlife (Worple Press) and Deck Shoes, a book of prose (Impress Books) are published in 2019. He is also the editor of the best-selling Lifesaving Poems (Bloodaxe, 2015), based on his blog of the same name.
Anthony is editor of Creativity in Primary Education (Sage, 2015), and co-editor of Making Poetry Matter (Bloomsbury, 2013), Making Poetry Happen (Bloomsbury, 2015), and The Poetry Book for Primary Schools (Poetry Society, 1998). He blogs at www.anthonywilsonpoetry.com.
Anthony will be discussing, and reading from, The Afterlife and Deck Shoes.
Anthony Wilson is a poet, writing tutor, blogger and Senior Lecturer at the Graduate School of Education, University of Exeter. His books of poetry are Riddance (Worple Press, 2012), Full Stretch: Poems 1996-2006 (Worple Press, 2006), Nowhere Better Than This (Worple Press, 2002) and How Far From Here is Home? (Stride, 1996). His prose memoir of cancer, Love for Now (Impress Books), was published in 2012, while The Afterlife (Worple Press) and Deck Shoes, a book of prose (Impress Books) are published in 2019. He is also the editor of the best-selling Lifesaving Poems (Bloodaxe, 2015), based on his blog of the same name.
Anthony is editor of Creativity in Primary Education (Sage, 2015), and co-editor of Making Poetry Matter (Bloomsbury, 2013), Making Poetry Happen (Bloomsbury, 2015), and The Poetry Book for Primary Schools (Poetry Society, 1998). He blogs at www.anthonywilsonpoetry.com.
Anthony will be discussing, and reading from, The Afterlife and Deck Shoes.
Tim Pears is the author of ten novels, including In the Place of Fallen Leaves (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award), In a Land of Plenty (made into a ten part BBC series), Landed (shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2012 and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2011, winner of the MJA Open Book Awards 2011) and, more recently, The Horseman and The Wanderers, the first two books in The West Country Trilogy. He has been Writer in Residence at Cheltenham Festival of Literature and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Oxford Brookes University, and is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award.
Tim lives in Oxford with his wife and children. He will be discussing and reading from The Redeemed, the third book in The West Country Trilogy.
Tim lives in Oxford with his wife and children. He will be discussing and reading from The Redeemed, the third book in The West Country Trilogy.
Nick Jubber is a writer and traveller with a passion for history and a pair of itchy feet. He is fascinated by storytelling, nomadism, exploration and the connections (or misconnections!) between past and present. He has written four books. His latest is Epic Continent, about some of Europe's iconic tales and my adventures amongst them. Before that was The Timbuktu School for Nomads, about Nick's experiences amongst nomads in North Africa. The Prester Quest, his first book, sets out from the canals of Venice to the highlands of Ethiopia, following the mission of a medieval physician sent in search of a mythical priest-king. It won the Dolman Travel Book Award. His second book, Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah's Beard, explores the Persian-speaking world through the lens of an 11th century epic poem, travelling from Tehran to the tomb of a medieval Sultan in Afghanistan.
Nick has written for The Guardian, The Observer, the TLS, the Globe and Mail and BBC Online, amongst others, and spoken on BBC Radio 4 and NPR in the US. He will be speaking about, and reading from, his latest book, Epic Continent.
Nick has written for The Guardian, The Observer, the TLS, the Globe and Mail and BBC Online, amongst others, and spoken on BBC Radio 4 and NPR in the US. He will be speaking about, and reading from, his latest book, Epic Continent.
Jason Webster is an acclaimed writer who spent years living in Spain. He has written extensively on the country both in fiction and non-fiction. His new book Violencia examines the country's trajectory. Old fault lines are reappearing: extremist groups are on the rise, a region pushes for independence, society is fragile and polarised. This is nothing new: a long view of Spanish history shows the country is returning to its old ways. Can democracy ever work in a Spain which has spent hundreds of years in civil war? In his controversial new history of Spain, Jason charts its history from its origins to the present day, uncovering its darkest events and its genius for enlightened thought. He shows how events are in danger of being repeated and argues that Spain has long predicted crises in the West.
David Jones is a conservationist, speaker, writer, underwater cameraman and ocean advocate. He has worked in the area of ocean plastic pollution since 2009, when he joined The Plastic Oceans Foundation to become the main adviser on education, science, and sustainability. He also played a significant role in producing the documentary film, A Plastic Ocean. He is currently CEO of the UK charity Just One Ocean and is also a researcher at the University of Portsmouth investigating the impacts of microplastics in coastal environments. As well as two degrees in Business and Industry he also has an MSc is Coastal and Marine Resource Management and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
David will be speaking about two key challenges of our age – ocean sustainability and plastic pollution.
David will be speaking about two key challenges of our age – ocean sustainability and plastic pollution.
Fiona Benson lives in rural Devon with her husband James Meredith and their daughters, Isla and Rose. Her pamphlet was ‘Faber New Poets 1’ in the Faber New Poets series, and her full-length collection Bright Travellers (Jonathan Cape, 2014), received the Seamus Heaney Prize for first collection and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize.
Her second book, from which she will be reading, is Vertigo & Ghost (Cape, 2019).
Her second book, from which she will be reading, is Vertigo & Ghost (Cape, 2019).
Owen Matthews studied Modern History at Oxford University before beginning his career as a journalist in Bosnia. He has written for the Moscow Times, The Times, the Spectator and the Independent. In 1997, he became a correspondent at Newsweek magazine in Moscow where he covered the second Chechen war, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. His first book on Russian history, Stalin's Children, was translated into 28 languages and shortlisted for The Guardian First Books Award and France's Prix Medicis. Owen is currently a contributing editor for Newsweek magazine, based in Istanbul and Moscow.
Owen will be talking about his new book, An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin's Master Agent – the thrilling true story of the man John le Carré called 'the spy to end spies', and whose actions turned the tide of the Second World War.
Owen will be talking about his new book, An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin's Master Agent – the thrilling true story of the man John le Carré called 'the spy to end spies', and whose actions turned the tide of the Second World War.
Lisa Clifford is a highly acclaimed film-maker and former journalist who worked for years in London and New York at the Financial Times and then lived in the Hague where she worked for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting. She has reported and filmed all over the globe but she specialises in reporting on human rights and the rule of law in East and Central Africa. Her latest documentary, Militia Man, tells the story of a Congolese warlord and his trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Lisa will talk about the story behind Militia Man and show selected highlights from the film.
When the ICC decided that 23-year-old Germain Katanga was the person most responsible for years of carnage in northeastern Congo, a complex 10-year legal process unfolded with a budget in the millions. Militia Man explores a flawed ICC war crimes trial, as seen through the eyes of Katanga, his lawyers and a family that lost everything in a terrible massacre. It reveals a court that remains well-funded and largely unchallenged despite failing to deliver justice and adequate reparations to restart shattered lives. After serving eight years in The Hague, a shocking development awaits Katanga in Congo and raises further questions about the competence of the court.
When the ICC decided that 23-year-old Germain Katanga was the person most responsible for years of carnage in northeastern Congo, a complex 10-year legal process unfolded with a budget in the millions. Militia Man explores a flawed ICC war crimes trial, as seen through the eyes of Katanga, his lawyers and a family that lost everything in a terrible massacre. It reveals a court that remains well-funded and largely unchallenged despite failing to deliver justice and adequate reparations to restart shattered lives. After serving eight years in The Hague, a shocking development awaits Katanga in Congo and raises further questions about the competence of the court.
Angela Gallop CBE started her career in 1974 working for the Home Office Forensic Science Service. Twelve years later, she set up her first company, with the aim of creating some balance in the courtroom by providing defence lawyers with the same access to forensic services that had previously only been available to the prosecution. Now one of the world's most eminent forensic scientists, Angela was awarded a CBE in 2015 for her services to forensic science. Angela was involved in the Yorkshire Ripper investigation and she and her colleagues helped to solve some of the UK's most high-profile cases, including the murders of Stephen Lawrence, Damilola Taylor, Rachel Nickell and the Italian banker Roberto Calvi, who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982.
Angela will be discussing her new book, When the Dogs Don't Bark, which looks at some of the misconceptions about what forensic scientists really do, how technologies such as DNA profiling and digital forensics have transformed forensic science, and her involvement in high-profile cases and in correcting serious miscarriages of justice.
Angela will be discussing her new book, When the Dogs Don't Bark, which looks at some of the misconceptions about what forensic scientists really do, how technologies such as DNA profiling and digital forensics have transformed forensic science, and her involvement in high-profile cases and in correcting serious miscarriages of justice.
Isabel Bannerman was born in Paddington in 1962, the youngest of five children who lived in a terraced house in London's Kensington High Street. She began gardening when she met Julian Bannerman, owner of Bannerman’s Bar in the Old Town, Edinburgh, when she was at
University. Together they moved to a derelict baroque mansion in Wiltshire and camped whilst restoring the house and starting to design gardens and garden buildings for a living. With a lot of luck and hard work they established a practice, winning gold medals at Chelsea and working for clients such as HRH The Prince of Wales, Andrew Lloyd-Webber, George Clooney, and Sting and Trudie Styler.
Isabel has taken photographs since she was at school and began making her particular style of botanical scans in 2003. She has had four solo shows of her work, which is in the collections of Jasper Conran and Richard E Grant. She writes occasional gardening pieces for the Telegraph and Sunday Times. She wrote and photographed Landscape Of Dreams (Pimpernel Press, 2016), describing fourteen gardens created by the Bannermans and their way of working together. Scent Magic: Notes from a Gardener is her second book, and is the result of ten years researching and note-taking on her favourite subject, scent in the garden. She will be discussing this book and her work.
University. Together they moved to a derelict baroque mansion in Wiltshire and camped whilst restoring the house and starting to design gardens and garden buildings for a living. With a lot of luck and hard work they established a practice, winning gold medals at Chelsea and working for clients such as HRH The Prince of Wales, Andrew Lloyd-Webber, George Clooney, and Sting and Trudie Styler.
Isabel has taken photographs since she was at school and began making her particular style of botanical scans in 2003. She has had four solo shows of her work, which is in the collections of Jasper Conran and Richard E Grant. She writes occasional gardening pieces for the Telegraph and Sunday Times. She wrote and photographed Landscape Of Dreams (Pimpernel Press, 2016), describing fourteen gardens created by the Bannermans and their way of working together. Scent Magic: Notes from a Gardener is her second book, and is the result of ten years researching and note-taking on her favourite subject, scent in the garden. She will be discussing this book and her work.
At the age of 18, Kenneth Reams was convicted for capital murder without ever firing a bullet. He became the youngest inmate on Arkansas death row. In solitary confinement for the last 25 years, Kenneth has pushed back against the walls of his cell to become a painter, poet, the founder of a non-profit, and an art event organiser – all the while fighting for justice. His work, and that of his French artist wife, Ize, has been shown at solo exhibitions in Little Rock, Bridport and London.
Free Men is a film about human resilience, told through Kenneth’s charismatic voice. Awarded two international film prizes, the film will receive its UK premiere at Shute Festival. It’s an exploration of how one man can face the daily stress of imminent death and yet, against all odds, rehabilitate himself and thrive. Kenneth is intending to dial in for a Q&A at the end of the film.
Free Men is a film about human resilience, told through Kenneth’s charismatic voice. Awarded two international film prizes, the film will receive its UK premiere at Shute Festival. It’s an exploration of how one man can face the daily stress of imminent death and yet, against all odds, rehabilitate himself and thrive. Kenneth is intending to dial in for a Q&A at the end of the film.