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The Oxford Times is delighted once again to be a sponsor of The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival. There are more events this year than ever before, and you can read about the pick of them below. To book tickets, call the festival box office on 0870 343 1001. For a full listing of festival events visit www.oxfordliteraryfestival.com
Patti Smith: Holywell Music Room
10:51am Thursday 25th March 2010
Critic TOM GOODWYN talks to Patti Smith and watches her perform at the city’s Holywell Music Room
Life of Emily Dickinson
9:37am Thursday 25th March 2010
The commonly told story of poet Emily Dickinson, who published ten poems in her lifetime, but left behind 1,789, is that of a pathetic recluse, disappointed in love, who shrank from publication.
BLUEEYEDBOY by Joanne Harris
9:39am Thursday 25th March 2010
Such a deceptively sweet title for such a dark, troubled, troubling book.
'Tighter security' for Pullman talk
7:48pm Monday 22nd March 2010
Oxford author Philip Pullman today played down claims he would need special security when he gives a talk on his controversial new book about Jesus.
Literary festival sets record
6:04pm Sunday 21st March 2010
Book fans flocked to Oxford at the weekend for the chance to speak to some star names at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival.
Melvyn Bragg's upbeat view of the arts
9:10am Thursday 18th March 2010
Studying at Oxford gave Melvyn Bragg the “elbow room” to find out what sort of life he wanted. “Oxford gave me the space to turn into the sort of person I became,” he said, in that gentle, Cumbrian tone.
Solar by Ian McEwan
8:20am Thursday 18th March 2010
There aren’t many literary novels with a physicist as the hero. McEwan breaks the mould in his latest book, which follows the tribulations of Michael Beard — a fat, short, bearded scientist who is irresistible to women.
Greatest story ever re-told
6:50am Thursday 18th March 2010
The “angry letters” have already begun arriving. Philip Pullman’s new book The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ will not be in the shops for another two weeks, with its content being kept a closely guarded literary secret.
Joanna Trollope in high spirits
11:01am Thursday 11th March 2010
Novelist is thrilled that her latest book has hurtled straight to the top of the bestseller list
Sherlock Holmes celebrated twice
10:14am Thursday 11th March 2010
NICK UTECHIN on attempts to introduce Sherlock Holmes to a younger audience
Simon Rae and Charlotte Edwards
10:55am Thursday 11th March 2010
A duo with local links will be appearing at Oxford Literary Festival on March 23 in Winning the Ashes: Living the Dream, in Fiction and in Fact.
Joanne Harris's new book set to shock fans
10:50am Thursday 11th March 2010
Maggie Hartford meets Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat
Focusing on young readers
10:37am Thursday 11th March 2010
Book-mad children — and those who need a bit of encouragement — will find plenty to interest them at the festival.
Here come the girls...
10:45am Thursday 11th March 2010
Formerly Oxford’s only female college, St Hilda’s flies the literary flag for women, writes Gill Oliver
Festival hosts ‘lost Booker’
10:35am Thursday 11th March 2010
Literary Editor Maggie Hartford reviews this year’s glittering line-up of authors
THE END OF THE PARTY: RISE AND FALL OF NEW LABOUR by Andrew Rawnsley
9:20am Thursday 11th March 2010
THE END OF THE PARTY: RISE AND FALL OF NEW LABOUR
Chopin by Adam Zamoyski
9:10am Thursday 11th March 2010
Fryderyk Chopin was born in March, 1810, to French parents in Poland.
Wolf Hall author to speak
8:20am Thursday 11th March 2010
Wolf Hall was the publishing phenomenon of 2009, and is on course to be this year’s as well.
UP AND DOWNSTAIRS by Jeremy Musson
8:20am Thursday 11th March 2010
Even today we are fascinated by big country houses, set in their beautiful gardens and vast estates.
Anne lines up feast truly fit for a king
1:24pm Wednesday 10th March 2010
Once again the highly respected food historian Anne Menzies has been asked to research a themed dinner at Christ Church for the Oxford Literary Festival.
Literary festival logs on to Amazon link
5:29pm Monday 8th March 2010
The Oxford Literary Festival has announced a business partnership with online bookseller Amazon, in the website’s first link-up with a literary festival.
Paperback choice
8:40am Thursday 4th March 2010
Dancing Backwards Salley Vickers (Fourth Estate, £7.99) Vickers has chosen to set her latest novel on a cruise ship, where her heroine, a middle-aged widow called Vi, takes up ballroom dancing with her dashing room steward.
Double biography of John and Myfanwy Piper
8:40am Thursday 4th March 2010
John Piper was an artist who has touched our lives in many ways: through his illustrations for the Shell guides, his stained glass and tapestries, and through his contribution to post-war debates about planning.
TRESPASS by Rose Tremain
8:30am Thursday 4th March 2010
Trespass by Rose Tremain. In her previous book, The Road Home, Rose Tremain captured the immigrant experience with assured skill, winning the Orange prize. In her latest book, she is still pre-occupied with outsiders, but this time the setting is the unforgiving landscape of the Cevennes, southern France.
THE KING’S SMUGGLER by John Fox
8:30am Thursday 4th March 2010
THE KING’S SMUGGLER by John Fox. The political intrigues, sectarian hatreds and bloodshed of the Stuart period in England, especially during the Civil War, are vividly portrayed in this book.
Writing Against the Flow
8:40am Thursday 25th February 2010
Having noted Tom Fort's literary output — a book on the life of eels, an essay on British weather, a social history of lawn-mowing — I arrive at my interview with the Oxfordshire-based author assuming he is an endearing eccentric. But he insists that he is not.
Patti Smith keeps her vow to an old boyfriend
4:31pm Wednesday 24th February 2010
Oxford came fairly early to a knowledge of the remarkable photography of Robert Mapplethorpe.
The Thirties: An Intimate History
9:55am Wednesday 24th February 2010
Juliet Gardiner brands the 1930s the ‘forgotten decade’ on the cover of her latest book, The Thirties: An Intimate History.
Real people, real lives
2:57pm Thursday 18th February 2010
Writer Helen Rappaport reveals her love of Russia, all things Victorian and the landscape of the Medway marshes in conversation with Sylvia Vetta
Scientists who made modern world
8:20am Thursday 11th February 2010
SEEING FURTHER ed. Bill Bryson (Harper Press, £25) The photo on the back flap of the dust jacket – Bill Bryson photographed with Isaac Newton’s death mask in the Reading Room of the Royal Society — is eminently suitable.
Crisis of Brilliance
8:50am Thursday 4th February 2010
A photograph of a picnic taken in 1912 inspired David Boyd Haycock to write A Crisis of Brilliance. The moment he saw the group of young artists from the Slade School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, gathered together for a formal picture, he knew he had to write about their experiences before and during the First World War.
Top authors to appear at city festival
6:50am Thursday 21st January 2010
JOHN Le Carré and Martin Amis will head an impressive line-up of hundreds of writers appearing at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival.
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