DOWNTON Abbey creator Julian Fellowes will ensure that Blenheim Palace enjoys top billing at its own literary festival, which opens in Woodstock tomorrow.

Lord Fellowes will be at the 2014 Blenheim Palace Literary Festival to introduce the premiere of his new television documentary about the great palace.

The film director, screen writer, novelist and actor is something of a specialist when it comes to stately homes and misbehaving aristocrats, having won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for his film Gosford Park in 2002. His other films have include Young Victoria, shot in part at Blenheim.

On Friday, in the palace’s Marlborough Room, he will be speaking about the rules and rituals of Blenheim Palace and the lives of those associated with the palace from Lady Sarah Wilson to Winston Churchill.

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His film Blenheim Palace: Great War House, also provides an insight into how the First World War disrupted the old order and ushered in a new era.

The event will mark a new partnership between the literary festival and ITV, with the film to be transmitted later this year.

The festival, which runs from today until Sunday, brings hundreds of visitors to Woodstock every September, with few book festivals able to rival the setting of the palace. Our sister paper The Oxford Times is a media partner.

Oxford Mail:

  • Jessye Norman

The star attractions today will be veteran broadcaster and entertainer Nicholas Parsons, of Radio 4’s Just a Minute show, and American opera star Jessye Norman, who will be talking about how she went from a childhood in the segregated South to performing great operatic roles on the world’s biggest stages.

Another of opera’s biggest names Jonathan Miller, the celebrated director, actor, author and humorist, will be the speaker at the festival’s dinner on Friday.

The Oxford scientist, Richard Dawkins, often dubbed the world’s best known atheist, will be talking about his early life, featured in his memoir An Appetite For Wonder: The Making of a Scientist. The celebrated evolutionary biologist will also choose some of his favourite music, to be played by the Orchestra of St John.

Television scientist Alice Roberts will be speaking about her book The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being.

The situation in Ukraine will also figure prominently. Former cabinet minister Liam Fox will discuss Putin and Russia, while the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey will speak on moral dilemmas.

Oxford Mail:

  • Boris Johnson

Organisers have pulled off one last surprise by announcing a one-off post festival event on Friday, October 31, when Boris Johnson will be at Blenheim to talk about the legacy of Sir Winston Churchill, who was born there.

The Mayor of London is the author of a new book The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History.


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