IT’S TIME TO STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING, GET OUT A RED PEN, STUDY THE FORM AND START PLANNING…

Preview of events and speakers at this year’s Oxford Lit Fest 2018

I don’t know about you, but I was never told me how painful it could be to finish a book. Instead, it’s something I started to learn the hard way after discovering Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series when I was eight. Consequently, and ever since then, I always brace myself when opening to Chapter One since I know it’s thrill will all too soon end, leaving me alone to pick up the pieces. Which I guess is how I feel about the start of each of these festivals too - excited but with a guarded anticipation that all too quickly it’ll be over. Still, as everyone hates a coward, I’ve bitten the bullet a little earlier than usual to cast my eye over this year’s stellar cast of authors, speakers and events. However, there is one, rather obvious problem I must first get off my chest and it’s this: where do you start when authors, writers and commentators of the following talents - Peter Brookes (political cartoonist for ‘The Times’), Anthony Horowitz (creator of the popular Alex Rider series), Anthony Sher (one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of modern times), Lauren Child (the UK’s Children’s Laureate), Zing Tsjeng (UK editor of the ‘Broadly’ channel, hailed as ‘the slickest feminist channel around’) and Frances Hardinge (Costa Book Award winner for her book ‘The Lie Tree’) - are all on the bill of the festival’s opening day? Forget Day Two, Day Three and so on, Saturday March 17th’s attend-all-you-can literary buffet already looks likely to test the stamina of even the most ardent of festival goers. Consequently, over the next few weeks I’ll be taking a brief stroll through the still evolving smorgasbord of authors already signed up to entertain, challenge and inform you. And as new names are added, I will of course keep you updated...