Biography | Oxford Literary Festival

Aida Edemariam

The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 10:00am Sat 28 Saturday, 28 March 2020 See this event
Julie Summers

Dressed for War: The Story of Audrey Withers, Vogue Editor
Cohen Quad: Lecture Theatre 12:00pm Sat 28 Saturday, 28 March 2020 See this event
Val McDermid and Emma Smith

Shakespeare and Marlowe: Rivals, Collaborators, or Aliases – an Early Modern Mystery
Sheldonian Theatre 2:00pm Sat 28 Saturday, 28 March 2020 See this event
Daisy Dunn Interviewed by Nicolette Jones

In the Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny
Cohen Quad: Lecture Theatre 6:00pm Sat 28 Saturday, 28 March 2020 See this event
Marion Turner

Chaucer: A European Life
Oxford Martin School: Lecture Theatre 2:00pm Mon 30 Monday, 30 March 2020 See this event
Nicola Tallis

Uncrowned Queen: The Fateful Life of Margaret Beaufort, Tudor Survivor
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 4:00pm Mon 30 Monday, 30 March 2020 See this event
John Took

Dante
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 2:00pm Tue 31 Tuesday, 31 March 2020 See this event
Jeremy Dronfield

The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz
Weston Lecture Theatre 4:00pm Tue 31 Tuesday, 31 March 2020 See this event
Jan Marsh

Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 4:00pm Tue 31 Tuesday, 31 March 2020 See this event
John O’Connell

Bowie’s Books: The Hundred Literary Heroes Who Changed His Life
Weston Lecture Theatre 6:00pm Tue 31 Tuesday, 31 March 2020 See this event
Clare Hastings

Hold the Front Page! For the star of Fleet Street
St Cross College 12:00pm Wed 1 Wednesday, 1 April 2020 See this event
John Guy

Gresham’s Law: The Life and World of Queen Elizabeth I’s Banker
Bodleian: Divinity School 12:00pm Wed 1 Wednesday, 1 April 2020 See this event
Adam Sisman

The Professor and the Parson: A Story of Desire, Deceit and Defrocking
Weston Lecture Theatre 6:00pm Wed 1 Wednesday, 1 April 2020 See this event
Christina Hardyment

Novel Houses: Twenty Famous Fictional Dwellings
Weston Lecture Theatre 10:00am Thu 2 Thursday, 2 April 2020 See this event
Archie Brown

The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher and the End of the Cold War
St Cross College 10:00am Thu 2 Thursday, 2 April 2020 See this event
Mo Moulton

Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World For Women
Weston Lecture Theatre 12:00pm Thu 2 Thursday, 2 April 2020 See this event
Paul Corthorn

Enoch Powell: Politics and Ideas in Modern Britain
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 2:00pm Thu 2 Thursday, 2 April 2020 See this event
Andrew Lownie

The Mountbattens: Their Lives and Loves
Weston Lecture Theatre 6:00pm Thu 2 Thursday, 2 April 2020 See this event
Claudia La Malfa

Raphael and the Antique
St Cross College 10:00am Fri 3 Friday, 3 April 2020 See this event
Catherine Horwood

Beth Chatto: A Life with Plants
St Cross College 12:00pm Fri 3 Friday, 3 April 2020 See this event
Janice Hadlow

The Other Bennet Sister
Bodleian: Divinity School 2:00pm Fri 3 Friday, 3 April 2020 See this event
Anna Fifield

The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong Un
Oxford Martin School: Lecture Theatre 12:00pm Sat 4 Saturday, 4 April 2020 See this event
Nora Krug

Heimat: A German Family Album
Bodleian: Divinity School 2:00pm Sat 4 Saturday, 4 April 2020 See this event
Hugh St Clair

A Lesson in Art & Life: The Colourful World of Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 4:00pm Sat 4 Saturday, 4 April 2020 See this event
William Feaver

The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth 1922-1968
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 6:00pm Sat 4 Saturday, 4 April 2020 See this event
Kavita Puri

Partition Voices: Untold British Stories
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 12:00pm Sun 5 Sunday, 5 April 2020 See this event
Andrew Robinson

Einstein on the Run: How Britain Saved the World’s Greatest Scientist
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 4:00pm Sun 5 Sunday, 5 April 2020 See this event
Duncan Hamilton

The Great Romantic: Cricket and the Golden Age of Neville Cardus
Weston Lecture Theatre 4:00pm Sun 5 Sunday, 5 April 2020 See this event

Festival information:

Often as an author, I only occasionally get to meet the public who buy and read my books. The Oxford Literary Festival was a special opportunity for me and certainly one of the highlights of my career – it was an honour I will never forget.

I loved the whole atmosphere of the Oxford Literary Festival. From breakfast, alongside some of the attendees, who were talking books with each other a mile a minute, to the public event at The Sheldonian where everyone was lively and engaged – I felt I had arrived in a kind of literary heaven.

It was a privilege for me to visit the festival to receive the Bodley Medal. As an incidental blessing I saw Oxford at its most mysterious and atmospheric. It was a day of piercing cold and as I walked through the twilight from the Sheldonian to Christ Church, the streets were empty and the whole city was shutting itself away. Christ Church was silent except for the footfall of unseen persons around corners and the sounds of evensong creeping from behind closed doors. For the first time I understood thoroughly the power of college ghost stories.

Every literary festival stays in an author’s mind for slightly individual reasons. I shall remember the Oxford festival for: - the size of the audience: at the top end of the range - their intelligence – this makes a huge difference for a speaker. In the Oxford audience I encountered many experts in the field my book covered and even one of the ambassadors I’d quoted - the beauty and the grace of the place itself – incomparable - the willingness of my hearers to buy books afterwards; I’ve never sold more.

A stimulating and rewarding on-stage conversation; a lively informed and tolerant audience; privileged access to the great treasures of the Bodleian, and finally, wonderfully interesting dinner companions to help me conclude the best day I have enjoyed at any festival – anywhere.

The Oxford festival is the most elegant and atmospheric of literary festivals. It’s a pleasure to both attend and perform there.

The Oxford Literary Festival has in my mind become the leading literary festival of the year. The organisation, the roster of speakers, the ambience and the sheer quality of it all is superb. May it now go from strength to strength each year stretching its ambition more and more. I believe it will.

I came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions.

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11th St Hilda's day at the festival

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