Health | Oxford Literary Festival

Margaret Snowling

Dyslexia: A Very Short Introduction
Blackwell’s Marquee 5:15pm Sat 28 Saturday, 28 March 2020 See this event
Sonia Contera

Nano Comes to Life: How Nanotechnology Is Transforming Medicine and the Future of Biology
Oxford Martin School: Lecture Theatre 10:00am Sun 29 Sunday, 29 March 2020 See this event
Lucy Jones

Losing Eden: Why our Minds need the Wild
St Cross College 10:00am Sun 29 Sunday, 29 March 2020 See this event
Sue Armstrong

Borrowed Time: The Science of How and Why We Age
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 12:00pm Thu 2 Thursday, 2 April 2020 See this event
Rachel Clarke

Dear Life: A Doctor’s Story of Love and Loss
Weston Lecture Theatre 2:00pm Thu 2 Thursday, 2 April 2020 See this event
Susan Llewelyn

Clinical Psychology: A Very Short Introduction
Blackwell’s Marquee 5:15pm Fri 3 Friday, 3 April 2020 See this event
Jenny Goodman

Staying Alive in Toxic Times: A Seasonal Guide to Lifelong Health
Weston Lecture Theatre 10:00am Sun 5 Sunday, 5 April 2020 See this event
Jack Price

The Future of Brain Repair: A Realist’s Guide to Stem Cell Therapy
Oxford Martin School: Lecture Theatre 12:00pm Sun 5 Sunday, 5 April 2020 See this event

Festival information:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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