You are Currently viewing Past Events, Click here to see upcoming 2024 Events

See 2024 Events

Irish Programme

Sophie White and Nicole Flattery Chaired by Triona Adams

Irish Voices: Where I End and Nothing Special
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 4:00pm Sun 26 Sunday, 26 March 2023 See this event
John Banville, John Boyne and Neil Jordan Chaired by Claire Armitstead

Voices of Ireland: Literature, History and Nation
Sheldonian Theatre 6:00pm Sun 26 Sunday, 26 March 2023 See this event
Colm Tóibín Interviewed by Richard Ovenden

Bodley Lecture and Award of Bodley Medal: Life and Work
Sheldonian Theatre 6:00pm Thu 30 Thursday, 30 March 2023 See this event

Festival information:

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 night in Oxford was the most beautiful event I have ever done. Not just the spectacular setting (of the Sheldonian), but an unforgettable evening.

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.

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.

The Oxford Literary Festival is intellectual Viagra.

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 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.