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Literature

Bodleian Guides

Literary Oxford with the Bodleian SOLD OUT
Weston Library Steps 1:00pm Sat 16 Saturday, 16 March 2024 See this event
Gavin Francis, Michèle Roberts and Philip Davis chaired by Peter Kemp

My Reading: What is it Like to Love a Book?
Weston Lecture Theatre 2:00pm Sat 16 Saturday, 16 March 2024 See this event
Alastair Lack

Literary Oxford with Alastair Lack SOLD OUT
Meet outside St John’s College Lodge (main entrance), St Giles 2:00pm Sat 16 Saturday, 16 March 2024 See this event
Adam Sisman introduced by Henry Woudhuysen

Lincoln Lecture: John le Carré in Oxford
Lincoln College: Oakeshott Room 4:00pm Sat 16 Saturday, 16 March 2024 See this event
Amin Ghaziani and Diarmuid Hester

Queer Identity and a Creative Life
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 4:00pm Sat 16 Saturday, 16 March 2024 See this event
Jen Cownie and Fiona Lensvelt

Wild Card: Let the Tarot Tell Your Story
Lincoln College: Oakeshott Room 12:00pm Sun 17 Sunday, 17 March 2024 See this event
Bodleian Guides

Children’s Stories: A Family Walking Tour SOLD OUT
Weston Library Steps 1:00pm Sun 17 Sunday, 17 March 2024 See this event
Alastair Lack

Oxford Poets with Alastair Lack SOLD OUT
Meet outside St John’s College Lodge (main entrance), St Giles 2:00pm Sun 17 Sunday, 17 March 2024 See this event
Mary Morrissy interviewed by Clare Hutton

Penelope Unbound
Lincoln College: Oakeshott Room 2:00pm Sun 17 Sunday, 17 March 2024 See this event
Derek Owusu, Guy Gunaratne and Carys Davies interviewed by Suzi Feay

Novelists in the Limelight: Three Award-Winning Writers
Weston Lecture Theatre 4:00pm Sun 17 Sunday, 17 March 2024 See this event
Emma Smith

The Making of Shakespeare’s First Folio SOLD OUT
Weston Lecture Theatre 12:00pm Mon 18 Monday, 18 March 2024 See this event
Emma Smith

Shakespeare’s First Folio: Show and Tell
Weston Library: Blackwell Hall 1:30pm Mon 18 Monday, 18 March 2024 See this event
Bodleian Guides

Literary Oxford with the Bodleian
Weston Library Steps 1:00pm Tue 19 Tuesday, 19 March 2024 See this event
Bianca Bellová and Alex Zucker Maya Jaggi

The Lake and the EBRD Literature Prize Shortlist
Bodleian: Divinity School 2:00pm Tue 19 Tuesday, 19 March 2024 See this event
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst talks to Susannah Jowitt

Metamorphosis: A life in Pieces
Lincoln College: Oakeshott Room 4:00pm Tue 19 Tuesday, 19 March 2024 See this event
Dirk van Hulle and Mark Nixon chaired by Michael Caines

Write Cut Rewrite
Weston Lecture Theatre 10:00am Wed 20 Wednesday, 20 March 2024 See this event
Julian Jackson and Artemis Cooper chaired by Miles Young

Winner of Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize for Non-fiction. France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain
Bodleian: Divinity School 12:00pm Wed 20 Wednesday, 20 March 2024 See this event
Peter McCullough

Be Something. Be Somebody: A Sermon by John Donne
Lincoln College: Chapel 12:00pm Wed 20 Wednesday, 20 March 2024 See this event
Alastair Lack

Literary Oxford with Alastair Lack SOLD OUT
Meet outside St John’s College Lodge (main entrance), St Giles 2:00pm Wed 20 Wednesday, 20 March 2024 See this event
Richard Ovenden

Bodleian: a VIP Experience
Bodleian Weston Library: Blackwell Hall 6:00pm Wed 20 Wednesday, 20 March 2024 See this event
Marion Turner

Chaucer Here and Now
Weston Lecture Theatre 10:00am Thu 21 Thursday, 21 March 2024 See this event
Bodleian Guides

Literary Oxford with the Bodleian
Weston Library Steps 1:00pm Thu 21 Thursday, 21 March 2024 See this event
Ali Smith interviewed by Richard Ovenden

The Bodley Lecture and Award of the Bodley Medal: Life and Work
Sheldonian Theatre 6:00pm Thu 21 Thursday, 21 March 2024 See this event
Sophie Duncan talks to Suzi Feay

Searching for Juliet: The Lives and Deaths of Shakespeare’s First Tragic Heroine
Lincoln College: Oakeshott Room 10:00am Fri 22 Friday, 22 March 2024 See this event
Peter Kemp talks to Toby Lichtig

Retroland: A Reader’s Guide to the Dazzling Diversity of Modern Fiction
Pusey House: Chapel 12:00pm Fri 22 Friday, 22 March 2024 See this event
Bodleian Library Curators

A Drink with a View: Tour of Chaucer Here and Now and Write, Cut, Rewrite SOLD OUT
Weston Library: Blackwell Hall 5:30pm Fri 22 Friday, 22 March 2024 See this event
Tom Conti, Jeremy Robson, Lynne Hjelmgaard and Keren Abse Tony Curtis

Dannie Abse: A Centenary Celebration
Lincoln College: Oakeshott Room 6:00pm Fri 22 Friday, 22 March 2024 See this event
Bodleian Guides

Literary Oxford with the Bodleian
Weston Library Steps 1:00pm Sat 23 Saturday, 23 March 2024 See this event
Alastair Lack

Literary Oxford with Alastair Lack SOLD OUT
Meet outside St John’s College Lodge (main entrance), St Giles 2:00pm Sat 23 Saturday, 23 March 2024 See this event
Vicente Luis Mora interviewed by A K Blakemore

Centroeuropa
Pusey House: Chapel 4:00pm Sat 23 Saturday, 23 March 2024 See this event
Bodleian Guides

Children’s Stories: A Family Walking Tour SOLD OUT
Weston Library Steps 1:00pm Sun 24 Sunday, 24 March 2024 See this event
Agnès Poirier talks to Matthew Stadlen

Left Bank: Art, Passion and the Rebirth of Paris 1940-50 SOLD OUT
Lincoln College: Oakeshott Room 2:00pm Sun 24 Sunday, 24 March 2024 See this event
Alan Hollinghurst

Our Evenings
Sheldonian Theatre 6:30pm Tue Oct 1 Tuesday, 1 October 2024 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.

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 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.

The Oxford Literary Festival is intellectual Viagra.

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.

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.