Historical Fiction

Christina Hardyment

Alyce Chaucer: Fact and Fiction
Oxford Martin School: Seminar Room 12:00pm Tue 1 Tuesday, 1 April 2025 See this event
Jo Harkin talks to Matthew Stadlen

The Pretender
Harris Manchester College: Chapel 4:00pm Thu 3 Thursday, 3 April 2025 See this event
Tracy Chevalier talks to Ben Lawrence

The Glassmaker SOLD OUT
Pusey House: Chapel 12:00pm Sat 5 Saturday, 5 April 2025 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.

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.

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.