Art History

Nicola Moorby

Turner and Constable: Art, Life, Landscape
Department for Continuing Education: Lecture Theatre 12:00pm Mon 23 Monday, 23 March 2026 See this event
Franny Moyle

Mrs Kauffman and Madame Le Brun: The Extraordinary Entwined Lives of Two 18-Century Painters
Weston Lecture Theatre 10:00am Tue 24 Tuesday, 24 March 2026 See this event
Jack Hartnell and Ruben Verwaal

Medical Image and Mythology: The Wound Man and Blood, Sweat and Tears
Oxford Martin School: Lecture Theatre 2:00pm Wed 25 Wednesday, 25 March 2026 See this event
Kelly Grovier and Lachlan Goudie

The Artist’s Brush: The Secrets Behind Great Paintings
Department for Continuing Education: Lecture Theatre 10:00am Sat 28 Saturday, 28 March 2026 See this event

Festival information:

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.

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 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.

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.

The Oxford Literary Festival is intellectual Viagra.

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.

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.

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.