Music

Michael Symmons Roberts talks to Jane Shaw

Quartet for the End of Time: On Music, Grief and Birdsong
Pusey House: Ursell Room 10:00am Wed 25 Wednesday, 25 March 2026 See this event
Eleanor Chan

Duet: An Artful History of Music
Department for Continuing Education: Lecture Theatre 4:00pm Sat 28 Saturday, 28 March 2026 See this event
Amy Jeffs, Gwen Burns and Natalie Brice

Old Songs: Stories of Love and Death from Traditional Ballads
Pusey House: Chapel 6:00pm Sat 28 Saturday, 28 March 2026 See this event
Samira Ahmed

A Hard Day’s Night
Oxford University Mathematical Institute: Lecture Theatre 2 4:00pm Sun 29 Sunday, 29 March 2026 See this event

Festival information:

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

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 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.

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.

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.