Double booker winner Mantel heads world-class line-up

Double booker winner Mantel heads world-class line-up

Hilary Mantel

Double Booker-winning novelist Hilary Mantel is among a world-class line-up of speakers at the 2017 FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival announced today. Mantel talks to historian Diarmaid MacCulloch about their different perspectives on the historical character at the centre of her two Booker-winning novels, Thomas Cromwell.

Paul Nurse

Booking is now open for the festival, which also welcomes novelists Vikram Seth, Alexander McCall Smith and William Boyd; multi-award-winning poet Simon Armitage; Nobel-winning scientist Paul Nurse, pictured left; and international cellist Steven Isserlis in a joint event with actor Simon Callow. An extensive programme for children and young people includes the return of the popular Harry Potter show, The Magical World of Harry Potter, and appearances by illustrator Nick Sharratt, explorer Justin Miles and detective fiction writer Robin Stevens. The 2017 festival takes place between Saturday March 26 and Sunday April 2. You can book online on this website, at our new telephone box office on 0333 666 3366*, or in person at Oxford Visitor Information Centre*, Broad Street, Oxford. More events will be added to the programme over the next few weeks. * A £1.50 agent's booking fee applies to all bookings made by phone and at the visitor information centre.

2023

2022

Festival information:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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