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:

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 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.

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.

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The Spanish Embassy: supporters of the programme of Spanish literature and culture

The Cervantes Institute, London

Embassy of Peru

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Five-star hotel partners of The Oxford Collection

Oxford International Centre for Publishing

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Supporters of the programme of American literature and culture

New College founded 1379

Exeter College: college home of the festival. Founded 1314

Worcester College founded 1714

Lincoln College founded 1427

Trinity College founded 1555

Magdalen College founded 1458

Brasenose College founded in 1512

Reuben College founded in 2019

Harris Manchester College founded 1893

Founded 1884

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