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| © Sunday Times |
During the sleepy Easter holidays, after
the hubbub of term-time activity has subsided and the students of the city’s
two Universities have decamped, something quite unusual awakens the slumbering
calm of Oxford; amongst the city’s dreaming spires descends literary Pandemonium.
For ten days each year the Sunday Times’
Oxford Literary Festival takes grip, marquees spring up and historic college
doors are thrown open as the general public are welcomed to a huge number of
talks and presentations given by a wide range of writers and panelists. This year experts from twenty different
countries--renowned novelists, screenwriters, historians and poets--slipped
from their normal lives into a world full of lively public interactions and
Q&A sessions, all focused around their latest works.
Highlights of the festival included Booker
Prize-winner Hilary Mantel talking about her Wolf Hall sequel Bring Up The
Bodies, original Mersey Sound poet Roger McGough reading from his latest
collection As Far As I Know (a
standout of which, Scorpio, opens
with a strongly resonating quote from Oxford’s own John Betjeman) and children’s
author cum screenwriter Anthony Horowitz discoursing widely from Alex Rider to Foyle’s War.
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| © Sunday Times |
An exceptional discussion was given by
broadcaster Jonathon Meades, a rare individual with the darkly playful ability
to lead audiences unwittingly from the expected to a quite unanticipated
subject. Ostensibly presenting on his
latest collection of architectural modernism essays, Museum Without Walls, Meades’ construction of labyrinthine
sentences and razor-sharp use of unsettling conjunctions demonstrated his
credentials as the consummate wordsmith. The
outspoken stalwart of British television finished by ringing a loud crescendo
excoriating the dumbing-down of accessible
BBC broadcasting by a new cretinocracy.
Here, here.
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| © Sunday Times |
One of the largest
crowd-drawers was the inauguration of Phillip Pullman into the Folio Society
where he was interviewed on the award-winning His Dark Materials
Trilogy. The three-part adventure written primarily for children is in essence
an inversion of Milton’s classic from which the trilogy draws its name. Pullman
spoke openly about his personal experiences from which he drew on as
inspiration; the heroic father figure Pullman lost as a child, his time in
Oxford at Exeter (Jordan) College and the years spent teaching prepubescent children;
a large influence on the crux of his writings, particularly his interpretation
of prelapsarian innocence.
Finally, A nod must be inklined to the fourth annual sister
event Not The Oxford Literary Festival, which ran parallel to the larger
hosting. Staged a few doors down from
the historic Eagle And Child pub in the Albion Beatnik Bookstore, a late-night
reading celebrated some of the finest talent of the Sadcore Dadwave micro-genre that this humble reviewer has ever
experienced.
Unforgettable.
Lysander White
Lost & Found Contributor
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