This year's Festival promises a truly thought-provoking and entertaining programme of events featuring many of Britain's finest writers and personalities.
The 2011 line-up includes one of Britain's most highly regarded journalists and ex-Independent MP Martin Bell, distinguished ex-Royal Ballet principal dancer Deborah Bull, Britain's favourite mathematician Johnny Ball, archaeologist, historian and broadcaster Neil Oliver, writer and comedian Steve Furst, writer, broadcaster and entertainer Pam Ayres, award-winning garden writer Sarah Raven and journalist and broadcaster Bel Mooney.
Other Festival highlights include the ever-popular Girls' Night hosted by Jane Wenham-Jones on 21st October, featuring, among others, bestselling novelists Penny Vincenzi and Penny Jordan. Another firm favourite, the Festival Quiz will also feature in the programme this year.
The ever popular Readers' Day which celebrates fiction, and is a great chance to meet an eclectic mix of authors, will be held on 15th October. This year it features Nina Bell, Anne Berry, Suzannah Dunn, Rebecca Frayn, Jason Goodwin, Mark Mills, S.J. Parris, Imogen Robertson, Natasha Solomons and Elizabeth Speller.
Fiction continues to be celebrated on 17th October with an event looking at the lighter side of provincial life with novelists Ceri Radford and Helen Simonson who talk about their respective debut novels, the runaway hit A Surrey State of Affairs, and Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, a New York Times Bestseller and a Richard & Judy 2011 Spring Pick.
Always eagerly anticipated are the Festival's writing workshops. This year the programme includes workshops on story structure, crime writing, historical fiction and the practical aspects of getting published.
Historical fiction adds another facet to the Festival. A special panel featuring Emma Darwin, Rose Melikan, Maria McCann and R.N. Morris will discuss what draws them to specific periods in history, while historian, broadcaster and authority on 18th-century British social history Hallie Rubenhold will give a talk: 'Austen's Women', in which she gets under the bonnets of the real women of the period and questions whether Jane Austen's characters were realistic and what women really thought about culture, education, sex and their role in society.
Two key biographical speakers promise to bring two leading figures vividly to life. In Georgette Heyer, Biography of a Bestseller, Jennifer Kloester draws an engaging and comprehensive portrait of the queen of Regency romance, while Polar historian Dr David Wilson will give an illustrated talk entitled The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott in which he shares an astonishing set of new and unpublished images taken through the eyes of Scott himself, offering an irreplaceable insight into Scott the man and his passion for scientific exploration.
The Festival embraces a whole host of other subjects including film and crime. On 14th October, in In Glorious Technicolor – A Century of Film and How it has Shaped Us, film lover and critic Francine Stock explores the nature of our relationship with film and charts her personal journey through a glorious century of cinema, while ardent crime fans will have the opportunity to see Felix Francis, younger son of thriller-writing legend Dick Francis introduce his first solo novel Gamble on 18th October.
Finally, bringing to Festival to a close on a light-hearted note will be the much loved comedian, broadcaster and scriptwriter Barry Cryer with his new show Butterfly Brain.
Over the course of the Festival, author events in local schools will be staged as part of our commitment to encouraging reading and writing among young people.
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01483 444334
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01483 444789
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Many of you enjoyed the varied events and workshops on offer at last year's Festival.
Featured authors and personalities included Steven Berkoff, Maureen Lipman, Ron Moody, Lesley Pearse, Elizabeth Buchan, Peter James, Michael Wood, Jenny Eclair, Irma Kurtz, and Jane Wenham-Jones. Below are the Surrey Advertiser interviews with Bill Turnbull, Jenny Eclair and Kevin McCloud, filmed at the 2010 Festival.