The Chester Literature Festival

Next week is the start of the Chester Literature Festival. Looking at the programme the planning committee and the administrator Katharine Seddon must have worked hard to build such an impressive programme. There is something on virtually every day with very few clashes, which is quite an accomplishment.




The events I have booked to see are:
Tuesday 3rd October: the poet UA Fanthorpe reading her work.
Wednesday 11th October: the geneticist Steve Jones tells us 'Why evolution is right and creationism is wrong.'
Thursday 12th October: Chester Poets read their work with guest poet Cliff Yates.
Friday 13th October: Joan Bakewell contemplates aging in her new book The View From Here.
Tuesday 17th October: George Bonbiot considers new politics to stop the planet burning.
Wednesday 18th October: the amazing writer Professor David Crystal considers 'Language and the Internet'
Wednesday 25th October: Patricia Duncker presents the Cheshire Prize for Literature awards and will offer observations on the pleasures and pains of writing.

And finally on Friday 27th October George Alagiah (who I worked with to produce an alternative prospectus when I was a fresher at the University of Durham - an event I recall with great clarity but which he sadly doesn't remember at all) will give a talk about his autobiography 'Home from Home'. Having read his account of news journalism in 'Out of Africa' I would expect this to be excellent.

There are many other interesting events as well and I would love to go to all of them - but it is possible to have too much of a good thing, I find - and after a while exhaustion sets in...