Oxbridge Literary Festivals this week

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Boat Race, Cambridge, David Owen, Francesca Simon, George Monbiot, Hilary Benn, Iris Murdoch, Jo Brand, Joanne Harris, K-Tel, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Heseltine, Michael Morpurgo, Mortlake, Oxford, Philip Collins, Putney, Ranulph Fiennes, Robert Harris, Roger McGough, Simon Mayo, Tracey Thorn, Val McDermid

This weekend sees the annual University Boat Race – Oxford squaring off against Cambridge on the Thames between Putney and Mortlake. But this time of year also sees a more cerebral rivalry – their Literary Festivals.

The dark blue Festival is already under way (https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/) . Oxford events started on Saturday 30 March and continue till Sunday 7 April. “350 speakers from 25 countries”. Performers or interviewees still to come include Ranulph Fiennes, Robert Harris, Jo Brand, Kazuo Ishiguro, David Owen, Michael Heseltine, Val McDermid, Joanne Harris and Michael Morpurgo. And many more, as they used to say on the compilation LPs they used to sell in the 1970s. (Were they on the K-Tel label?)

Turning a paler blue, the Cambridge Spring Festival (http://www.cambridgeliteraryfestival.com/) runs from Friday 5 April to Sunday 5 April. Like Oxford’s, the schedule is too full to list here, but it includes George Monbiot on A Plea For The Planet, Tracey Thorn on A Teenager in Suburbia, Forever Iris (“celebrating the centenary of a magnificent novelist”), Philip Collins on How We Can Fix Our Broken Politics, Francesca Simon on Horrid Henry, Simon Mayo on The Power of Storytelling, Hilary Benn MP on Finding A Way Forward, and Roger McGough with A Night of Poetry and Performance. And many more.

Two real feasts! So if you have the time this week, get along to one of these two ancient seats of learning. You’ll come back with inspiration for your own writing, and rather a lot of books …

Killing your darlings

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BBC Radio 4, Poisons, whodunits

Crime writers beware … Especially if you’re half of a whodunit-writing duo, appearing at a literary festival, and you’ve just killed off your successful sleuth, famous for his knowledge of poisons. Let last night’s short story on Radio 4 in their ‘The Crime Writer at the Festival’ series be a warning. ‘A Marriage of Inconvenience’, 14 Minutes, available on I-Player at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07m4v8n for the next 29 days.

The Cambridge Literary Festival

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Andy Stanton, Cambridge, David Hare, Howard Jacobson, Jackie Kay, Kate Tempest, Sebastian Barry, Shakespeare, Tracy Chevalier

There are three wonderful literary festivals lined up this spring, at Cambridge, Oxford and Charleston (the great Bloomsbury house near Lewes in Sussex).  Lots of authors to see and listen to, and buy books from – and other famous names from the media and other worlds are on show too.

The Cambridge Literary Festival – 5-14 April

The website (http://www.cambridgeliteraryfestival.com ) says, “This year’s eclectic and vibrant line-up is bigger than ever and presents leading lights from the worlds of comedy and current affairs, history and hip-hop, finance and fiction, science and Shakespeare and poetry and politics.”

The programme includes: Akala, Sebastian Barry, Tracy Chevalier, David Hare, Horrible Science, Howard Jacobson, Jackie Kay, Ken Livingstone, Ben Miller, Alexei Sayle, Andy Stanton, Kate Tempest, Edmund de Waal and Ruby Wax.

The Oxford Literary Festival

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Ian McKellen, Jacqueline Wilson, Joan Bakewell, Melvyn Bragg, Michael Frayn, Oxford, Shakespeare

The Oxford Literary Festival overlaps with Cambridge (either by design or accident). It’s from 2-10 April – see http://oxfordliteraryfestival.org. So you might have to decide between light and dark blue.

Among the attractions: “Award-winning actor of stage and screen Ian McKellen takes to the Sheldonian stage for talk about his life in Shakespeare – One of our greatest actors Sir Ian McKellen is to join Shakespeare scholar Professor Sir Jonathan Bate for a discussion to mark the 400th anniversary of the death of The Bard. McKellen and Bate will discuss how their lives have been shaped by their relationship to the great plays.”

Also appearing, as stated on the website: Jacqueline Wilson, Melvyn Bragg, Joan Bakewell, A C Grayling, James Naughtie, Garry Kasparov, Maureen Lipman and Michael Frayn.

The Charleston Festival

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Charleston, Charlotte Bronte, Ian McEwan, Jane Austen, Jeanette Winterson, Rose Tremain, Shakespeare

The Charleston Festival follows, from 20-30 May. See www.charleston.org.uk. Highlights (taken from a Festival e-mail and the website) include:

• an appearance by Sir Tim Berners-Lee;
• Jeanette Winterson on The Gap of Time, her response to Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. Echoing the original play, the book is a contemporary story of betrayal, paranoia and redemption. We are to expect a zestful performance;
• Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, cosmologist and space scientist, and Ian McEwan, one of our most science-savvy novelists, discuss the future of our planet;
• Award-winning author, Rose Tremain, talks about her new novel, set in the lead-up to WW2. The Gustav Sonata revolves around the relationship between two Swiss boys and follows them through to old age;
• Jane Austen versus Charlotte Brontë: who better to try to resolve the contest than Claire Harman, current biographer of Charlotte Brontë and John Mullan, Professor of English Literature and author of What Matters in Jane Austen? The audience will have the final say. Moderator Virginia Nicholson, social historian, will be entirely impartial.