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 …

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You’ve got to put in the hours

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hard work, pub raconteurs, Val McDermid

In her gripping psychological thriller Trick of the Dark Val McDermid puts the following into the mouth of one of the main characters, a most successful businesswoman:

“It always amazes me that so many people think it’s just enough to have an idea, without doing any work to underpin it. …  It’s the difference between being a good pub raconteur and a bestselling novelist. That difference is hard work.”

So says Val McDermid, author of over 30 books which have sold over 10 million copies (see http://www.valmcdermid.com/).  She should know!

Darcy and Elizabeth – Again

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Alexander McCall Smith, American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld, Eligible, Harper Collins, Jane Austen, Joanna Trollope, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Val McDermid

Can there ever be too much exposure to Darcy and Elizabeth?

Best-selling American author Curtis Sittenfeld thinks not. Talking of her new novel, Eligible, she says “I wanted (my book) to be an homage to Pride and Prejudice.  But I didn’t want it to be so similar that it didn’t contain surprises.”

Eligible is part of the Austen Project announced in 2011 by Harper Collins. First came Joanna Trollope’s contemporary version of Sense and Sensibility; then Val McDermid’s Northanger Abbey; followed by Alexander McCall Smith’s Emma.

None of these have been particularly well received, but Sittenfeld has written about the vexed question of class before, in American Wife, based on former first lady, Laura Bush. She thinks placing the story in contemporary America is valid. “The pressure to get married, or have children, still exists, it just exists much later,” she says. “I didn’t want to make the characters identical, but I did want to be able to use the same adjectives to describe them. So you could still say of my Darcy that he is smart, aloof, a little bit rude, but very ethical. Or of my Liz that she is bright, funny and inquisitive, but maybe a little antagonistic in some situations.”

Here is her opening:

“Well before his arrival in Cincinnati, everyone knew that Chip Bingley was looking for a wife.”

I guess this book will be like Marmite: you will either loathe or love it (with Austen purists almost certainly in the former category), but my appetite has been whetted.

The book will be out on April 21.

 

 

Fiction can tell the truth at election time

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fiction. election, The Guardian, Val McDermid

Val McDermid made the interesting observation in The Guardian (Saturday 4th April) that when people lose trust in politicians, they need to find it elsewhere – and are turning to fiction for some kind of truth. Fiction not as in campaign speeches but the work of novelists, comedians, playwrights, poets, musicians and artists. Writers are apparently being listened to in a way that we have rarely seen before.