A round-up now of some of the bits and pieces I caught up with on Friday at the Cheltenham Lit Festival. Continue reading »
Cheltenham Festival 07
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Anton appeared at the festival to discuss Empire’s Children, a book and documentary series that follows six prominent Brits searching for their family roots across the Commonwealth.
Pint-sized explorer Bruce Parry bounced into Cheltenham on Thursday night, and a sell out crowd of eight hundred turned out to watch. The Tribe star’s discussion raced headlong through genetics, moral relativism and ‘conveyor belt capitalism’ and seemed to leave a somewhat startled audience simpering in admiration. “Have you a Special Message for Western Society?” asked one spectator, as if questioning the risen Messiah.
Tonight I caught up with Sanjeev Bhaskar in the Writers Room at Cheltenham.
It’s not all auditoriums and signing queues: on Wednesday night we hit the cider with Cheltenham’s performance poets, bringing live literature to local club Slak. We couldn’t work all the time…
Last night saw Cheltenham subjected to some base behaviour and debauched dalliances as the saucy side of Regency Britain was revealed.
Oliver James, clinical psychologist, broadcaster and author last night gave a controversial and at times difficult lecture on the subject of his new book Affluenza, which examines the long-held belief that money won’t make you happy and that ‘keeping up with the Jones’s is detrimental to one’s mental health. Continue reading »
The LongPen was ‘invented’ by me in the summer of 2004. (I put ‘invented’ in quotation marks because of course I did not do the math or build the machine, being one of those people who doesn’t know what makes the light bulb light up when you turn it on.) It is the world’s first long-distance, real-time signing and handwriting device.
It has been a long and interesting roller-coaster ride, from agonizing melt-down moments to brilliant successes, with a certain amount of jeering and egg-throwing along the way — though I am told all this is par for the course when it comes to new inventions that strike people at first as a little crazy. Continue reading »
“Don’t rush it,” was Robert Harris’ advice to would-be writers at Cheltenham on Wednesday night, announcing that his latest book had been in the making for more than a decade. Harris told a crowd gathered in the Garden Theatre that he’d been jotting down ideas for The Ghost as early as 1994 – and he had the notebook in hand to prove it.
Following last night’s talk, here’s eleven things about actor, comedian and writer Keith Allen… Continue reading »
Microphone? Check! Camera? Check! Irony? Fully developed…
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According to the press, it is the Day of the Magpie. Alistair Darling’s eyebrows, at odds with the settings of the contrast on the rest of his face stared darkly at me from the front cover of each paper. I turned my attentions back to the countryside that whizzed past me as I made my way to Cheltenham. Continue reading »
When I suggested to Kate and Mark that we should perhaps take Fifth Estate on tour the response was extremely positive. So much so, I went home, immediately cleaned the mud off my wellies, resurrected my tent from the dead and grabbed my glow-sticks. Continue reading »
Frankfurt? Where’s Frankfurt? While publishing’s hardest bargainers jet over to Germany for the book trade’s annual deal-athon, Fifth Estate is heading to the Cheltenham Festival for a week of the finest literary loafing - and we’d like you to join us.
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