Cheltenham Literature Festival
October is one of my favourite times of the year. Not just that it harbours the last vestige of summer warmth or the portent of the autumn still to come. Not even the childish pleasure that comes from crunching through the brittle golden leaves underfoot or delighting in finding shiny Horse Chestnuts - I love this time of year for The Cheltenham Literature Festival!
Cheltenham is a Spa town nestling on the edge of the Cotswolds and every October for 10 days the town is alive with all things literary - authors, biographers, illustrators, philosophers and critics.
I started going to the festival about ten years ago when I was still living in a sleepy village in Lincolnshire and my yearly excursion to Cheltenham felt like a journey to a different planet, not just a different town, although catching the train from Peterborough to Cheltenham Spa was nothing like space travel!
I can’t remember the exact details of my first visit, but the feelings, memories and impressions from my first festival still remain. I remember luxuriating in the richness of the spoken and written word, my trusty map of the second-hand bookshops prepared for me by my son (who lives in Cheltenham), drinking a glass of wine outside a café bathed in the autumn sunshine with, of course, a book in hand.
I loved the fact that you got to know the town through the different venues where talks took place - the Town Hall in Imperial Gardens, the Playhouse theatre which was originally medicinal baths and then a swimming pool, and the Everyman Theatre with its plush seats and feeling of intimacy.
Over the years I have been to many great talks and events. Talks given by Germaine Greer, Maya Angelou, John Irving, Alexander McCall Smith, Robert Fisk, Phillipe Sands. Talks on Samarkand, the Hungarian uprising, architecture, the decline of the apple orchard, the food of Laos and Cambodia, the All Star Poetry Slam, fairy stories for adults. There really is something for everyone!
In recent years my horizons have been expanded as I now take my granddaughter to talks as well – among others we have been to see Olivia the Pig, a talk on Ladybird books and Tony Ross of Horrid Henry fame. One of my sisters even flew over from Australia for the Festival’s 60th anniversary!
This year’s festival also looks set to inspire. My tickets have already been bought so here are some of the talks that have tempted me this year:
Sing Along with Julia Donaldson; Gareth Peirce; Christopher Brookmyre; Nikolaus Pevsner. I do hope that I have been able to enthuse you as well as my family and friends.
Contributed by Theresa.
(Published on 17th Sep 2014 )
