Durham Book Festival 2012
by New Writing North
The Durham Book Festival is an annual celebration of books and reading that takes place in Durham each October. The festival is managed by New Writing North and funded by Durham County Council and Arts Council England. The Durham Book Festival 2012 programme built on the festival’s growing reputation for inviting world-class speakers to the city and for developing exciting new commissions, both made for and premiered in Durham. In 2012 authors who appeared included Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Nick Robinson, Jack Straw MP, Roger McGough, Ian Rankin, PD James and Kate Mosse. To find out more about the Durham Book Festival 2013 and to join the festival mailing list, visit www.durhambookfestival.com.
Episodes
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Victoria Glendinning and Anne de Courcy: Stories of Empire
Thomas Stamford Raffles, the charismatic founder of Singapore and Governor of Java, remains a controversial figure. His own end was sad, though his fame was immortal. In Raffles: The Man in his Moment, the first biography of him for over 40 years, Victoria Glendinning charts his prodigious rise...
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Ruth Padel and Jean Sprackland: The Narratives of Nature
In The Mara Crossing, poet Ruth Padel explores in poetry and prose the theme of home and what being native means, as our borders shift and human and animal migration moves across the globe. Where is a swallow’s real home? And what does it mean to be native if an English oak tree is an immigrant...
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Nick Robinson: Politics, Power and the Media
In Live From Downing Street, the BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson, tells the inside story of the ‘troubled marriage’ which has forced politicians and broadcasters to live together, rarely in harmony, for over 70 years. With unprecedented access and insight, he reveals how the key players…
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Jack Straw: Last Man Standing: Memoirs of a Political Survivor
Jack Straw MP introduces his new memoirs, Last Man Standing: Memoirs of a Political Survivor. As a small boy in Epping Forest, Jack Straw could never have imagined that one day he would become Britain’s Lord Chancellor. As one of five children of divorced parents, he was bright enough to get a...
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Lorna Goodison: Meet the Festival Laureate 2012
Each year we work with the English Department at Durham University to bring an outstanding writer to the city for the festival and to commission a new piece of work from them. While in residence, the Laureate also undertakes special events with students from the university. We were thrilled to...
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Gillian Slovo: Honour and Destiny
Gillian Slovo talks about her new novel, An Honourable Man. Set in the Sudan and London of 1884, this historical epic is played out against the shambolic end of the British Empire. Slovo draws on the lives of two real men: heroic army man Charles Gordon, and WT Stead, the father of tabloid...
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Sophie Hannah, Dreda Say Mitchell and Mari Hannah: Cruel to Be Kind
Three of the UK’s leading female crime writers introduce their new books and talk about their different approaches to storytelling. In her new novel, Kind of Cruel, mistress of suspense Sophie Hannah delivers an intricately plotted and pleasingly sinister story. This new novel will not disappoint...
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Cressida Cowell: How to Train Your Dragon
Cressida Cowell’s hugely popular series How to Train Your Dragon, starring Viking hero Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, is loved by children around the world. Hiccup even travelled to Hollywood and was turned into a successful film in 2010. Cressida talks about her best-selling books at what what…
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Barry Forshaw, David Hewson and Ann Cleeves: We Love Nordic Noir
Did you stay up late reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? Did you record every episode of The Killing and enjoy The Bridge? If so, you are not alone. Join our well-read panel to discuss why British readers can’t get enough Nordic noir. To tell us about the history of the genre, we are joined…
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Peter Moore and Bridget O'Donnell: Crimes of the Past
In Inspector Minahan Makes a Stand: The Missing Girls of England, Bridget O’Donnell tells the story of how rebel detective Jeremiah Minahan took on the establishment to expose how young girls were being enticed, tricked and sold into prostitution in London in the 1850s. The brutal murder of the...
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Kate Mosse and Michèle Roberts: Love and Danger in Occupied France
Kate Mosse returns to Durham to launch the eagerly anticipated final novel in her Languedoc trilogy. Following on from Labyrinth and Sepulchre, her new novel, Citadel, takes us into the heart of Nazi-occupied France. Michèle Roberts’ new novel, Ignorance, is a mesmerising exploration of guilt,...
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Pat Barker: Toby’s Room
In her first novel in five years, Pat Barker returns to the First World War with Toby’s Room to explore damage, intimacy and loss in her most powerful work yet. Moving from the Slade School of Art to Queen Mary’s Hospital, where surgery and art intersect in the rebuilding of the shattered faces…
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About this show
The Durham Book Festival is an annual celebration of books and reading that takes place in Durham each October. The festival is managed by New Writing North and funded by Durham County Council and Arts Council England. The Durham Book Festival 2012 programme built on the festival’s growing reputation for inviting world-class speakers to the city and for developing exciting new commissions, both made for and premiered in Durham. In 2012 authors who appeared included Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Nick Robinson, Jack Straw MP, Roger McGough, Ian Rankin, PD James and Kate Mosse. To find out more about the Durham Book Festival 2013 and to join the festival mailing list, visit www.durhambookfestival.com.
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New Writing North
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