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Robin Blackburn, From Natural Rights to General Liberty...

Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2010 Self-Evident Truths? Human Rights and the Enlightenment

Robin Blackburn is Professor of Sociology, Essex, and Editor of New Left Review.

This lecture is part of a series. Visit www.oxford-amnesty-lectures.org for more details and to sign up for our e-newsletter.

Gilded Youth

MENDELSSOHN Octet in E flat, Op. 20
MAHLER Symphony No. 1 in D ‘Titan’
Marios Papadopoulos conductor

This pairing of two clearly contrasting but subtly complementary works promises an evening of youthful optimism. The first desks of Oxford Philomusica’s much admired string section come together to play Mendelssohn’s astonishing manifestation of teenage talent, before the Orchestra in full force embarks upon the epic and ultimately uplifting musical journey which is Mahler’s First Symphony.

To join Oxford Philomusica’s mailing or e-list please click HERE

The Sixteen - The Choral Pilgrimage

The 2010 tour will be The Sixteen's tenth Choral Pilgrimage, and will focus on some of the finest music by three leading Tudor composers: John Sheppard, Thomas Tallis and William Byrd. At the heart of the programme is Sheppard’s monumental antiphon Media vita in morte sumus and Byrd’s deeply personal setting of Infelix ego. All three composers lived through decades of religious turmoil in mid-sixteenth-century England and expressed in different ways their devotion to the Catholic faith

Programme

William Byrd Laudibus in sanctis
Haec dies
Infelix ego

Thomas Tallis Jesu salvator saeculi, redemptis

Miserere nostri

Iam Christus astra ascenderat

John Sheppard Media vita in morte sumus
Sacris somemniis

Mahan Esfahani, Solo Harpsichord Concert

BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and Artist-in-Residence at New College Mahan Esfahani returns to the Holywell Music Room for a recital featuring virtuoso works for solo harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach, Domenico Scarlatti, and Richard Strauss.
Described recently by The Times as ‘exceptionally gifted’, Esfahani is quickly gaining recognition internationally as a major solo artist on early keyboards and as a broadcasting and recording artist.

God's Grandeur - Hildegard and Hopkins

A recital of the sequences of Hildegard of Bingen and settings of some of the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins featuring Vox Angelica and the actor Robert Hardy as Br Joseph, Hopkins and a newspaper correspondent.
The Programme includes The Wreck of the Deutschland.

Oxford Bach Choir and RPO

Nicholas Cleobury conductor
Elizabeth Atherton soprano
Wendy Dawn Thompson mezzo soprano
Andrew Kennedy tenor
Derek Welton baritone

Bob Chilcott Requiem world premiere
Beethoven Mass in C

Music at Oxford and the Oxford Bach Choir bring to Oxford a new work by Bob Chilcott to be premiered tonight, Requiem. In a perfect partnering, Chilcott’s work is matched with Beethoven’s rarely heard masterpiece, Mass in C.

www.musicatoxford.com www.oxfordbachchoir.org

Book 6 or more events in the Music at Oxford Season Oct 09 – June 2010 and get 15% discount by calling 01865 305305 or in person at Oxford Playhouse ( excludes Chapel Series)

Co-promotion with the Oxford Bach Choir

Miranda Westcott & Sholto Kynoch

Rising star Miranda Westcott is currently attending the Cardiff International Academy of Voice and has already made her Royal Opera House debut. Her programme includes songs by Schumann, Mahler’s ‘Rückert Lieder’ and Judith Weir’s ‘Songs from the Exotic’.

Cremona String Quartet

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT HAS CHANGED DATES FROM THE 14th FEBRUARY 2010

Season Ticket Price: FULL - £96 & Concession - £84

Free Admission To Children between ages of 10 and 5 When Accompanied by an adult

Please note we do not allow children under the age of 5

Dante String Quartet

Haydn: G major op 77 no 1
Sibelius: D minor Voces Intimae
Smetana: E minor Aus mein Leben

The Dante Quartet was founded in 1995 at the International Musicians Seminar at Prussia Cove and has performed at the major venues and Festivals in the UK, also in France, Holland, Spain, Switzerland, Poland and Finland, last year being featured at the Nuremberg Festival. If has a special relationship with King's College, Cambridge. Recordings include the quartets of Janacek, Rubbra Lyapunov and Gretchaninov, and song cycles by Gurney and Vaughan Willliams with tenor Andrew Kennedy. Their Faure and Franck quartets were released by Hyperion last year. Several new commissions to write music inspired by Dante's epic trilogy. In 2007 the Quartet won the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Chamber Music.

Full time students under the age of 25 will be admitted free of charge if they provide details of their college/school and full address

Tea Time Concert Series - (Witney)

Free Admission To Children between the ages of 10 and 5 When Accompanied By An Adult.

Please note we do not allow Children under the age of 5.

Refreshments Served In The Interval

021 Brochure Oxford Literary Festival

The comprehensive 140 page Guide to the exceptional programme of speakers and events at this year’s Oxford Literary Festival can be ordered here.

The cost of the Guide is £5, and this includes postage and packing. The Guide will be mailed out at the beginning of March 2010.

If you buy 5 or more tickets in one transaction for festival events, the Guide will automatically be sent to you free of charge.

051 Jung Chang

On Writing about a Tyrant
'Each year, The Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Lord Patten invites a figure of international eminence to give the Chancellor’s Lecture in the magnificent setting of Sir Christopher Wren’s Sheldonian Theatre.

Jung Chang’s Wild Swans sold more than 10 million copies, was translated into 30 languages, and became the biggest selling non-fiction paperback in publishing history. Banned in China, Jung Chang’s story of 3 generations of Chinese women in the 20th century reflected the turbulent history of her own family.

After 12 years of research, Jung Chang and her husband, Jon Halliday published their major biography of Chairman Mao – Mao The Untold Story – which is also banned in China.

Prices for this event vary from £25 to £10

Seyla Benhabib, Cosmopolitanism since Kant: Claiming Rights...

Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2010 Self-Evident Truths? Human Rights and the Enlightenment

Seyla Benhabib is Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Yale.

This lecture is part of a series. Visit www.oxford-amnesty-lectures.org for more details and to sign up for our e-newsletter.

Melvyn Bragg - Notes from an Amateur on the History of the Royal Society

Melvyn Bragg - Notes from an Amateur on the History of the Royal Society
The Royal Society - Melvyn Bragg

The Philip Bate Concert

The virtuoso oboist Christopher Redgate will give a recital of works for oboe and piano including CPE Bach: Sonata in G minor, Edward Cowie: Kandinsky’s Oboe (world premiere), Marin Marais: Variations on La Folia, Saint-Saëns: Sonata for oboe and piano, Christopher Redgate: Carnival for oboe and piano, Poulenc: Sonata and Pasculli: I Vespri Siciliani.

Christopher Redgate is currently an AHRC Research Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music. He has an international reputation as a virtuoso soloist, has many solo recordings to his credit and has broadcast frequently on BBC Radio Three. Tonight’s programme includes some beautiful Baroque music, astounding virtuoso music from the 19th century as well as repertoire favourites and a world premiere!

More information can be found on www.christopherredgate.co.uk

Pei-Jee Ng and Pei-Sian Ng (Chapel Series)

Pei-Jee Ng cello
Pei-sian Ng cello

JS Bach Cello Suite No 3 in C, BWV 1009
Daniel Kidane Black River for two cellos
JS Bach Cello Suite No 4 in E flat, BWV 1010
Elena Kats-Chernin Phoenix Story for two cellos

Bach cello suites are masterworks of western music which only the most assured performers programme. We’re in very safe, if youthful hands, here with Pei-Jee Ng recently described by the FT as ‘an artist whose age is irrelevant to his musical maturity’. Daniel Kidane’s work is described as ‘quietly impressive’. Phoenix Story is a highly melodic work, coloured by oriental modes to conjure the fabulous bird which rises from the ashes.

www.musicatoxford.com

Book all 3 Chapel Series events and get 20% discount by calling 01865 305305 or in person at Oxford Playhouse.

Peut-Etre Theatre - Workshop

This family workshop accompanies the show ‘This Is A That’.
Take a ride to the moon with Papa and Josette, walk on your ears, find odd things in unexpected places, and meet strange creatures called Jacqueline. This workshop is a companion to Peut-etre Theatre’s play This Is A That and is an opportunity for children and their parents to explore an extraordinary world.

104 Mark Edmonds, Alan Garner & Robert Powell

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
"Pieces of Places marks the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Alan Garner’s first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, and examines the importance of place in his work.

It will feature an exchange of ideas between author Alan Garner, archaeologist Mark Edmonds and actor Robert Powell, during which they will discuss certain objects that appear in Alan’s books.

Mark will hand Alan each item in turn for him to introduce and describe, through anecdote, how it was found and how it relates to place. Next, Mark will interpret as an archaeologist and offer thoughts on the object’s ‘story’, and Robert will illustrate through short excerpts how Alan uses it in his fiction.

Finally, Robert Powell will give a reading of The Stone Book, from The Stone Book Quartet."

102 Ian Glynn

Elegance in Science: The Beauty of Simplicity
"The idea of elegance in science is not necessarily a familiar one, but it is an important one. The use of the term is perhaps most clear-cut in mathematics - the elegant proof - and this is where the distinguished scientist Ian Glynn begins his exploration.

The idea of elegance may seem strange in a field of endeavour that prides itself in its objectivity, but only if science is regarded as a dull, dry activity of counting and measuring. It is, of course far more than that, and elegance is a fundamental aspect of the beauty and imagination involved in scientific activity."

106 Shelia Dillon & Tom Macmillan

"Whilst we now profess concern for the consequences of our lifestyles, do we really care? Does genuine interest in the environment and in the plight of workers in vulnerable communities run deep in British society, or is it simply a mark of middle-class distinction and a way for writers to connect with their readers?

Tom MacMillan, Chief Executive of the Food Ethics Council, will join Sheila Dillon of BBC Radio 4's Food Programme to discuss our attitudes to food, drink, and to question whether ethics will ever shape our behaviour."

101 John Gross

The Oxford Book of Parodies
"Parody can be the most entertaining form of criticism and one of the most delicate, erudite and allusive. Parodies come in all shapes and sizes. There are broad parodies and subtle parodies, ingenious imitations and knockabout spoofs, scornful lampoons and affectionate pastiches.

All these varieties, and many others, appear in The Oxford Book of Parodies, a delightful new anthology compiled by master anthologist John Gross, who captures a genre that is comical, scornful, witty, and subtle."

103 Malorie Blackman, Frances Hardinge & Philip Pullman Chaired by Nicolette Jones

Fantastical Truths
Suitabled for Children over 10

In a rare gathering of exceptional talents Malorie Blackman, Frances Hardinge and Philip Pullman discuss what fantasy can tell us about reality. Malorie Blackman's bestselling Noughts and Crosses quartet considers big themes of race, terrorism and social equality, in a hypothetical world. Pullman's hugely inventive epic trilogy His Dark Materials embraces philosophy and religion. And his fellow Oxford graduate, the award-winning novelist Frances Hardinge, writes acclaimed pseudo-historical fantasies, including Gullstruck Island, which reveal much about ourselves. Chaired by Sunday Times children's books reviewer Nicolette Jones

105 Timothy Knatchbull

From a Clear Blue Sky
On the August bank holiday weekend in 1979, 14 year-old Timothy Knatchbull went out on a boat trip off the shore of Mullaghmore, County Silgo, Ireland. It was a trip that would cost four lives - and change his life forever.

The IRA bomb that exploded in the boat killed his grandfather Lord Mountbatten, his grandmother Lady Barabourne, his twin brother Nicolas and local teenager Paul Maxwell.

For 30 years Timothy Knatchbull has lived with the echoes of that dreadful day. In telling this story for the first time, he is not only revisiting the terrible events he and his family lived through, but also writing an intensely personal account of human triumph over tragedy.

107 Inspector Morse Walking Tour

11am - 1pm

Meet outside Balliol College Lodge, Broad Street

Mention Oxford and dreaming spires, colleges and quadrangles all come to mind - plus, of course, Inspector Morse. The television series featuring John Thaw was based on the novels of Oxford writer Colin Dexter and remain immensely popular in the United Kingdom and all over the world. Centred on the university and city, Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis encounter Head of Houses, dons, murderers and criminals in the course of their detective work, pausing only to solve a tricky question over a pint or two in a favourite pub. This walk explores the Oxford of Inspector Morse and visits some of the scenes of his best-known cases.

124 Antony Beevor

Teen Event

Suitable for anyone over the age of 15

"Distinguished historian Antony Beevor is celebrated for powerful and scrupulously rearched books including Stalingrad, Berlin: the Downfall, and his latest book D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, which reveal the human cost of war. Interviewed by a Sixth-Former, he will discuss, for younger readers and historians- and writers-to-be, the importance of history, his commitment to telling the truth about it, and the process of research for his books, as well as wider problems facing writers today."

125 Daisy Goodwin

101 Poems that could Save Your Life
After Cambridge and Columbia Film School, Daisy Goodwin became an Arts Producer at the BBC and subsequently produced programmes for the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel Five which became household favourites. She has become one of the nation's greatest promoters of poetry through the Nation's Favourite Love Poems and 101 Poems that could Save your Life to her recent triumph with Off by Heart - the national poetry reciting competition for 7-11 year olds. The final, filmed at last year's Sunday Times Oxford literary Festival, was aired on BBC 2.

Daisy reads a selection of her favourite poems from her series of bestselling anthologies including 101 poems that could Save your Life.

122 Jeremy Musson

Up and Down Stairs is an absorbing exploration of the inner functioning and rigid hierarchy of the country house.

It offers an intriguing insight into a tradition that has rested near the heart of British identity for more than 500 years.

Although the status of a domestic servant is one that has, through the course of history, accumulated negative connotations, at one time domestic service was the second most common profession in England.

Architectural historian Jeremy Musson illuminates the daily lives of people who helped these vast houses run smoothly

121 Stanley Wells

Shakespeare Sex and Love
How does Shakespeare's treatment of human sexuality relate to the sexual conversations and language of his times? Pre-eminent Shakespearean critic Stanley Wells draws on historical and anecdotal sources to present an illuminating account of sexual behaviour in Shakespeare's time. He will also talk about the variety of ways in which Shakespeare treated sexuality in his plays and poems as a source of comedy, drama, debate, and passion.

123 Douglas Hurd & Edward Young

Douglas Hurd, Private Secretary to Edward Heath, and an MP between 1974 and 1997, joined forces with Edward Young when writing Choose Your Weapons. Young, after gaining a First in History at Cambridge, had won a Mellon Scholarship to Yale, where he studied history and International Relations.

Together they will discuss this book, which examines eleven of the most colourful and controversial Foreign Secretaries of the past two centuries. Drawing on his own experience, Hurd discusses how the Foreign Secretaries argued, succeeded and failed, and in the process draws conclusions which are particularly relevant today.

148 William Horwood & Philip Pullman

The Fantasy Tradition in Oxford
For nearly 150 years Oxford writers of fantasy have enthralled readers around the world. From Charles Dodgson's Alice in Wonderland, published in 1865 through to Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and CS Lewis's Narnia series, the City has inspired a bewitching succession of novelists who have entranced us all.

Philip Pullman, the award-winning author of the Dark Materials Trilogy joins William Horwood, author of Hyddenworld to discuss The Fantasy Tradition in Oxford.

141 Sue Elliott, Patrick Hennessey & Allan Mallinson

Sending our Children to War
Is the sacrifice of noble young lives in Iraq and Afghanistan unnecessary and heartless, exacerbated because these wars are difficult explain? Are politicians exploiting our soldiers' courage and do they have the right to send young men and women to war for something they haven't experienced themselves? Why do young men and women go to war, do they know what they are letting themselves in for, is it an extension of movies and war games?

Join writer Sue Elliott, 'The Children who Fought Hitler', Patrick Hennessey ex officer and now author of 'The Junior Officers Writing Club', Allan Mallinson former cavalry officer, defence commentator and author of 'Making of the British Army'.

146 Robert Orchard event cancelled

The Corpus Politic

A day of political remembrances and observations from Westminster and Washington.

From its Foundation in 1517, Corpus fellows and alumni have helped to record political life both in Britain and, later, in the United States. To celebrate its new partnership with the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival, Corpus Christi College has brought together three of its sharpest political observers to share their insights into the real lives of politicians and their world. As the most intimate of the traditional Colleges, what better place to gather private political thoughts and overhear an occasional tale of indiscretion?

The general election is only weeks away but what happens if - as some are predicting - Labour and the Conservatives both wake up next morning to find they've been Hung Drawn and Thwarted - with no party winning outright for the first time in a generation? The BBC’s parliamentary correspondent, Robert Orchard, looks for clues from the last time voters elected a hung parliament, drawing on his recent interviews with key figures who lived through minority governments and cross-party deals and wheeler-dealing in the 1970s and 1990s.

143 Robin Hanbury-Tenison

"Selected by Robin Hanbury-Tenison, described by the Sunday Times as the ""greatest explorer of the last twenty years"", The Oxford Book of Exploration is a comprehensive anthology of the writings of explorers through the ages.

The ultimate in travel writing, these are the words of those who changed the world through their pioneering search for new lands, new peoples and new experiences. Hanbury-Tenison takes us to the four corners of the world and includes explorers such as Dr David Livingstone, Mary Kingsley and Sir Francis Drake."

145 Marcus Chown, Manjit Kumar, and Joe Schwartz

Quantum theory is one of science's most thrilling challenging and even mysterious areas. Join our discussion based on Icon Books' series of graphic guides to big ideas which introduce subjects from Capitalism to Chaos, philosophy to Postmodernism.

Speakers will be Manjit Kumar, author of Quantum which was shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction, Marcus Chown, author of the bestselling Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You and Dr Joseph Schwartz (Chair), author of Introducing Einstein.

147 Frank Cottrell Boyce, Ali Sparkes and Harriet Goodwin, Chaired by Sonali Shah

Suitable for children between 7 and 12

Three books were shortlisted this year in Blue Peter's "Book I Couldn't Put Down" category, and all three authors are appearing here in the setting for Hogwarts hall to talk about their shortlisted books - Frank Cottrell Boyce, film-maker, Carnegie-Medal-winning author, father of seven, and author of the laugh-out-loud space adventure Cosmic (with a theme of fatherhood); Ali Sparkes, author of the time-travel story Frozen in Time, which has now been shortlisted for six awards; and Harriet Goodwin, whose debut The Boy Who Fell Down Exit 43 is already causing a stir, and who is also - not to spoil a surprise - a professional classical singer. Sonali Shah of CBBC Newsround will chair.

144 Richard Dawkins / Georgina Ferry / Steve Jones Chaired by Roger Highfield

For 350 years, our most eminent scientists have sought to unravel nature's great mysteries, discover the laws that govern our Universe and solve the riddle of life on earth. As the discoveries and revelations of each successive century have overtaken the (perceived) certainties of previous generations, we must wonder, how far can we trust in the new certainties of 21st century science?

Two eminent scientists, Richard Dawkins and Steve Jones talk about science, certainty and the Royal Society, with Georgina Ferry, a Science writer, and Roger Highfield, Editor of The New Scientist

149 Literary Oxford Walking Tour

2 - 4pm.
Meet outside Magdalen College Lodge, High Street.

Explore Oxford Colleges in the footsteps of famous writers and poets.
Start at Magdalen, home to John Betjeman and C.S.Lewis, and walk past Queen's and through University College, ending
up at Merton, the college of Max Beerbohm and T.S. Eliot. On the way enjoy readings from the poetry and prose of writers
who have lived in and written about the city and the University

150 Roy Strong

Sir Roy Strong was Director of The National Portrait Gallery, 1967-73, and of the V&A from 1973 to 1987. His books, diaries, radio and television appearances have made him one of the most provocative figures of the age.

Sir Roy has written a new book on England to be published in About the historic make up and the imagery which have constituted England in the imagination of her peoples through the centuries.

In the Wedgwood Lecture Sir Roy addresses the panorama of England’s past – the streams which fed the mythology of England as it appears in art and literature, and where we might go from here.

161 Kate Figes Interviewed by Rebecca Abrams

Couples: The Truth
"How do we separate the myths from the truths? In our world of unrivalled sexual independence is it easier or harder to maintain a relationship? Divorce, gay marriages, cohabiting, remarrying; we have never been better placed to construct the relationships of our choosing. But with this freedom comes the responsibility for making them work in reality, beyond the unrealistic expectations placed on love by popular culture.

Kate Figes draws on history, the research of sociologist and psychologists as well as interviews with more than 120 people about their relationships. The results of her findings are extraordinary and surprisingly encouraging."

167 Juliet Nicolson

Juliet Nicolson comes from a great writing family. Her father Nigel was a writer and founded, with George Weidenfeld, the publishing firm Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Her grandparents were the writers Sir Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, and her brother is the writer Adam.

In 2005, Juliet’s novel, The Perfect Summer about the run up to World War I was published to great critical acclaim. In The Great Silence, she explores the world of 1918, as the war ended, and people tried to regain some sense of impossible normality. Peace at last, after Lloyd George declared it had been ‘the war to end all wars’, would surely bring relief and a renewed sense of optimism? But this assumption turned out to be deeply misplaced as people began to realise that the men they loved were never coming home. The Great Silence is the story of the pause between 1918 and 1920. A two-minute silence to celebrate those who died was underpinned by a more enduring silence born out of national grief."

164 Richard Carwardine

Abraham Lincoln and his Legacy

Throughout his presidential quest Barack Obama paid frequent, self- referential homage to his Illinois predecessor, Abraham Lincoln. The present occupant of the White House, however, is only the latest in a long line of political leaders around the globe who have consciously modeled themselves on the 16th American president. Yet Lincoln had no executive experience before he entered office and as a wartime leader both friend and foe assailed him during the American Civil War. What explains Lincoln’s subsequent appeal and why has it proven so durable?

Professor Richard Carwardine is President of Corpus Christi College. His analytical biography of Abraham Lincoln won the Lincoln Prize in 2004. He was an adviser to the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

163 Diarmaid MacCulloch and Sara Wheeler, Chaired by Catherine Pepinster

Diarmaid MacCulloch and Sara Wheeler join forces to discus their respective books, focusing their discussion on cultures and spirituality. Calling on his work A History of Christianity, which presents the development of Christian history, acclaimed historian Diarmaid MacCulloch will show how different ideas about God have persisted or developed over many centuries. Sara Wheeler, whose book The Magnetic North uncovers the beautiful, brutal reality of the Arctic, meditates on the role of the Arctic in public and private, concluding that the complex and ambiguous Arctic perfectly captures the elegiac melancholy of middle age.

162 Antony Beevor

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy
One of our very finest military historians, Antony Beevor has already demonstrated in his critically acclaimed Stalingrad and Berlin: The Downfall 1945 the merciless cost of war. Hailed by Max Hastings as "as powerful and authoritative an account of the battle for Normandy as we are like to get in this generation, his revelatory history of the D-Day campaign shows just how ferocious and hard-fought this epochal campaign was. At times, Beevor explains, it was as savage as anything seen on the Eastern Front. His gripping narrative conveys the true horror of war, as experienced by millions of ordinary Britons and Americans.

165 Alan Garner

By Seven Firs and Goldenstone - An account of the Legend of Alderley
"Alan Garner, author of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, will mark the 50th Anniversary of its publication by giving an illustrated lecture on the Legend of Alderley.

This version of the myth of the Sleeping Hero is rooted to places on Alderley Edge in Cheshire, where Alan Garner grew up. He tells how, by unravelling the anomalies within the Legend, as given to him by his grandfather, he was led to discover the Bronze Age occupation of the Edge, which is now the earliest dated metal working site in England.

The lecture contains images that are not suitable for children

166 Neil MacGregor

A History of the World in 100 Objects
'In his first public lecture outside London, Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, talks about the BBC Radio 4 series A History of the World in 100 Objects. In the series he seeks to tell a narrative history of the world from 2 million years ago to the present day, through one hundred objects from the British Museum’s collection. Objects have the power to tell stories about humanity and change our perspective on the past and our understanding of the world today. Neil MacGregor will expand upon his series this special presentation at the Sheldonian Theatre.

The Director of the National Gallery from 1987 to 2002, Neil MacGregor then became Director of The British Museum, and has since been responsible for staging a remarkable series of major international exhibitions.

Prices for this event vary from £25 to £10

184 Adam Zamoyski

Published to coincide with the bicentenary of Chopin's birth, this completely new edition of Adam Zamoyski's outstanding biography of the great composer, first published in 1979, cuts through the mass of anecdotes and myths that have sprung up around Chopin's life and draws the reader into the private world of this most complicated man. The result is a biography of authority, perception and wit, which allows Chopin to emerge from the sugary romantic mists in which he has been shrouded.

183 Delia da Sousa Correa & Kirsty Gunn

Katherine Mansfield and The Art of Performance
Katherine Mansfield was a musician as well as a writer, a 'performer' of stories at parties who delighted friends with her dramatic impressions and impersonations. Delia da Sousa Correa, editor of the new Katherine Mansfield Studies Journal, and author Kirsty Gunn, (her most recent book is The Boy and the Sea) will discuss Mansfield's awareness of literature as a performance art - describing specific stories by Mansfield that evoke musical performance and including a reading of new work inspired by Mansfield that's been written in a similar 'key'.

186 Tracy Chevalier

Tracy Chevalier enjoyed international acclaim for her book Girl with a Pearl Earring which was released as a film in 2003 starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson.

Her latest novel, Remarkable Creatures, is set in the early 19th century and tells how one woman's gift transcends class and gender to lead to some of the most important discoveries of the century. Mary Anning sets the male-dominated scientific world alight, challenging ideas about the world's creation when she uncovers unknown dinosaur fossils. Her friendship with the prickly, intelligent Elizabeth Philpot, who is also fossil-obsessed, strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty and barely suppressed envy providing a revealing portrait of the resilient nature of female friendship.

187 Brian Chikwava & Chioma Okereke. Chaired by Elleke Boehmer

Literatures from across the Africa are addressing the challenges of the new century with energy and ambition, undeterred by the many difficulties which continue to beset the continent. Writers Chioma Okereke and Caine Prize-winner Brian Chikwava, along with Elleke Boehmer in the chair, will explore the themes and pressures of the new African writing: the demands of writing from exile, the freedoms and pitfalls of on-line publishing, the threats and excitements of globalization and its impact on writers from the continent.

181 Melvyn Bragg

In Our Time: A Companion to the Radio 4 Series
"The Radio series In Our Time began after Melvyn Bragg was sacked from Start the Week, in order to preserve the programme's political integrity, following his appointment to the House of Lords.

James Boyle, controller of Radio 4 at the time, engineered a return to the air for what he called 'a ring-fenced programme' on what was then known as the death slot. The result was In Our Time, an entertaining and fascinating programme attracting a huge audience.

Melvyn Bragg talks about his work on the Radio 4 series and some of the episodes that reflect the diversity of the programmes."

My Cat Jeoffrey

Britten : Rejoice in the Lamb, Hymn to St Cecilia, A Hymn of St Columba
Vaughan Williams : Mass in G Minor

190 Dinner with Steve Jones

Includes reception, three-course dinner and wine. Dress Code: Lounge Suits

Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College, London, prize-winning author, journalist, radio and television presenter of science programmes, explores the inherited elements of the human condition and behaviour.

188 to Festival Opening Dinner with Michael Cockerell

The Corpus Politic

A day of political remembrances and observations from Westminster and Washington.

Michael Cockerell, the award winning TV documentary maker and political author, is an old Corpus man. ‘You are no-one in politics, until you have been Cockerelled,’ says The Sunday Telegraph. His two books on politicians’ love-hate relations with the media are: Sources Close to the Prime Minister and Live from Number 10. Of his latest TV series on the Great Offices of State last month, The Times wrote: ‘With his gift for story- telling, unique access and freakish ability to encourage people to talk, Cockerell always communicates the drama of people and politics.’

7pm drinks, 7.30pm dinner, Hall, Corpus Christi - £85.00 (includes reception, three-couse dinner, including wine). Dress: Lounge Suits

J.S Bach: St Matthew Passion

Bach's St. Matthew Passion arguably ranks as his greatest choral composition alongside the Mass in B Minor, and remains a favourite amongst choirs and audiences alike. The version being performed is a Mendelssohn revision from 1841 sung in English.

189 Catherine Andreyev

Nikolay Andreyev: A Moth on the Fence: Memoirs of Russia, Estonia, Czechoslovakia and Western Europe

Throughout his life Nikolay Andreyov remained an optimist who tried to see the good in any situation and person, whether they were guards in a Soviet prison camp, professors or international politicians. His memoir describes his childhood, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War. It also covers his time as a refugee, his life as an émigré in Estonia and Prague between the two World Wars, his detention in transit camps and more, before settling in Cambridge where he embarked on a distinguished teaching career at the University from 1949 to 1975. Here, his daughter Catherine Andreyev talks about her father's life.

185 Laura Fish / Remi Kapo / James Walvin. Chaired by Mike Wooldridge

Throughout the period of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, English and African traders paid little heed to the consequences of their trafficking. The wounds inflicted by this cruel industry were deep and often unforeseen. But are the scars still showing? Have the racial stereotypes springing from the shadow of that era, and fortified by 19th century social and scientific theory, been appropriately modernised? Do we remain the heirs of a dark, inadequately examined history? Our writers probe a sensitive issue.

Laura Fish, broadcaster and author of Strange Music, discusses with first time novelist Remi Kapo, author of Reap the Forgotten Harvest, an Epic Saga of Slavery and James Walvin, author of numerous books (most recently 'A short History of Slavery') and co-editor of the journal Slavery and Abolition. This panel will be chaired by Mike Wooldridge, BBC world affairs correspondent.

182: Bruce Anderson, Patrick Mercer, and Colonel Stuart Tootal, Chaired by Ann Leslie

Afghanistan - Why are we There, When will it End?
In 1996 John Reid, then defence secretary, announced that "we would be perfectly happy to leave in three years and without firing one shot". Since operations began in Afghanistan over 250 British service personnel have been killed. The questions remain, why did we invade, did we blunder into an unwinnable war and when and what determines ‘victory? These and other questions will be addressed by Colonel Stuart Tootal, former commander of 3 Para author & of ‘Danger Close’, Patrick Mercer MP former infantry officer and author of ‘To Do & Die’ and political columnist Bruce Anderson.

202 Louisa Young

Journey to Ancient Greece
Halo is a brand new epic tale set in Ancient Greece from Zizou Corder (author of the acclaimed Lionboy series). Join Louisa Young for a captivating event that will take its audience on a journey to both historical and mythological Greece. With costume, music and artefacts, Louisa will bring to life some of the most fascinating stories of the Greek Gods as well as the history of the Spartans. Perfect for adventure-loving boys and girls of 10+.

201 Vernon Bogdanor

From New Jerusalem to New Labour: British Prime Ministers from Attlee to Blair
"From New Jerusalem to New Labour, is written by a stellar collection of contributors including Kenneth Morgan and Philip Ziegler who consider each British post-war Prime Minister and examine how they have dealt with Britain's changing role, domestic and overseas, since the end of World War Two.

Many of the expert authors involved with this publication have known the Prime Ministers about whom they are writing, adding a personal perspective to the work.

Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at Oxford University, as Editor of this collection talks about our post-war Prime Ministers and the impact they left on Britain."

203 Salley Vickers

Dancing Backwards

Set in both the 1960's and the present day Dancing Backwards is the story of Violet Hetherington who takes a transatlantic cruse to visit Edwin, an old friend. As she makes the six-day crossing, she relives the traumatic events that led to her loosing Edwin's friendship and abandoning her career as a poet for the safety of marriage and domesticity.

This brilliant new work from the bestselling author of Miss Garnet's Angel and The Other Side of You, will be read by Dame Eileen Atkins, on Book of the Week for BBC Radio 4 during the Festival.

205 Sam Kiley

In the dust and blazing heat of Helmand, the young men of the 16 Air Assault brigade find themselves in the most relentless battles faced by British troops in recent history.

As the only writer to have obtained unprecedented, unrestricted access to the front line, Sam Kiley was with them to bear witness to the most intense challenges of their lives. Desperate Glory is an unflinching portrait of the reality of war - the bombs, the shooting and the daily struggles that push our troops to the very limit of human endurance.

204 Film Oxford Walking Tour

11am - 1pm.
Meet outside Balliol College Lodge, Broad Street.
From Charley's Aunt to the latest adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, Oxford has proved a magnate for filmmakers
and filmgoers alike. Whether it's a Bollywood spectacular or the latest episode of Inspector Lewis, the colleges and
quadrangles of Oxford are a familiar backdrop to numerous films. In this walk, explore the streets of the city that has
provided the setting for films as diverse as a Yank at Oxford and The Golden Compass and hear about 'film' Oxonians
such as Kris Kristofferson, Rowan Atkinson, Rosamund Pike.

Gould Piano Trio

Season Ticket Price: FULL - £96 & Concession - £84

Free Admission To Children between ages of 10 and 5 When Accompanied by an adult

Please note we do not allow children under the age of 5

222 Philip Gooden

The Story of English: How the English Language Conquered the World
"Worldwide some 380 million people speak English as a first language, some 600 million speak it as a second language and a staggering one billion people are believed to be learning it.

English is the premier international language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment and diplomacy and also on the Internet. It has been one of the official languages of the United Nations since is founding in 1945 and is considered by many to be well on the way to becoming the world’s first universal language.

Philip Gooden, who has a perfect command of his material, tells the story of the English language in all its richness and variety."

226 Julian Baggini

Big thoughts can come in small packages, as philosopher Julian Baggini will explain when he discusses three of his books under the general heading Microphilosophy.

His first book The Pig That Wants to be Eaten presents 100 thought experiments and short scenarios which pose a problem in a vivid and concrete way. Do They Think You’re Stupid? analyses all the different varieties of bad arguments and provides the tools to spot them in the media, from politicians and in everyday life. And in Should You Judge This Book By Its Cover? Julian Baggini applies his philosophical scalpel to famous sayings, proverbs and pieces of homespun wisdom.

224 Robert Winston

Human beings are clever. Our cleverness and our ability to design and use tools have led to our increasing domination over the plant on which we live. But virtually every idea we have had – be it to do with farming, living in cities, writing, the uses of fire, transport, weapons, even medicine – has at least at one level made humankind more vulnerable.

As our technology becomes more powerful and widely used, the threat that lies latent in many of our discoveries gives increasing cause for concern. Robert Winston, one of Britain’s best-known scientists, presents his ‘Scientist’s Manifesto’, the principles which he believes could ensure a better and safer relationship between scientist and society. Here he calls on society as a whole to take responsibility to ensure that our scientific knowledge is used widely for the benefit of mankind.

223 Joanna Trollope

With her customary acute observation, Joanna Trollope has once again written a topical novel with an utterly compelling contemporary theme in which many common assumptions are thought-provokingly turned on their head. It's the tale of a celebrated musician, wealthy, popular and adored by his partner and their three daughters, who has never given her the one thing that would have made her life perfect - a wedding ring and marriage as he is already married to someone else. When he dies suddenly, who will inherit his legacy?

221 Brian May and Elena Vidal

A Village Lost & Found
"In A Village Lost and Found, which is the product of more than 30 years research, Brian May and photographic historian Elena Vidal, present an exhaustive study of the 1850s stereoscopic photographic series Scenes in Our Village by T R Williams.

The Oxfordshire village, whose identity was lost for 150 years, was only recently discovered by Brian May, in 2003.

With over 50 images, along with extensive related material, including many corresponding photographs of the village as it is today, Brian May and Elena Vidal present a fascinating insight into a village lost and found."

225: Catherine Bennett, John Kampfner, Geoffrey Robertson, Chaired by Albert Scardino

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"; "The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment"; "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows." Orwell was a staunch proponent of freedom of all kinds, especially of speech and of the press. But - with criticisms of the media flourishing, preachers of hate making headlines, the anonymity of the internet, and journalists complaining about libel laws - how free is free speech, and what should the limits be? Catherine Bennett (shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Journalism 2009), John Kampfner (director, Index on Censorship) and Geoffrey Robertson QC (lawyer, broadcaster and author) discuss the issues.

243 Alex Perry

"Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, international corporations and governments have embraced the idea of a global village: a shrinking, booming world in which everyone benefits. What if that's not the case? Alex Perry, award-winning foreign correspondent, travels from the South China Sea to the highlands of Afghanistan to the Sahara to see first-hand globalization at the sharp end -- and it's not pretty.

He visits some of the planet's remotest and most dangerous places to explore the sharp end of globalization and in so doing demonstrates vividly that for every winner in our brave new world, there are hundreds and millions of losers.

A journey through the developing world, which reveals with clarity that globalization starts wars."

246 Belle de Jour (Brooke Magnanti) in Conversation with India Knight

Belle’s Best Bits: A London Call Girl Reveals Her Favourite Adventures
Ever since The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl was published in 2005, journalists and readers alike have tried to discover the identity of Belle de Jour, the young woman who had sex for money and kept a web diary that was read by 15,000 people each day.

Even more fascinating than the speculation was the truth. Bell is Dr Brooke Magnanti, a research scientist who supported herself by working as a call girl while completing her doctoral studies. Belle’s Best Bits provides a voyeuristic glimpse behind the scenes of the high-class sex trade and an insight into the secret life of this extraordinary woman.

242 Andrew Lane & Tim Pigott-Smith

The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Family Event

Andrew Lane, author of a new series of Young Sherlock, in conversation with actor Tim Pigott-Smith (on his day off from Enron), the author of The Baker Street Mysteries, about youngsters who help Holmes with his cases. They will consider the enduring appeal of Sherlock Holmes, and how they have both brought him to a new young audience.

247 David Norris

James Joyce: Do you Hear what I am Seeing

Controversial Irish Senator, human rights activist, broadcaster, actor and Joycean authority performs his internationally celebrated one-man show ‘Do You Hear What I Am Seeing. This show has been performed to rapturous applause in London, Paris, New York, Sydney, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Beirut (in the middle of a mortar bombardment) in 1982 as well as all over Ireland. Although a highly sophisticated show no prior knowledge of Joyce’s life or work is necessary to enjoy this performance. “Norris’s reading of Ulysses was brilliant” Martin Gambarotta, Buenos Aires Herald.

244 Toby Elliott Int by Julie Summers

Commodore Toby Elliott was a submariner during the Cold War but it was in his role as Chief Executive of Combat Stress that he witnessed the devastating psychological effect of warfare. In this wide-ranging and highly entertaining interview with Julie Summers he will talk about his work during his ten years at the helm of the ex-services mental health charity, Combat Stress as well as his life as a submarine commander in the 1970s and 80s, as well as in command of the first RN ship to carry women as part of her crew.

245: Jennie Bristow, Val Gillies, Christina Hardyment, and Jennifer Howze

In the build up to the election, all the mainstream parties are keen to make their policies on the family distinct. However, what they all agree on is that parenthood requires a massive adjustment to our lives, emotions, and relationships, and we have to be taught how to deal with that by experts. But can it really be so difficult that parents need constant counselling, parenting classes and policies backed by swathes of academic research, to rear their own children? Are today's parents really so hopeless they need supernannies' assistance to cope? Might the current focus on hapless parents increase their insecurity and diminish parental authority over their own children?

Hear panellists Jennie Bristow: author, Standing up to Supernanny; editor, www.parentswithattitude.com, Dr Val Gillies: Reader, Families & Social Capital Research Group, London South Bank University; author of Marginalised Mothers: Exploring Working Class Experiences of Parenting and Christina Hardyment: author, Dream Babies: Babycare Advice from John Locke to Gina Ford discuss the issues.

248 Literary Oxford Walking Tour

2 - 4pm.
Meet outside Magdalen College Lodge, High Street.

FUNomusica Family Concert - BUGS!!

Bugs!!
Alasdair Malloy presenter.

A Creepy-Crawly concert featuring those insects we either love or loath! Alasdair will be in ‘David Attenborough’ mode and the audience are invited to come dressed as a bug or to bring along a toy or homemade bug. Music includes The Wasps
Overture, The Ugly Bug Ball and a Tarantella for Tarantulas as well as a unique and unforgettable version of The Flight of the Bumble Bee!

Come dressed as a bug ready to make your antennae in the pre-concert activities from 2pm.

Concert suitable for ages 4 – 8.

Pre Concert Activities from 2pm

To join Oxford Philomusica’s mailing or e-list please click HERE

263 Richard E Grant

BBC Four Screening: Diaries
Why write a diary? Why read one? BBC Four's Dear Diary sees Richard E Grant, a diarist since childhood, go in search of answers to those questions and discovers the power of the diary. Follow Richard as he uncovers a sinister truth behind playwright Joe Orton’s diaries, meets Erwin James, a prison diarist, to understand the power of writing for a serving offender and talks to Sheila Hancock about Kenneth Williams’ diary, in which she appeared – at times to savage criticism. Introduced by Richard E Grant with Questions and Answers afterward.

Event lasts about 1 hour 30 minutes

264 Matthew Rice

Rice's Architectural Primer
"Matthew Rice is a writer and illustrator who thought he knew lots about British architecture until be began to write and illustrate Rice's Architectural Primer. His message is simple - if you want to understand a building, sit in front of it and draw it.

He explains the language of architecture, which enables the observer to break down a building into its component parts and come to understand the language that enables us to discuss it meaningfully. Rice aims to ensure that ungainly and inept descriptions of observed architecture will be a thing of the past."

267 David Halpern & David Smith

The dominant political story of the last few years has been the crisis afflicting the global economy. Fault for the crisis has been laid at the doors of many professions - bankers, politicians, academics - and the effects have been felt far and wide. But over two years after the start of the crunch and subsequent recession, what can we expect to happen next?

David Smith, Sunday Times Economics Editor and author of The Age of Instability, and David Halpern, Research Director of the Institute for Government and author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations, peer into the crystal ball. Chaired by Ben Wright (BBC political correspondent).

265 Louise Rennison

Withering Tights

Suitable for anyone over the age of 13

"In an exclusive, one-woman preview, hearLouise Rennison, Queen of Teen, talk about her new teen series, which will be set against the gloriously funny and eccentric background of a performing arts school, and will introduce readers to a completely new cast of characters in their own special ‘Louise Rennison’ world of friendship, rivalry and hilariously embarrassing moments. The first book Withering Tights will be out this summer."

261 Richard Hamblyn

Richard Hamblyn's first book, The Invention of Clouds, was shortlisted for the prestigious Samuel Johnson prize. Blending history, science and eye-witness accounts, his dramatic new book Terra explores the relationship between the planet and the humans who inhabit it by looking at four events that changed the world - the Lisbon earthquake of 1755; the weather-panics of the summer of 1783; the eruption of Krakatau in 1883; and, the Hilo tsunami of 1946.

Hamblyn reminds us of the earth's unimaginable force and describes what happens when that force is unleashed, both in terms of the immediate human consequences and the economic and scientific implications. He also questions why we don't seem fully able to learn from the catastrophes, mistakes and responses of the past to natural disasters.

262 John Simpson

Throughout many decades of groundbreaking journalism, John Simpson has become not only one of the most recognisable and trusted British personalities, but has transferred his skill to books with multiple best selling success.

In his latest book, Unreliable Sources, he turns his eye to how Great Britain has been transformed by its free press down the years.

He shows how, while the press likes to pretend it’s independent, they have enjoyed the power they have over the events they report and have at times exercised it irresponsibly.

321 John Abbott, Alan Steer, David Yelland Chaired by Claire Fox

Nearly fifteen years after it was first made, the rallying cry of "education, education, education" is more pertinent than ever. We have known for some time that the power of education extends far beyond the school walls, but where does teaching stop and parenting begin? How does a child escape the trappings of poverty toward a prosperous future?

Join the first of our series on Education Matters for an informed and passionate debate with Alan Steer, author of Learning Bahaviour: Lessons Learned, the government commissioned report into behavior in schools; John Abbott, president of the 21st Century Learning Initiative, and author of 'Overschooled but Undereducated'; and David Yelland, former Editor of The Sun and author of the forthcoming 'The Truth about Leo'. Chaired by Claire Fox, Director of the Institute of Ideas and panelist on BBC 4's Moral Maze.

341 Jeremy Leggett & Doug Parr Chaired by Janet Balfour

Energy Matters: Nuclear, Essential or Unnecessary?
The nuclear industry believes it can answer all three goals of energy policy; namely low cost, minimal associated greenhouse gas emissions and security of supply. Opponents beg to differ, claiming that history suggests costs will be higher than projected, risks associated with radioactive waste too great and nuclear brings its own threats to security. Since there are alternative forms of clean energy, why bother persisting with nuclear? A lively debate chaired by Janet Balfour, chair of the Nuclear Liabilities Fund is guaranteed with speakers Jeremy Leggett, Chair of Solar Century and author of 'Carbon War', Doug Parr, Chief Scientist of Greenpeace

342 Political Oxford Walking Tour

2 - 4pm.

Meet at entrance to Meadow Buildings, Christ Church

Oxford has always been an important political centre and the University can count among its alumni 24 British Prime Ministers and the Heads of State of many other nations including Bill Clinton. The tour starts at Christ Church, proceeds to the Bodleian, Sheldonian and Balliol College. Balliol has produced eminent public figures, not least Edward Heath, Roy Jenkins and the current Chancellor of the University, Chris Patten.

363 Edward Hollis

The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories
The plans are drawn up, the site is chosen and the foundations are dug: a building comes into being with the expectation that it will stay forever. But a building is a capricious thing; it is inhabited and changed, and its existence is a tale of constant and curious transformations. Edward Hollis tells the stories of thirteen buildings to reveal the hidden histories of the Parthenon and the Alhambra, ancient palaces recreated by vainglorious dictators, and exploring the monuments of our own day, from souvenir chunks of the Berlin Wall to the fibre-glass theme parks of Las Vegas.

361 Peter McDonald

Tower Poetry - A Tower Miscellany
Launch of A Tower Miscellany, edited by Peter McDonald, marking 10 years of Tower Poetry. Peter McDonald, poet, will host the event and introduce readings by some of the featured poets. Miscellany poets include Frances Leviston, Stephen Burt, Olivia Cole and Miriam Gamble and the event will feature poets reading their work. Tower Poetry, based at Christ Church, aims to stimulate an enjoyment and critical appreciation of poetry, particularly among young people, and to encourage them to write their own poetry.

362 Patti Smith

Just Kids
Writer, artist and performer Patti Smith has recorded ten albums and written five books, and her artwork has been exhibited worldwide. In 2005 she received the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the highest grade awarded by the French Republic to eminent artists and writers who have contributed significantly to furthering the arts throughout the world.

Patti Smith reveals how a chance encounter changed the course of her life. Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith, became kindred spirits and together pursed their mutual dreams. Each eventually reached the pinnacle of artistic achievement, even though their vow to care for each other underwent painful trials and separations. Mapplethorpe's unforgettable portrait of Smith for the cover of Horses forever fuses their indelible mark on our culture. Patti Smith’s Just Kids is about friendship in the truest sense, and the artist's calling.

381 Ian Blair, Roger Graef, Robert Reiner, Chaired by Jean Seaton

‘Having gone truncheons to tasers in a generation, I also have to wonder what purpose the current Police Service has been built for... Once people get over the quasi military kit, we are mostly approachable and pleasant people, it’s just that we dress like Imperial Stormtroopers.’ Policing has undergone a huge transformation over the last 15 years, as suggested by Orwell Prize-winning police blogger ‘Jack Night’, but what do the next few years hold for the Service? Join Ian Blair (former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, author of Policing Controversy), Roger Graef (broadcaster, producer of Thames Valley Police) and Robert Reiner (Professor of Criminology, author) as they discuss the future of policing with Jean Seaton, Director of the Orwell Prize.

382 Paul Davies

Are we alone in the vastness of the universe? Is ET out there, but not sending any messages our way? Might we be surrounded by messages we simply don't recognise? Paul Davies, best selling author, physicist and Chair of the Search or Extraterrestrial Intelligence Post-detection Task Group, says we should forget about looking to receive messages from ET, and be concentrating instead on all physical and astronomical anomalies as potential signatures of intelligence. In The Eerie Silence, he asks if we have been looking in the wrong place, at the wrong time and in the wrong way.

384 Ariana Franklin, Giles Kristian & MC Scott

Law and Disorder in Historical Fiction
Three historical novelists who have a similar approach to history, but work within different eras, come together to discuss their latest books. All three have new books coming out this year and they have all been praised for their meticulous research and story-telling abilities.

MC Scott is the author of the popular Boudica series, has set her latest book Rome the Emperor’s Spy during Emperor Nero’s rule. Giles Kristian, whose debut novel Raven became a Waterstone’s bestseller has just brought out the second Raven Adventure Sons of Thunder. And Ariana Franklin writes historical crime novels which follow the career of Adelia Aguilar, a forensic specialist struggling with her skills in Henry 2nd’s England.

383 Barbara Trapido

Sex and Stravinsky
Barbara Trapido’s writing is so sparklingly clear and witty that it can come as a shock to realise how strong an undertow runs beneath the surface.

This time she gives us Sex and Stravinsky, set in 1995, which introduces a mix of people from different spheres. This novel throws up the complexity, cruelty and richness of the global world while, a sequence of personal stories come together like a dance; a masquerade in which things are not always as they seem. From far and wide they are all draw together to Jack’s place – or is he Jacques? Or Giacomo? The answer rests within those final pages.

388 Anthony Sattin

A Winter on the Nile, Florence Nightingale, Gustavo Flaubert and the Temptations of Egypt

In the winter of 1849 Florence Nightingale was an unknown 29 year-old- beautiful, well-born and deeply unhappy. After clashing with her parents over her refusal to marry, she was offered a lifeline by family friends who suggested a trip to Egypt.

This book follows her journey along the Nile, which helped her emotional recovery and gave her the strength to pursue her dream of a career in nursing. By extraordinary coincidence, taking the same boat was an unpublished French writer, Gustave Flaubert, who like Nightingale was at the crossroads in his life.

Anthony Sattin is the author of several highly acclaimed books, including Lifting the Veil, The Pharaoh's Shadow and The Gates of Africa.

387 Louise Medus

No Hand To Hold & No Legs to Dance on: Laughing and Loving - A Thalidomide Survivor's Story

This magnificently frank and breezy book - which is often very funny - is a survivor's story, a triumph of the human spirit over adversity. Louise was born Louise Mason, a victim of the devastating drug Thalidomide. Born without arms and legs, she is the daughter of David Mason, who held out against the drug company, the legal establishment and all the other parents of Thalidomide victims in the high-profile fight for proper compensation.

Few people realised she did not live with her wealthy parents at their spacious North London home, but was being brought up in an institution. This is a survivor's story of an amazing woman who has been an active disability rights campaigner and has now found love with a fellow Thalidomide victim born without arms.

385 Owen Sheers

Art of the Sea: In Words
Majestic, dramatic, and sometimes terrifying, the sea has had an enduring fascination for British writers. From Shakespeare to Coleridge and Tennyson, Stevenson to Conrad, it has inspired some of our most gifted authors. In BBC Four's Art of the Sea: In Words poet and author, Owen Sheers, sets off to discover whether there is anything that unites the great British sea stories. In the company of both seafarers and sea writers, he explores the transformative effect that the sea has had on the human mind.

Event lasts 1 hour 15 minutes.

386 to David Freeman Talking Blues

Talking Blues
David Freeman presents the weekly Blues and Boogie Show on Jazz FM.
Here he discusses with fellow enthusiasts the way the blues has been a potent vehicle to express personal pain - and indeed joy - but has also been a valuable force for social reform. David will be joined by musicians who will show how blues music travelled and spread from its roots in the Southern States to become a true world music when it evolved into rock 'n roll.

Marcus Bonfanti is living proof that the power of the blues still exists and can inspire and excite as much as it did 80 years ago. You don't have to be an old man from Mississippi to play the blues - a well mannered and charming
27 year old from North London can do it just as well.

This event will last 1hr 30mins. With Live Music.

401 Russell Celyn Jones & Owen Sheers

New Stories from the Mabinogion
An exciting new series of contemporary novels from leading authors, reworking the medieval myth cycle, the Mabinogion launches with Owen Sheers’s White Ravens and Russell Celyn Jones’s The Ninth Wave. White Ravens is a modern reinvention of one of the best-known tales Branwen, Daughter a Llyr, which is the story of Bbendigeidfran, the giant king of Britain and his sister Branwen.

The Ninth Wave is the retelling of Pwyll, Lord of Dyfed, in which Russell Celyn Jones swaps the magical for the psychological and the courtly for the post-feminist.

422 Jane Haynes & Maggie Hyde. Chaired by Roderick Main

Carl Gustav Jung was the most enigmatic and controversial of the early depth psychologists, who supplemented Freud's work with crucial questions about religion and the soul. Join our discussion based on one of our most popular titles in Introducing series. The discussion will cover Jung's life and work, his science and scholarship, and his exploration into the psychology of religion, alchemy and astrology, as well as his infamous Red Book.

Speakers will be Maggie Hyde, author of Introducing Jung, Jane Haynes, the author of Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am? The Journal of a Psychotherapist, and Roderick Main PhD (Chair), Director of the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex and author of The Rupture of Time: Synchronicity and Jung's Critique of Modern Western Culture.

421 Roma Tearne

The Swimmer
"Roma Tearne's latest novel The Swimmer is a gripping captivating story about love, loss and what home really means.

It's the tale of 43 year old Ria who struggled to find love until she discovers the swimmer, an illegal immigrant from Sri Lanka, who is awaiting a decision from the Home Office on his asylum application. Although he is 20 years her junior, their romance is unconventional but deeply moving defying both boundaries and cultures. That is until tragedy occurs."

424 Aamer Hussein and Neel Mukherjee, Chaired by Elleke Boehmer

While the Indian English novel has attracted much critical and popular attention in recent years, the Pakistani novel in English is a relative newcomer to the scene, drawing praise and interest in its own right. Neel Mukherjee, joint winner of the Vodafone-Crossword Award, India’s premier literary award for writing in English, and Aamer Hussien author of Another Gulmohar Tree are joined by Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature at Oxford University, in an exploration of the intricate dimensions that define the South Asian novel in English from its Indian and Pakistani perspectives.

423 - Samir El-youssef, Brian Klug and Rabbi Danny Rich, Chaired by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Is it possible to talk about Israel and Palestine without the conversation collapsing? Can any progress be made unless we can find a way of making each side listen to the thoughts and fears of the other? Even in Britain this subject is becoming impossible to raise. Sound and fury torpedoes all discourse, ending in unresolved emotion and resistance, accusations and counter accusations. This panel is an experiment. Can we, quietly and reasonably, trying to muster empathy, try to break the deadlock and begin a process? Join Brian Klug (A Time to Speak Out and Offence: The Jewish Case).Chaired by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, author and award winning journalist now a columnist with The Independent. Other speakers to be confirmed.

444 Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers

"Zeitoun is a poignant, haunting, ethereal story about New Orleans in peril. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans residents Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun are cast into an unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water.

Good Samaritan Abdulrahman has stayed in the city, traversing its flooded streets by canoe, feeding trapped dogs and rescuing survivors as New Orleans becomes a danger zone. But nothing can prepare him for the wholly unexpected nightmare that follows.

This is a major work by one of our most important writers, Dave Eggers, who was one of three 2008 TED Prize recipients and was named one of the 50 Visionaries Who are Changing the world by Utne Reader."

445 Oxford Poets Walking Tour

2 - 4 pm.

Meet outside St John's College Lodge, St Giles

Oxford University produced a rich crop of poets in the Twentieth Century - from First World War poets like Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden, through 'the pylon poets' of the 1920s and 1930s (such as WH Auden and Louis MacNeice) to Philip Larkin, Keith Douglas and distinguished contemporary poets - not forgetting, of course, John Betjeman. Enjoy readings from their poetry and prose, from St John's College to Merton.

443 Tom Bower

The Squeeze: Oil Money and Greed in the 21st Century
"Over the last 20 years, oil prices have soared from $7 a barrel to $147 and down to $37. Amid economic boom and bust, speculators, traders, politicians and monarchs have plotted to earn fortunes from oil and prayed for salvation from unpredictable natural and man-made disasters. Overweening vanity and greed absorb those titans whose ambitions are forging the world’s quest for oil.

Tom Bower presents the untold story of the most important quandary of our times: why, if there is plentiful oil in the earth, does mankind face a dire shortage threatening our lives?"

442 Kishwar Desai Interviewed by Elleke Boehmer

Kishwar Desai has written journalism internationally on issues of social injustice and women’s issues. Here she talks to Elleke Boehmer (Professor of World Literature at Oxford University) about her first novel which focuses on the terrible subject of female foeticide and about the role of women in Indian society.

441 Owen Sheers talks to Jem Poster

Poets in Conversation
"Novelist and award-winning poet Owen Sheers will be in conversation with fellow poet and novelist Jem Poster and reading poems from his two collections The Blue Book and Skirrid Hill.

Owen Sheers is also known for his BBC Four series and accompanying book A Poet's Guide to Britain. A collection of the most powerful and unforgettable poetry written about the landscape of Great Britain. Selected by Owen, it celebrates not only the natural scenery of Britain, but the human investment in the landscape."

462: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Rosemary Barron, Renee Hirschon and Claudia Roden

The Diaspora, or the scattering of people, is an experience many of us now share.
Food is about roots and identity as well as pleasure, comfort and conviviality. To a migrating people it is a link with their past and an old homeland. Three writers, Rosemary Barron, Director of Oxford Gastronomica, Claudia Roden, expert on Jewish and Middle Eastern cuisines and Nikos Stavroulakis, historian, and founder of the Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania, Crete, will discuss the power of food to evoke memories of family, to assuage the pain and nostalgia of exile, and its role in affirming identity and aiding social cohesion within dispersed.

463 Aminatta Forna

"Aminatta Forna was named by Vanity Fair as one of Africa's most promising new writers and her novel Ancestor Stones was selected by the Washington Post as one of the most important books of 2006. Here she talks about her stunning new novel, The Memory of Love - an exploration of obsessive love.

In an African city Elias Cole, a former lecturer, reflects on his past, on his youth in England and his obsession with Saffia, a woman he loved, and his colleague, her husband Julius. When he meets the psychologist Adrian Lockheart, who is new to Africa, a relationship develops between the two men which explores the full extent of Elias's involvement with Saffia and Julius, and exposes unsettling truths which Adrian himself must address."

461 Angela Thirwell

Into the Frame: The Four Loves of Ford Madox Brown
"Angela Thirwell's Into the Frame is a vivid account of the public art and private demons of Ford Madox Brown, the finest but lease understood of artists in the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and the four central women in his life: his two wives and models and his two secret loves.

Richly illustrated throughout, based on new research and written with verve and sympathy, Angela Thirwell offers readers a rare opportunity to explore the life of a great artist and to enter a fascinating and world of Victorian bohemianism."

466 Philip Pullman, Kate Clanchy, Helen Cross, William Fiennes, Katie Waldegrave

RSL First Story
‘Writing,’ says Philip Pullman, ‘can liberate and strengthen young people’s sense of themselves as almost nothing else can.’ First Story, a charity which arranges for acclaimed authors to work as writers-in- residence in challenging state schools, has now launched in three schools in Oxford. At this special event, Philip discusses how creative writing can transform lives with First Story's Katie Waldegrave and writers Kate Clanchy, Helen Cross and William Fiennes, and introduces readings from pupils taking part in the project.

465 Simon Rae & Charlotte Edwards

Winning the Ashes: Living the Dream, in fiction and in fact

Suitable for Children over the age of 9

Award-winning author of the ‘definitive’ biography W.G. Grace, Simon Rae now turns to fiction. In Unplayable, his latest cricket book, schoolboy Tom Marlin discovers a mysterious power to bamboozle batsmen of any calibre. This takes him to the very top and a chance to win the Ashes. ‘What better fantasy than this?’ asked Nicholas Lezard in the Guardian. Charlotte Edwards MBE has lived the dream, and the captain of the all-conquering England Women’s team, and will be talking about her real-life experiences as a leading woman cricketer.

487 William Nicholson

Suitable for children over 13 years

Playwright, screenwriter and novelist William Nicholson, whose credits include Shadowlands, Gladiator and The Wind Singer trilogy, has now written Rich and Mad, the story, for young adults, of a teenage love affair. He discusses what he sees as the "pornification of teenage sex" with consultant child and adult psychotherapist Gerry Byrne.

484 Michael Longley

Tower Poetry - Snow Water
Michael Longley has published eight collections of poetry including Gorse Fires which won the Whitbread Prize and The Weather in Japan which won the Hawthornden Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. His most recent collection Snow Water won the Librex Montale Prize. His Collected Poems was published in 2006. In 2001 he received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. This event will be a delight for all poetry lovers.

485 Martin Bell

A Very British Revolution: The Expenses Scandal and How to Save Our Democracy
Penned by former independent MP Martin Bell, A Very British Revolution uses his insider's perspective to take a long, hard look at the MPs' expenses scandal. Explaining how the crisis arose, he also lays out his prescription for healing the deep wounds inflicted by the scandal. As Martin puts it: "The revolution will not be complete until all the rogues in the House are gone and public confidence in the MPs remaining is restored."

482 Helen Rappaport

Beautiful for Ever
"Helen Rapport has unearthed the extraordinary story of Madame Rachel of Bond Street, the Victorian cosmetician, con artist and blackmailer, who changed her fortunes by appealing to the desire of society women to enhance their looks with forbidden cosmetics.

Her campaign of blackmail began once she arrived in London and acquired premises in Bond Street, to which veiled ladies arrived in close carriages. It was her address book, which enabled her to blackmail her clients who paid dearly for their vanity."

486 John Harris - Gin Tasting

Gin, with its fragrant and colourful history, has made a long journey to become Britain’s favourite spirit aperitif. Take a break from the Festival’s literary treats and join John Harris, Steward of Christ Church, who leads this tasting of five different gins, all of which may surprise you with their difference, diversity and restorative qualities!

Event lasts from 6pm to 7.30pm

488 Alexi Sayle - Glass of Wine and Short Story Reading - Cancelled

Event Cancelled

The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award is the world's biggest and most lucrative prize for a single short story, with £25,000 going to the winner. Ahead of the announcement of the winning entry at the festival on Friday, March 26, the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival is offering festival goers the chance, on three successive evenings (March 23, 24 and 25), to judge for themselves the shortlisted entries. Come and enjoy a glass of wine in a relaxed atmosphere as two of the six stories get their first reading in public.

491 Dinner Anne Menzies & Jenny Uglow

includes reception, three-course dinner and wine. Dress Code: Lounge Suits

May 2012 sees the 350th Anniversary of King Charles II’s return to England in 1660 – and ‘the Glorious Restoration’ of the Monarchy.

To mark the occasion a special Festival Dinner is being staged, with a dramatic menu that might have been served to Charles II on a visit to Oxford in the 1660’s. Researched by Food Historian, Anne Menzies, this memorable Dinner will be produced by Christ Church Chef Chris Simms and his team.

After dinner, Jenny Uglow will talk about her acclaimed account (A Gambling Man: Charles II and The Restoration) of Charles II’s first 10 years on the throne, a decade which witnessed the Plague, the Great Fire of London and War with the Dutch.

481 David Boyd Haycock

A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists & the Great War
"David Boyd Haycock tells the story of Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, Christopher Nevinson and Stanley Spencer, who were five of the most important British artists of the twentieth century.

From diverse backgrounds they met at the Slade School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture in London between 1908 and 1910, in what their teacher Henry Tonks later described as the school's last crisis of brilliance. They loved, taught and fought, formed gangs and created or joined new movements, slept with their models and prostitutes until finally their tempestuous lifestyles descended into obsession, murder and suicide."

492 Ann Cleeves & Chris Stout

Detective Jimmy Perez knows it will be a difficult homecoming when he returns to Fair Isle to introduce his fiancée, Fran, to his parents. It's a community where everyone knows each other, and strangers, while welcomed, are still viewed with a degree of mistrust. With the autumn storms raging, the island feels cut off from the rest of the world. Trapped, tension is high and tempers become frayed. Enough to drive someone to murder...

And so begins Blue Lightning the final in Anne Cleeves the Shetland Quartet.

Listen to Anne Cleeves talk about and read from her Shetland Quartet interwoven with music from Chris Stout. Afterwards join them for oatcakes, salmon and ales brewed from the Isle of Unst.

Food and ales kindly provided by Promote Shetland

489 Andrew Graham-Dixon

The Man Who Ate Everything
Join Andrew Graham-Dixon for his affectionate BBC Four portrait of the late and indisputably great Alan Davidson, one of the world's most influential writers and thinkers on food, together with an exploration of Davidson’s magnum opus, The Oxford Companion to Food. This programme forms part of a forthcoming BBC Four season on food. With contributions from many of Davidson's friends and collaborators, such as Paul Levy and Raymond Blanc, the film charts a journey through Davidson's life and work that takes Andrew from Davidson's roots in England to his exotic flowering as a student of arcane fish cuisine on the banks of the great Mekong River in Laos…

Event lasts 1hr 15mins

483 Brian Moore interviewed by David Walsh

Beware of the Dog: Rugby's Hard Man Reveals All

Brian Moore, or 'Pitbull' as he came to be known during nearly a decade at the heart of the England rugby team's pack, established himself as one of the game's original hard men. Yet, for all his bullishness on and off the pitch, there is a more unconventional, complicated side. A solicitor by trade, Moore's love of fine wine and preference for reading Shakespeare in the dressing room before games, mark him out as anything but the stereotypical rugby player. Introduced by David Walsh, chief sports correspondent of the Sunday Times, hear Moore talk with astounding frankness about the shocking events, both personal and professional, that have gone towards shaping him over the years.

490 Philip Ball

The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't do Without it

All human cultures seem to make music - both today and throughout history. But why do they do so? Why music can excite deep passions and how we make sense of musical sound at all are questions that have, until recently, remained profoundly mysterious. Philip Ball, consultant editor for Nature, reveals what is known - and what is still unknown - about how music works its magic, and why it seems indispensable to humanity. He will not only deepen your appreciation of the music you love, but will also open a window on forms of music that once seemed alien, dull or daunting.

505 Selina Hastings & Adam Sisman

Award-winning biographers Selina Hastings and Adam Sisman present a detailed account of the tremendous feud between two of their most formidable subjects: Hugh Trevor-Roper (Sisman) and Evelyn Waugh (Hastings). They also discuss relations between biographer and subject, and the complications of friendship.

Selina Hastings’s The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham was published in 2009. She has also written lives of Nancy Mitford, Rosamund Lehmann and Evelyn Waugh. Adam Sisman’s Hugh Trevor-Roper: A Biography will be published this summer. He has previously written a life of A.J.P. Taylor, a “biography” of the Life of Johnson, and a biographical study of the friendship between Wordsworth and Coleridge."

503 Ruth Rendell Interviewed by David Grylls

Acclaimed crime writer Ruth Rendell will discuss with David Grylls the latest edition of the Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes, for which she has supplied the introduction. How important has Holmes been in the history of detective fiction? What differences does she see between Conan Doyle's great detective and her own sleuth, Chief Inspector Wexford? Would she ever kill off her own creation?

This event is jointly sponsored by Oxford University Department for Continuing Education and Kellogg College, Oxford.

504 Kat Banyard

The Equality Illusion: The Truth about Women and Men Today

Women have made huge strides in equality over the last century and feminism is now generally considered irrelevant or even embarrassing. But what about the fact that today's women working full-time in the UK are paid on average 17% less than men, or that one in three women world wide have been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused because of her gender?

Campaigner Kat Banyard argues passionately and articulately that feminism continues to be one of he most urgent and relevant social justice campaigns today.

506 Paul Quarrie

Oxford has always abounded in book collectors and libraries from the Middle Ages onwards. Generally acquired for use rather than show, many of these private collections have survived because they have ended up in institutions. This talk will take some half a dozen figures ranging from figures like Robert Burton and Anthony A Wood in the seventeenth century, whose libraries have been studied in detail, to Sir Robert Taylor the architect, Philip Bliss the antiquary, Sir Thomas Brooke, some of whose books are at Keble, A.H. Sayce the assyriologist, the great Greek scholar Ingram Bywater and most recently John Sparrow Warden of All Souls and the late Bent Juel-Jensen, who did so much to encourage bibliophily amongst the young.

Paul Quarrie FSA has worked extensively in the field of rare books as academic, librarian, and senior director of Sotheby's. He now works part-time with Maggs Bros of Berkeley Square, and is writing a book on 18th century collections. His most recent publication is a contribution to Libraries within a Library published by the British library in 2009.

502 John Lister Kaye

John Lister Kaye
For the last 30 years John Lister-Kaye, one of Britain's best-known nature writers, has taken the same circular walk from his home deep in a Scottish glen up to a small hill loch. Each day brings a new observation or an unexpected encounter - a fragile spider's web, an osprey struggling to lift a trout from the water or a Woodcock exquisitely camouflaged on her nest - and every day, on his return home he records his thoughts in a journal.

At The Water's Edge, is a collection of these wonderful wildlife encounters.

501 Adrian Tinniswood

Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the 17th Century Mediterranean
"Pirates of Barbary is an extraordinary record of the European renegades and Islamic sea-rovers who terrorised the Mediterranean and beyond throughout the 17th Century.

Drawing on an incredible wealth of material including from furious royal proclamations to the private letters of pirates and their victims, Adrian Tinniswood paints a kaleidoscopic image of a wild and exotic people, place and time.

Many of the extraordinary stories he reveals are of quite ordinary men from Britain and Europe who turned their backs on their homelands in pursuit of wealth and infamy on the high seas."

522 Tristan Gooley

The Natural Navigator
"Tristan Gooley has spent years practising and teaching natural navigation as a way of enriching journeys and reconnecting with the world. His book The Natural Navigator, blends natural science, myth, folklore and the history of travel to introduce his readers to the ancient art of finding their way using nature's own signposts.

He tells us how the Ancient Greeks used the stars to chart their course and why some trees grow in a particular shape that can help us find our way. He even explains how natural signs can be used to navigate in the heart of the city and how you can discover north by simply looking into a puddle."

525 Bee Rowlatt & May Witwit

Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad is the true-life account of an unlikely friendship that develops between Bee, a part-time radio producer living in north London, and May, a hard-talking, chain-smoking Iraqi university lecturer living in Baghdad.

When a simple email brings them together, they discover a friendship that overcomes all their differences of culture, religion and age.

In 2007, when May discovers she is on an assassination list because of her job at the university, and two of her colleagues are murdered, Bee helps May apply for refugee status and plan her escape to the UK, in which the book became a vital part.

524 Robert Lacey

Saudi Arabia is a country defined by paradox: it sits atop some of the richest oil deposits in he world, and yet the country's rolling disaffection produced sixteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. It is a modern state driven by contemporary technology, and yet its powerful religious establishment would have its customs and practices rolled back to match those of the Prophet Muhammed which date back more than 1,000 years

In this fascinating book, veteran British journalist and best selling author Robert Lacey gives us one of the most penetrating and insightful looks at Saudi Arabia ever produced. "Compelling ... I know of no book that captures so convincingly the intimate connection between the kingdom and the rise of al-Qaeda and its jihadist ideology." The Economist

521 Peter McDonald, Stephen Romer & Michael Schmidt

Tower Poetry - The Best Young Poets
Join the judges Stephen Romer, Michael Schmidt & Peter McDonald as they present the prizes to the winners of the 10th Tower Poetry competition. This event will also include the first performance of 'Villanelle' by Sophie Stephenson-Wright (2009 runner-up) set to music by Jonathan Pitkin. Established following a bequest to Christ Church, by the late Christopher Tower, Tower Poetry aims to stimulate an enjoyment and critical appreciation of poetry, particularly among young people, and to encourage them to write their own poetry.

523 Max Hastings

Did You Really Shoot the Television?
"Award winning foreign correspondent Max Hastings is the son of broadcaster and adventurer Macdonald Hastings and the famous columnist and editor of Harper's Bazaar Anne Scott-James. One of his grandfathers was a literary editor while the other wrote plays and an enchanting memoir of his own Victorian childhood. His great-uncle was an African hunter who wrote poetry and became one of Max's heroes.

Max Hastings tells us about this remarkable cast of forebears, 'a tribe of eccentrics' as he himself characterises them, with guest appearances by a host of celebrities from Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad to John Betjeman and Osbert Lancaster.

'All families are dysfunctional', his mother asserted impenitently to Max, but his family managed to be more dysfunctional than most."

542 Patricia Fara

Science: A Four Thousand Year History
This is a truly global history, looking not just at the more familiar story of science in Europe, but also at the contributions of China and the Islamic empire, so offering a tale that starts at the very beginning and comes right up to the 21st century. Patricia Fara takes us from ancient Babylon to genetics and particle physics, showing the world of science as part of the cut and thrust of war, politics, business and personal ambition throughout the centuries.

543 Adrian Elliott, Peter Hitchens, Chris Woodhead, Chaired by Joanne Harris

Ten years on from David Blunkett's announced plans for academy schooling funded largely by private business, we begin the second of our Education Matters series by asking whether excellence in achievement has truly disappeared forever from British schooling. Are pupils aiming only to pass exams? Should children leave school with skills or knowledge? Or is everything on the up and up? Chaired by author Joanne Harris, these issues will be discusssed in a lively debate by Chris Woodhead, former Chief Inspector of Schools and author of A Desolation of Learning; Adrian Elliott, TES columnist and author of State Schools Since the 1950s: The Good News; and outspoken author and columnist Peter Hitchens.

541 John Burnside talks to Jem Poster

Poets in Conversation

"Award winning novelist and poet John Burnside will be in conversation with fellow poet and novelist Jam Poster and reading poems from his latest collection The Hunt in The Forest.

In these poems of hunting and predation, he explores our most deep-rooted and primeval pursuits: romantic love, memory, selfhood, grief and the recollection of he dead.

His poems take us on a journey out of the light and into darkness, where we may just as easily lose ourselves as find what we are looking for."

545 Julie Summers

Relative Strangers is the untold story of wartime evacuation. Julie is looking at what happened to the children evacuated in wartime Britain when they came home. Using documentary evidence compiled after the war and recent interviews she reveals a rich picture of how the children who returned from the country, from America and from all over the Commonwealth fared in the aftermath. She will talk about the surprises encountered along the way and some of the pitfalls of oral history.

546 C.S. Lewis Walking Tour

2 - 4pm.

Meet outside the Eagle and Child Pub, St Giles

The poet John Betjeman described his tutor, C S Lewis as 'breezy, tweedy, beer-drinking and jolly' - a remarkable figure for many years on the Oxford landscape. Author of The Narnia Chronicles, The Screwtape Letters and much else besides, he was also a respected English don at Magdalen College. The tour begins outside The Eagle and Child pub, where Lewis and friends met regularly in a group called The Inklings and ends at Magdalen College. It also visits St Mary's Church, central to Lewis's Oxford life and creativity.

547 Richard Olivier

Event lasts until 5.30pm

An experimental workshop - using the myth of renewal in Shakespeare’s 'As you like it' - to explore new ways to create change in the culture of teams, groups and organisations. It invites us to leave behind our old habits and approach to problems and instead become present to what will truly sustain us. And combines story with psychological insight and creative exercises to explore issues faced by modern leaders. The workshop will be led by Richard Olivier (son of Laurence Olivier) who directed ‘Henry V’ for the opening of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in 1997, Richard is the Artistic Director and founder of Olivier Mythodrama – a unique leadership development consultancy. He has spoken all over the World and was a guest speaker at the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2003 and 2009.

This is a unique opportunity for festivalgoers to work with one of the leading international leadership development consultants.

Book early, places limited to 40

544 Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall

When war broke out in 1939, the government created the Ministry of Food to help families make the most of wartime rations.

Today, in the face of rising food prices, an obesity epidemic and ever increasing food miles, The Ministry of Food shows how modern families can survive the credit crunch with a bit of wartime wisdom and ingenuity.

Written by best-selling author Jane Fearnley-Wittingsall, this book is an invaluable handbook which accompanies a major new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum.

563 Mike Lant, George Monbiot, Ronald Oxburgh & James Smith

Energy Matters: Land for Food or Energy?
Concerns over greenhouse gas emissions and security of supply has encouraged governments to introduce legislation to support biofuels to replace gasoline and diesel fuels. The agricultural industry has accordingly switched production for food to transport fuels. Does this make sense in world where famine still exists and whose population is approaching 7bn?
George Monbiot, writer and investigative journalist, will debate this important topic with Mike Lant, global licensing manager for world leading agribusiness, Syngenta and James Smith, Director, Edinburgh Global Development Academy. Lord Ronald Oxburgh, previously chief scientist to MOD and Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell will chair the debate.

561 Helen Dunmore Interviewed by Jem Poster

The Betrayal
"A gripping and deeply moving portrait of life in post-war Soviet Russia, The Betrayal involves the reader in an epic struggle of ordinary people who strive to survive during a time of violence and terror. Set in Leningrad during 1952, a city recovering from war, where Andrea, a young hospital doctor and Anna, a nursery school teacher, are forging a life together, it brings together colourful characters living in a land ruled by whispers and watchfulness.

This stirring book is a sequel to Helen Dunmore’s best selling novel The Siege, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and a Costa Book Award."

564 Clive Bloom, Nick Harkaway, George Mann, Peggy Vance, Michael Alcock, Chaired by Barry Turner

How to Write A Bestseller
What truly makes a bestseller? What do agents and publishers look for when they sign a new author? What are the differences between a fiction and a non-fiction bestseller?

Chaired by Barry Turner, editor of The Writer’s Handbook, the definitive guide to getting your book published, these questions and more will be discussed in a lively debate between Clive Bloom, author of Bestsellers, novelist Nick Harkaway, Sci-fi fiction author George Mann, Peggy Vance, Publisher at Dorling Kindersley and Michael Alcock, Literary agent at Johnson & Alcock.

565 AC Grayling

Thinking of Answers: Questions in the Philosophy of Everyday Life
The essays in AC Grayling’s Thinking of Answers are responses to questions set by editors and readers. If, for example, beauty existed only in the eye of the beholder, would that make it an unimportant quality? Are human rights political and can ethics be derived from evolution by natural selection?

As in his previous books of popular philosophy, rather than presenting a set of categorical answers, AC Grayling offers suggestions for how to think about every aspect of a question and arrive at one’s own conclusions.

562 David Dimbleby

The Seven Ages of Britain
"The Seven Ages of Britain is a unique exploration of British History by David Dimbleby, which was televised on BBC 1 and BBC 2.

His book which accompanied the series brings together leading experts who vividly capture each period of history, beginning with the mysterious Pictish carvings and Roman mosaics that reveal the legacy of Britain's many invaders.

As David Dimbleby guides us through the seven ages of Britain, he journeys from the riches of the Middle Ages, to the innovation of the Restoration, the exotica of the British Empire and finally to the twentieth century modernism."

567 Ashmolean Museum Walking Tour

The University of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology has re-opened to universal acclaim - after a £61 million scheme to extend and refurbish its buildings. The Director of The Ashmolean Museum, Dr Christopher Brown will conduct a tour of both the historic and new galleries while highlighting some of the great treasures of the collections now on display.

586: Andrew Rawnsley, in Conversation with Martin Ivens

The End of the Party is packed with more astonishing revelations as Andrew Rawnsley takes up the New Labour story from the day of its second election victory in 2001.

There are riveting inside accounts of all the key events from 9/11 to the Iraq War to the financial crisis and the parliamentary expenses scandal; and entertaining portraits of the main players as Andrew Rawnsley takes you through the triumphs and tribulations of New Labour. He also highlights the astonishing feuds and reconciliations between Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson.

590 Paul Edwards accompanied by Yolanda Morató

Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) is a key figure in English Modernism, both as a painter and a writer. He was one of the first abstract painters in Europe, and is considered by some to be the 20th century equivalent of William Blake. The most fascinating personality of our time – T S Eliot, 1920.

The largest exhibition ever held of his visual and literary work is currently on show in Madrid at the Juan March Foundation until 16 May. Paul Edwards, Professor of English and History of Art at Bath Spa University, is the author of Wyndham Lewis: Painter and Writer and was guest curator for the exhibition. He will be giving an illustrated talk on the exhibition, and will explain why Wyndham Lewis remains largely neglected in his own country. He will be assisted by Yolanda Morató who translated Lewis’s works into Spanish.

581 Centre for Inquiry Presents: A Debate Between Peter Stanford & Stephen Law

What sort of "faith schools" are acceptable, if any?
"Do faith schools help build communities, or divide them? Do they educate, or indoctrinate? Do they raise principled moral citizens, or dangerous moral sheep? Should a school that discriminates against staff and pupils on the basis of faith receive state funding?

Peter Stanford is a former editor of the Catholic Herald, and an award-winning journalist and broadcaster. His biographies have included Lord Longford, C Day-Lewis, Bronwen Astor and the Devil. His latest book, The Extra Mile: The Twenty First Century Pilgrim, is published in March. Peter had two children at faith schools and is a foundation governor of one.

Stephen Law is a philosopher and the author of a book on faith schools called ""The War For Children's Minds"". Stephen will argue that the state funding of faith schools should be abolished, and that every child at every school should be reminded regularly that religious belief is something each one of them is free to accept or reject. Indeed, Stephen is not convinced faith schools should be permitted at all."

589 Wine and Short Story Reading

Glass of Wine and a Short-Story Reading with Alexei Sayle
The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award is the world's biggest and most lucrative prize for a single short story, with £25,000 going to the winner. Ahead of the announcement of the winning entry at the festival on Friday, March 26, The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival isoffering festival goers the chance to judge for themselves the winning entries. Come and enjoy a glass of wine and hear writer and performer Alexei Sayle in conversation with some of the short- listed candidates as they discuss and read extracts from their work. Chair: The Sunday Times short story editor Cathy Galvin

582 Marc Wright & Gaby Hinsliff

Twitter YouTube Blogs - Has the Citizen Journalist Taken Over?
From China and Iran to a London demonstration, the power of on the spot mobile phone photos and web messages has changed forever the way we gather and receive news. But is this always positive? Can we trust news from the new breed of citizen journalists? How does this affect the more traditional reporting from experienced journalists? Social media expert Marc Wright publisher of simply-communicate.com, the knowledge site for communication debates the issue with journalist Gaby Hinsliff, former Observer political editor who blogs regularly on a range of issues from politics to work life balance.

587 Ian Jack & Peter Kellner

With a General Election imminent, it’s a good time to consider what the future might hold for the UK. How different will its destiny be, depending on the result of the election? Will we experience as much change in the next half-century as we have in the last 50 years? And will there even be a ‘Great Britain’ in the near, let alone distant, future? Our distinguished panel will share their thoughts on past, present and times to come.

With Ian Jack (journalist, author of The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain) and Peter Kellner (journalist, president of YouGov)

588 John le Carré

John le Carré is one of the world's foremost novelists, a writer whose work transcends the narrow boundaries of genre to address vital issues about the individual, and about the world. In this rare public platform appearance, le Carré will give a talk about his work, and will receive from the Sunday Times literary editor Andrew Holgate the prestigious Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, past recipients of which have included Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Anthony Burgess and Tom Stoppard.

592 Andrew Martin

BBC Four Screening: Disappearing Dads
The world of literature reserves a special fate for fathers: they are either missing or marginalised, or regarded as an embarrassment. In a new programme coming soon to BBC Four, novelist and father Andrew Martin, takes us on a journey through three centuries of literary fatherhood from Jane Austen to Nick Hornby, while also looking at how real-life relationships between writers and their fathers have influenced fiction and non-fiction alike. Introduced by Andrew Martin with Questions and Answers from the audience.

Event lasts 1 hour 15 minutes

583 David Eagleman

Sum - Forty Tales from the Afterlives
"What happens to us when we die? And what does that tell us about being human? In the afterlife you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence. Or you may find the afterlife contains only those people whom you remember.

In this collection of imagined tales, neuroscientist David Eagleman kicks over traditional notions and offers a dazzling lens through which to see ourselves here and now. His stories are rooted in science, romance and awe of our mysterious existence.

'SUM is terrific. It's such a good idea that I was grinding my teeth all the way through wishing I'd thought of it first. The inventiveness, the clarity and wit of the prose, the calm air of moral understanding that pervades the whole thing, add up to something completely original.' Philip Pullman"

584 John Burnside

Waking Up in Toytown

"Waking Up in Toytown, is award-winning poet John Burnside's new memoir and sequel to his celebrated account of a troubled childhood in A Lie About My Father.

After a decade of drug abuse and borderline mental illness he runs away to the suburbs to live what he hopes will be a normal life. The suburbs, though, are not quite as normal as he imagined and he relapses into chaos. Here he talks about his quest for peace and mental security as the ghosts and terrors closed in and the illusion of Surbiton fell apart.

Unflinchingly honest, this is the story of one man's search for sanity - but it is also, in its own way the true story of an impossible, unmanageable love."

591 Phillip Blond, Simon Lee, Andrew Rawnsley and Peter Snowdon

Is this the end of the party for New Labour, has David Cameron set the Conservatives on full recovery from their disastrous electoral defeat in 1997, and are conventional politics at a crossroads? Who will pick up the pieces of catastrophic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the parliamentary expenses scandal and manage the fall-out from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression? Hear our panel of leading writers: Andrew Rawnsley, chief political commentator for the Observer, regular broadcaster, and author of The End of the Party; Peter Snowdon, historian, journalist, and author of Back from the Brink; Simon Lee, leading expert on New Labour and author of Boom or Bus: The Politics and Legacy of Gordon Brown; and Phillip Blond, political thinker and author of the soon-to-be-published Red Tory: How Left & Right Have Broken Britain.

585 Shappi Khorsandi

A Beginner's Guide to Acting English
"In 1979 three-year-old Shappi Khorsandi and her family left Tehran for London. Without a word of English between them, they found themselves thrust into an incomprehensible culture. If adapting to Britain wasn't enough, it soon became clear that due to her journalist father's criticism of the new Iranian regime, the Ayatollah's henchmen were in pursuit.

Now she is a popular stand up comic who performs all over the world. The Guardian described her as ""Britain's best young female comic by any yardstick"".

Don't miss her brilliantly funny talk as she recreates one family's baptism into 1980s England. With her touching portrait of a lost homeland and a witty dissection of Englishness, she reveals what it was like growing up an outsider."

605 to S Dent / S Harrison / H Hitchings / J Summers

Few things so readily spark a lively debate as the use and perceived misuse of English. But are we too protective of our language? Too prescriptive even? Does English need defending? Susie Dent, author of How to Talk like a Local and the resident dictionary expert and adjudicator on Channel 4’s long-running game show Countdown, Henry Hitchings, author of The Secret Life of Words (winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award) and Stephen Harrison, Professor of Latin Literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford will debate. Julie Summers, who has been known to coin the odd new word, will chair

604 Brenda Maddox

George Eliot: Novelist, Lover, Wife
Mary Ann Evans was born in 1819 and died in 1880 as George Eliot, one of the most famous authors of her generation, who is now celebrated as one of the greatest novelists in history. In this revealing biography, Brenda Maddox explores the woman behind the books: a troubled child, an ambitious young career woman and an almost-wife.

Intertwining her novels and her life story, Brenda Maddox sheds new light on one of English literature's most significant, complex and courageous figures.

603 David Albert Jones

Angels: A History
What are Angels? Where were they first encountered? Can we distinguish angels from gods, fairies, ghosts and aliens? And why do they remain so popular? In this introduction to the history of angels, David Albert Jones outlines the more prominent stories and speculations about angles in Judaism, Islam, Christianity and post-Christian spiritualities. He reflects the way angels are portrayed in art and films and asks why they remain so powerful in modern culture, because whether or not we believe that they exist in their own right, angles can still illuminate our thoughts.

602 Francis Russell

Places in Turkey: A Pocket Grand Tour
"Turkey for the tourist is a daunting, yet infinitely rewarding proposition providing you know how to choose between the many places that it offers the visitor.

Francis Russell has been travelling in Turkey for more than 20 years. His deep understanding of Turkey's history and culture and his keen eye for detail, make him the most delightfully erudite of travelling companions. The eighty-three recommendations in his pocket grand tour provide a fascinating and comprehensive itinerary that will enhance the traveller's experience of this fascinating country."

601 Nick Barrett

Hear the Lost Voices from the Titanic
The story of the Titanic continues to fascinate us across the years. Now Nick Barratt, genealogist and historian, explores the hidden past of this famous ship from its construction through to its maiden voyage in April 1912 which ended tragically when it struck an iceberg. Nick looks at the lives of the passengers from the first class aristocrats to those in steerage with stories from the crewmembers giving a very different perspective of the voyage. His book, "Lost Voices from the Titanic", ends by looking at the impact on the survivors and what became of them.

621 Edwin Heathcote & Charles Jencks

Architecture of Hope - Maggie's Cancer Caring Centres
"Since the mid 1990's an exciting building project has been underway, new cancer caring centres that offer a fresh approach in architecture and health.

Named after Maggie Keswich and co-founded with her husband, writer and landscape designer Charles Jencks, theses centres aim to be at all the major British hospitals that treat cancer.

Six have already been completed and a further six are in the pipeline. Complementary to the large hospital and National Health Service, they present a face that is welcoming, risk-taking, aesthetic and spiritual. Here Charles Jencks and Edwin Heathcote, architecture correspondent for the Financial Times talk about Architecture of Hope."

627 Penelope Lively In Conversation with Joanne Harris

Award-winning writer Penelope Lively talks to novelist Joanne Harris about her lifetime of writing and the unexpected aspects of a writing life, one of them being - appearing at literary festivals! In her long and distinguished career, Penelope has been shortlisted for the Booker three times, and has won it once, in 1987, with Moon. Her other novels include The Road to Lichfield, According to Mark, The Photograph and, most recently, Family Album.

625 Michael Steen

Michael Steen’s The Lives and Times of the Great Composers has become the definitive work on the key names in classical music. Now it has been revised and updated as a mass-market edition, it brings this authoritative and hugely engaging musical history to a much wider audience.

Covering 350 years of European musical history, Michael Steen sketches his canonic figures with Dickensian flair, providing a work that is also a literary achievement in its own right.

622 Trevor Millum

Tower Poetry - Getting the Best out of Poetry
Trevor Millum, ex Head of English and Director of NATE, (National Association for the Teaching of English) writer and creator of the Poetry Place website, shows teachers, parents - indeed anyone with an interest in words - how to encourage the more able (and motivate the more reluctant) student to enjoy the reading and writing of poetry.

623 Anthony Julius

Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England
In Trials of the Diaspora, Anthony Julius traces anti-Semitism’s disturbing history in England, from the bloody medieval persecutions and the invention of the ‘Blood Libel’, through the centuries of exclusion, the gradual rehabilitation after Cromwell, and the not-quite complete integration of the twentieth-century. He exposes the pernicious literary strand that extends from medieval balladeers through Shakespeare and Dickens, to Eliot and beyond. He also dissects the alarming new political Anti-Zionism – part secular, part religious.

In addition he tells his own story, revealing the everyday experience of today’s Anglo-Jewish community.

624 Shirley Williams

Shirley Williams was born to politics. As well as being influenced by her mother, Vera Brittain, her father George Caitlin, a leading political scientist, encouraged his daughter to have high ambition for herself – including daring to climb the bookshelves in his library – hence the title for her autobiography.

Although the role of women in our society has changed out of all recognition, it has changed least in the House of Commons. Shirley Williams describes those changes and the resistances to them through the magnifying glass of her own life, a life that coincides with our turbulent post-war history.

645 R Cooke / K Derham / T Hill Intr by P Kemp

The Lost Man Booker
In 1971, just two years after it began, the Booker Prize ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became – as it is today – a prize for the best novel of the year of publication. As a result a wealth of fiction published for much of 1970 fell through the net. The Lost Man Booker is a one-off prize to honour the books which missed out on the opportunity to win the Booker Prize in 1970. Join the judges - the ITN newsreader Katie Derham, poet and novelist Tobias Hill and journalist and critic Rachel Cooke - for the exclusive shortlist announcement, and a discussion on each of the six books, before casting your vote for the winner via the Man Booker Prize website.

Introduced by Peter Kemp, Sunday Times Fiction Editor.

641 Dominic Bradbury

The Iconic House: Architectural Masterworks Since1900
"Dominic Bradbury's leads us through some of the most important and influential architect-designed houses from around the world. With seminal works from such icons as Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, as well as modern-day greats including Tadao Ando, Rem Koolhass and Herzog and de Meuron, he presents a stunning array of buildings of the past century's architectural masterpieces.

Dominic Bradbury's illustrated talk brings to life these extraordinary homes, and offers an intimate glimpse into how these very special buildings are or were lived in."

644 David Constantine Talks to Jem Poster

When Ted Hughes and Daniel Weissbort founded Modern Poetry in Translation in 1966 they had two principal ambitions: to publish poetry that dealt truthfully with the real contemporary world, and to benefit writers and the reading public in Britain and America by confronting them with good work from abroad. As current co-editor of the periodical, and as an eminent poet and translator in his own right, David Constantine is particularly well placed to discuss, with examples, the complexities and pleasures of poetic translation.

642 Nick Barratt - Tracing Your Personal Heritage

Tracing Your Personal Heritage
The success of programmes like Who Do you Think You Are and Hidden House Histories shows that many of us are fascinated by our past history and heritage. Dr Nick Barratt has been interested in history since an early age, becoming our best-known genealogist through TV programmes and his books. His latest: Tracing Your Personal Heritage focuses on associated lines of historical research to family history, such as house history and sources for local history. It's intended to be a beginner's guide to these topics as well as showing you how to put flesh on the bones of your family tree.

647 Colin Dexter

Colin Dexter, the creator of Inspector Morse, has written a sparkling new book on how to solve cryptic crosswords, which opens with a short but vivid new Morse and Lewis story with a crossword theme.

Colin Dexter’s aim in writing this book was to help the many people who find it difficult, if not impossible, to progress beyond the easier ‘coffee break’ type of crossword to those of the more difficult cryptic variety.

To those already mastering the cryptic crossword, he offers tips on how to improve their existing skills.

643 Tom Bingham - cancelled

event cancelled

646 Inspector Morse Walking Tour

2 - 4pm.

Meet outside Balliol College Lodge, Broad Street

664 Lindsay Porter

Assassination: A History of Political Murder

"Assassination - the politically motivated killing of high-profile individuals - has always been part of man's struggle for power, from the removal of tyrants in classical civilisations to the state-sanctioned ""decapitation strikes"" of the present day.

Lindsay Porter places assassination in a wider context, looking at the aftermath of political murders down the centuries from Julius Caesar and Thomas Becket to Archduke Franz Ferdinand and John F Kennedy. She concludes that although Benjamin Disraeli was right in asserting that ""assassination has never changed the history of the world"", the belief persists that detonating a bomb is all that is needed to alter the course of history. And so assassination remains a horrifying act of political violence."

665 Clare Algar & Ian Cobain, Chaired by Jean Seaton

THE ORWELL PRIZE: How do we Stop Torture - Again?
"""The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"" asks O'Brien while interrogating Winston Smith in Orwell's 1984. But over the last few years, torture has moved from the pages of novels and history books into newspapers. Clare Algar (from Reprieve, which represents Guantanamo Bay inmates) and Ian Cobain (winner of the Paul Foot Award for his work on British involvement in torture for The Guardian) examine how and why.

Chaired by Jean Seaton, Director of the Orwell Prize."

663 Rachel Billington

Writing Fiction
For years, novelist Rachel Billington has been writing fiction with warmth, substance and memorable characters that appeal to a literate female readership.

Her latest book Lies and Loyalties, is an emotional, gritty family drama which explores the power of frustrated love and intense sibling rivalry and deals with powerful contemporary issues. Her next novel The Missing Boy, which comes out in May, centres around a 13 year-old boy who doesn’t feel ready to grow up and is filled with an inexplicable urge to run away from his home so that he can become a different person.

668 Tim Stanley-Clarke Port Tasting

Tim Stanley-Clarke is widely regarded as one of the foremost port experts in Britain. He joined the Symington family in 1984 as their 'Port Ambassador' in the UK - with responsibility over the years for Dow's, Graham's, and Warre's Ports and Blandy's Madeira.

Chairman of the Port Judging for the International Wine & Spirit Competition , Tim has also served as a judge at Port and Wine Festivals around the World.

The late Auberon Waugh wrote of Tim ""I have learned to value his judgement, enjoy his hospitality, rejoice in his company, and above all, open my eyes to the splendour of the wines he promotes.""

Join us for a memorable Port Tasting in the Great Hall of Christ Church."

661 Juliet Gardiner

The Thirties: An Intimate History
"Juliet Gardiner, author of the acclaimed Wartime Britain and The Children's War, brings to life the 1930s and provides a fresh perspective on that restless, uncertain, ambitious decade.
Using newspapers, magazines, memoirs, letters and diaries, she explores Britain's influence in the world and political and social crises, and captures the essence of a people part-mesmerised by 'modernism', the cult of fitness and fresh air, the obsession with speed and the celebration of elegance, glamour and sensation."

662 Frances Spalding

John Piper, Myfanwy Piper: Lives in Art
Frances Spalding gives us an exuberant biography of John Piper, one of the best-loved and capacious English artists, and his wife the librettist Myfanwy Piper, friend and collaborator with Benjamin Britten. Together they were at the heart of art, architecture, opera and the reshaping the perception of 'Englishness' in the mid-20th century. She presents the first comprehensive account of the life and work of John Piper and of the shared journey made by John and Myfanwy who early on settled down in a small hamlet on the edge of the Chilterns, whence they proceeded to produce work which placed them centre stage in the cultural landscape of the twentieth century.

666 Ben Okri

The English Speaking Union Lecture

With branches in over 50 countries around the world, The English Speaking Union (founded in 1918) promotes global understanding through the use of the English language. At the heart of the ESU's work is the role of English in literature, in the arts and music - as well as public speaking, discussion and debate.

The third ESU Lecture will be delivered by Ben Okri. Ben has published ten novels, including The Famished Road, as well as collections of poetry, short stories and essays. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has been awarded the OBE as well as numerous international prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Africa, the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction and the Chianti Rufino-Antico Fattore. He is a Vice-President of the English Centre of International PEN and was presented with a Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum. He was born in Nigeria and lives in London. Ben Okri's newest book, Tales of Freedom was published in April 2009.

695 Jan Morris

For more than half a century Jan Morris has enthralled readers around the world with her extraordinary ability to capture the atmosphere and mood of many places from humble villages to great cities. But what about the many people she has encountered along the way?

In Contact! Jan turns her brilliantly observant eye to the people she had met across the globe and through the decades. In a series of vignettes, some only a few lines long, she records hundreds of brief glimpses and fleeting encounters, celebrating the people who helped spark her view of the world and mould her responses to them.

This is Jan Morris’s first appearance at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

685 Bahram Bekhradnia, David Willetts, and Shirley Williams, Chaired by Malcolm Gillies

In fifty years university attendance has risen almost tenfold. But precisely what are the consequences of such a radical shift? Have standards dropped, are we providing "mickey mouse" degrees and where are tuition fees going? Are students increasingly being downgraded to customers, and is the big-business model really the shape of British universities to come?

Join David Willetts, MP for Havant with Shadow Cabinet responsibility for education, Shirley Williams, former secretary of state for education and one of the "gang of four" who founded the SDP, and Bahram Bekhradnia Director of the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) think tank, for a dramatic close to our Education Matters series set in the university that started them all. Chaired by Malcolm Gillies, Vice-Chancellor of London Metropolitan University.

697 Tom Bingham (Re-scheduled)

The Rule of Law is a phrase much used but little examined.

The idea of the rule of law as the foundation of modern states and civilisations has recently become even more talismanic than that of democracy, but what does it actually consist of?

Tom Bingham, Britain's former senior law lord, and one of the world's most acute legal minds, examines what the idea actually means.

A fascinating talk for anyone interested in politics, society and the state of our world.

691 Rose Tremain

Trespass
Best selling author and winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, Rose Tremain has set her latest novel Trespass, among the hills and gorges of the dark and beautiful heartland of southern France.

Almost a thriller, this extraordinary novel opens up two worlds as cultures collide, ancient boundaries are crossed, taboos broken and a violent crime is committed. The story centres on the relationships between two sets of siblings, and the skeletons hiding in their closets.

It is an extraordinary, unsettling, fast paced novel with a redemptive and satisfying conclusion."

690 Wine and Short Story Reading. Event Cancelled

Event Cancelled

693 Susie Orbach - Cancelled

Women and The Kitchen

Event Cancelled

Women's relationship with cooking and eating has been a focus of feminist literature for over forty years. How has this relationship developed over time, and what does it reveal about women's place in contemporary Britain? Join Susie Orbach, psychotherapist and writer, who will lead a discussion on these issues.

692 Clare Morgan, Rita Ricketts & Jon Stallworthy

New Oxford Writing
A special preview of exciting new voices from Oxford's MSt in Creative Writing, alongside established names such as Tim Pears, David Constantine, Grevel Lindop, Fred D'Aguiar and Christina Koning, all appearing in the first Blackwell/Kellogg College Centre for Creative Writing annual anthology, INITIATE (Autumn 2010). Readings (including the winner of the A M Heath Prize for Fiction) will be introduced by Jon Stallworthy, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Oxford, and Dr Clare Morgan, Director of the MSt and co-editor of the anthology with Rita Ricketts, Blackwell's historian.

681 Centre for Inquiry UK Presents: Simon Singh

Simon Singh is the science author responsible for a string of best-sellers that include Big Bang, Fermat’s Last Theorem and The Code Book. In his latest book, Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial, Singh subjects a number of alternative medicines to critical scrutiny, investigating what works and what doesn’t. Singh is currently being sued by the British Chiropractic Association for suggesting, in a Guardian article, that it “happily promotes bogus treatments” for some ailments. This has become a landmark legal case, of huge importance to the scientific community, many of whom (e.g. Richard Dawkins) believe British libel law has now become a threat to open scientific debate. Singh will be discussing the significance of this ongoing legal case, now being widely reported in the media.

688 Anthony Horowitz interviewed by Paul Blezard

Screenwriter and best-selling novelist Anthony Horowitz will be in conversation with Paul Blezard about his writing for television and for young people. He will offer behind-the-scenes insights into the acclaimed five-part ITV mini-series, Collision, and into his writing for the wartime detective series Foyle's War. Celebrated for his books about teenage superspy Alex Rider, the first of which, Stormbreaker, was filmed starring Alex Pettifer, Horowitz will reveal, for instance, why he is proudest of his Power of Five series of novels, and why he names his villains after his schoolteachers.

696 Dinner in Honour of Dame Antonia Byatt

includes reception, three-course dinner and wine. Dress Code: Lounge Suits

The Honorary Fellowship of The Oxford Literary Festival will be awarded this year at a special Dinner at Christ Church to Dame Antonia Byatt.

Born in Yorkshire, A S Byatt was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, Bryn Mawr College Pennsylvania, and Somerville, College Oxford.

From 1972 to 1983 she lectured in English and American Literature at University College, London before leaving to concentrate on her writing career. Her first novel appeared in 1964 ‘Shadow of a Son’ and over the next 45 years a wave of novels and short stores attracted enormous critical acclaim. ‘Possession – A Romance’ (1990) won the Booker Prize for Fiction – and her latest novel ‘The Children’s Book’ was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2009.

Dame Antonia will be introduced by Peter Kemp, Fiction Editor of The Sunday Times.

Zippos Circus

Zippos circus rolls into town with a fantastic new circus show for 2010 "Encore!" Hosted by Norman Barrett MBE, the World's Greatest Ringmaster, it's a dazzling and daring circus spectacular for all the family, with all the thrills, magic and excitement you have come to expect from Zippos - once again voted 'Britain's Best Circus'.

The performance may include bright or flashing lighting, non-particle smoke effects and loud sound effects

We give vouchers to businesses displaying our posters admitting two adults free on purchase of one souvenir programme Children must pay the appropriate price - visit www.zippos.co.uk or call the onsite box office 0871 210 2100 from the 24th March.

682 Marion Foale & Sally Tuffin Chaired by Iain R Webb

The Sixties. A Decade in Fashion
The creatively quirky and youthful clothing designs of Marion Foale and Sally Tuffin, along with their trailblazing boutique off Carnaby Street, snagged them a place in the now legendary history of the 1960's and early 1970's fashion. These two feisty, bolshy girls with their 'can-do' attitude found themselves at the epicentre of the 60's scene. David Bailey was photographing their designs; Cathy MacGowan was wearing them on Ready Steady Go!

Marion and Sally talk to Iain R Webb about the designs that made them famous during one of the most captivating decades of the 20th century.

694 Jim Crace

All That Follows

Set in England, 2024, and George Bush's Texas, 2006, Jim Crace's hypnotic novel asks what it really means to love, to believe and to be courageous. When a gunman seizes hostages from jazzman Leonard Lessing's house and his face leaps out of the evening news - and out of Leonard's own past - it is a news bulletin that threatens to change everything. Leonard Lessing is a solitary man who suddenly has a choice to make.

Come and here Booker-shortlisted writer Jim Crace talk about his latest novel, All That Follows.

684 James Shapiro

Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?
For two hundred years after Shakespeare's death, no one thought to argue that somebody else had written his plays.

Since then dozens of rival candidates - including Sir Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford - have been proposed as their true author.

Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro (whose bestselling book 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare won the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize) unravels the mystery of when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote the plays. His fascinating search for the source of this controversy retraces a path strewn with fabricated documents, false claimants, concealed identity, bald-faced deception and a failure to grasp what could not be imagined.

689 David Willetts

The baby boom of 1945-65 produced the biggest, richest generation that Britain has ever known. Today, at the peak of their power and wealth, baby boomers run our country. By sheer demographic weight they have fashioned the world around them to serve their interests. The Pinch is a landmark account of intergenerational relations in Britain, placing the principle of fairness between the generations at the heart of the political agenda. Here David Willetts appeals to older generations who have done so well out of the post-war world to protect the interests of the generations coming after them. David Willetts has been MP for Havant since 1992 and has served in the Shadow Cabinet for over a decade with particular responsibility for education, work and pensions.

687 Chris Durlacher

Only a few seconds of video footage of George Orwell is known to exist – walking across a field while at Eton – so writer and director Chris Durlacher had to start from scratch with this dramatised biography. Starring Chris Langham as George Orwell, this critically-acclaimed and Emmy-winning film was shown in 2003, the centenary of Orwell’s birth. Chris will be talking and taking questions about the documentary afterwards.

683 Bernice Lee, Simon Reddy & Walt Patterson Chaired by Tony White

Energy Matters: Living for the Future
Humans crave comfort (warm homes), illumination (so we can read books!), food (for nourishment and pleasure), entertainment (for fun!) and transportation. How will these be provided in the future? Will we have to redesign our cities to cope with limited energy supplies and population growth, or will our present practices be adequate? This fascinating subject chaired by Tony White who has worked extensively in the energy sector, a founder of Climate Change Capital, currently director of Ytilitu Limited, will be discussed by experts Bernice Lee, leader of Chatham House EEDP, Simon Reddy, Secretary of the C40 city mayors and Walt Patterson, self confessed 'troublemaker' and author of 'Keeping the Lights on; Towards Sustainable Electricity'

686 Con Coughlin Int by Ann Leslie

Con Coughlin's Khomeini's Ghost is the definitive account of how an impoverished young student from a remote area of southern Iran came to be the leader of the world-changing Iranian revolution of 1979. It includes first-hand accounts from his own former students of his early years as a teacher and young radical, and whose radical Islamic philosophy now lies at the heart of a modern-day conflict between Iran and the West..

Con Coughlin, executive foreign editor of the Daily Telegraphy, reveals how the security challenges now facing the new Obama administration can be traced back to Khomeini's revolution, whether it is the current crisis in Gaza or the development of Iran's nuclear programme.

Here he talks to renowned foreign correspondent Ann Leslie, who has been recognised as one of the 40 most influential journalists of our time.

704 Eugene Rogan

Why does the Islamic world bear the West such a grudge? In this hugely authoritative history, Eugene Rogan, who teaches the modern history of the Middle East at Oxford university, takes us from the Ottoman conquests in the 16th century, via the era of European imperialism and the superpower rivalries of the cold war, to the present age of unipolar American power in his attempts to understand the historical roots of the modern Arab world. His book is remarkable both for its geographical sweep, covering the Arab world from North Africa through the Arabian Peninsula, and for the depth in which it explores every facet of modern Arab history. "Strikingly vivid and authoritative . . . [Rogan] is a master of Arab sources" - Max Hastings, Sunday Times.

705 John Curran & Matthew Prichard

JohnCurran (author of Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks) will be in conversation with Agatha Christie’s grandson Mathew Prichard. They will be discussing the life of Agatha Christie, in light of the recent discoveries of both her notebooks and the taped recordings of her voice. They will be taking questions from the audience and discussing the impact of Agatha Christie on crime fiction.

701 John Sutherland

Novel Mysteries
Have you ever wondered if Heathcliff was a murderer? Can Jane Eyre be happy? And who betrayed Elizabeth Bennet? Then you share the questing mind of John Sutherland, emeritus professor, author and columnist. Casting his eye over some classic fiction texts, he hunts down apparent inconsistencies and oversights in a series of books about 19th century literature. Here he shares some of these puzzles in our session which may stimulate you to turn detective when reading your next book. And why did Robinson Crusoe find only one single footprint in the sand?

702 Belinda Harley

Mad About the Dog
We have all seen a bedraggled, cat or dog looking pitifully at us, when were are on holiday, and wondered for a moment if it would be possible to affect a rescue.

For Belinda Harley, there was no escape – once Goofy, a ragamuffin of a dog entered her life while she was on holiday on the Greek Island of Paxos, she knew she had to help him.

Before she knew it, she was moving heaven and earth to save him from his fate and was introducing him to high life in London. In return Goofy taught her a lesson in love.

703 Robert Service

Trotsky: A Biography
Revolutionary icon, cosmopolitan, theorist, leader, writer, lover, philosopher, enemy, Jew, husband and hunted victim, Leon Trotsky led a brilliant life in extraordinary times. He was not just an immensely colourful and complex character who played a pivotal role in the creation of the USSR, but a man who has recently been overlooked in comparison to fellow Soviet leaders.

Drawing on hitherto unexamined archives and his deep understanding of Russian history, Robert Service offers a fresh portrait of the man, his times and his legacy.

724 Blake Morrison

The Last Weekend
Set over a long summer weekend in Suffolk, Blake Morrison’s new novel opens with a surprise telephone call from an old university friend inviting Ian and his wife Em for a few days by the sea. Their hosts, Ollie and Daisy are a golden couple, whose glamour and happiness drive Ian to distraction, such that dangerous tensions quickly emerge. Beneath congenial yet charged conversation, the history of their relationship is uncovered. When Ian and Ollie resurrect an old almost forgotten bet made 20 years before, each day becomes a series of challenges for higher and higher stakes.

The Last Weekend is a haunting tale of friendship, jealousy, sexual passion and revenge.

726 Rachel Cooke, Anna Del Conte and Geraldine Holt

Our relationship with food and drink is so much part of our lives that it provides a rich foundation for autobiography. For many, memories of preparing and eating food, often with family and friends, reveal meaning in their personal worlds and in their communities.

Rachel Cooke of the Observer will be joined by Anna Del Conte, author of Risotto with Nettles: A Memoir with Food; and Geraldene Holt, food writer and Patron of Oxford Gastronomica, to explore the power of food as memoir and to discuss this emerging literary genre."

722 Jo Tatchell

A Diamond in the Desert: Behind the Scenes in the World's Richest City
Arabia in the 1960's was still a land of desert, nomadic tribes, falcons and gazelles. And Abu Dhabi, perched on the Gulf Coast was a poor fishing community. Barely forty years on it has become the richest city on earth, with major stakes in Western economies. If the extraordinarily ambitious vision for the capital of the United Arab Emirates succeeds in creating the greatest cultural complex of the 21st Century (including the new Guggenheim and Louvre of the Gulf) and a cultural bridge between Islam and the West, its future impact will be global.

Jo Tatchell, who has spent many years in the Middle East shows Abu Dhabi past and present through the eyes of its people as well as her own.

725 Dinah Birch, Peter Kemp & Henry Woodhuysen

The Oxford Companion to English Literature - How are the Great Literary Reference Books Compiled
Panellists Peter Kemp Fiction Editor of The Sunday Times, Henry Woodhuysen, Editor of the Oxford Companion to the Book and Dinah Birch, Editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature, discuss how literary reference books are compiled.

The new edition of the Oxford Companion provides unrivalled coverage of all aspects of English literature - from writers, their works and the historical and cultural context in which they wrote, to critics, literary theory and allusions. But how do you begin to put together a book of this kind. What do you leave in and what do you leave out. How many years does it take to compile and is it out of date as soon as it is published. Answers to all these questions and more from our three distinguished panellists.

721 Peter Stothard

On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italy
"Former editor of The Times, Peter Stothard, retraces the journey taken by Spartacus and his army of rebels. In the final century of the first Roman Republic an army of slaves brought a peculiar terror to the people of Italy. Its leaders were gladiators. The Spartacus Road is the route along which this rebel army outfought the Roman legions between 73 and 71BC, bringing both fears and hopes that have never wholly left the modern mind.

Peter Stothard's book, which was once a journalist's notebook, is a classicist's celebration, a survivor's record of a near fatal cancer and the history of a unique and brutal war."

723 Joanne Harris, Kathy Lette, Deborah Moggach. Chaired by Marie Staunton

The International Children's charity Plan UK asked seven well-known authors to visit seven countries to tell the human story behind the reports and statistics about the world's poorest girls. The result is an extraordinary collection of writings about prejudice, abuse and neglect, but also about courage, resilience and changing attitudes.

Joanne Harris visited Togo, Kathy Lette visited the slums of Brazil and Deborah Moggach went to Ghana. Here they join Marie Staunton CEO of Plan UK to tell us about the girls they met, of their lives, struggles and hopes."

748 Oxford Poets Walking Tour

2 - 4 pm.

Meet outside St John's College Lodge, St Giles

742 Charles Campion, Mark Hix, Tom Parker Bowles & Donald Sloan

The Rise and Rise of British Food
Are we are witnessing a renaissance of British food? Writers now celebrate the quality and diversity of British cuisine, and many chefs are proud to include local produce on their menus. What is driving this new found confidence? Donald Sloan, Chair of Oxford Gastronomica, will be joined in discussion by Charles Campion, broadcaster and journalist with the Independent and London Evening Standard; Tom Parker Bowles, broadcaster and food writer; and Mark Hix, acclaimed British chef and food writer with The Independent.

741 John Polkinghorne & David Papineau

Does Science Reveal The Mind of God? Polkinghorne vs Papineau

After a distinguished career, John Polkinghorne retired as a Professor of Physics to study for Church of England Ministry, becoming an ordained Anglican priest in 1982. He is the author of several books arguing that science is not in conflict with religion. Polkinghorne suggests that God is the answer to the question of "why is there something rather than nothing?" and that "theism explains more than a reductionist atheism can ever address." David Papineau is Professor of Philosophy at King's College London, one of the country's foremost philosophers and atheists, and the author of the excellent philosophy primer, Philosophy: Essential Tools For Critical Thought. Debate chaired by Stephen Law (Provost, Centre for Inquiry UK).

743 Catherine Bredow, John D Edwards, & Lia Mills Chaired by John Sutherland

Valley of the Shadow: Encounters with Mortality

What moves brave people to write about their journey through a life threatening illness? John Sutherland, academic and author, poses this question to three people who chose to share that journey. Novelist Lia Mills kept a diary through her oral cancer treatment: "In Your Face" is a life changing book for me" according to Anne Enright. Hasso von Bredow - totally paralysed following a stroke - could only communicate through blinking his eyes. His wife Catherine explains why she published "In the Blink of an Eye" after his death. John D. Edwards chose another medium -painting - to help him through dark times, described in "How Cancer Saved My Life."

746 Moses Isegawa

Moses Isegawa's Abyssinian Chronicles is a passionate story of 20th-century Africa, written with the vision of one who left his native Uganda in 1990 to pursue his dream and become a writer. Isegawa's hard-won observations form the basis for a quite remarkable novel.

At the centre of this unforgettable tale is Mugezi, a young man who manages to make it through the hellish reign of Idi Amin and who experiences first hand the difficult aspects of Ugandan society. He withstands his distant father's oppression, his mother's cruelty in the name of Catholic zeal, endures the ravages of war, rape, poverty and AIDS, and yet is still able to keep a hopeful outlook on life.

747 Anne Dolmore, Tim Hayward, Geetie Singh and Carolyn Steel

For most of the 20th century, London's culinary landscape was generally regarded as bleak. Today, this complex and fascinating city boasts an abundance of world-class restaurants and speciality food markets. Anne Dolamore, founder of Grub Street Publishing and Chair of Sustain, will be joined by Rosie Boycott, pioneering journalist, former Editor of The Independent, and London Food Tsar and Carolyn Steel, architect, academic, and author of Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives, to explore the role of food in building the character and culture of London.

745 Robin Robertson talks to Jem Poster

Poets in Conversation
Robin Robertson’s fourth collection is, if anything, an even more intense, moving bleakly lyrical, and at times shocking book than Swithering, winner of the Forward prize. These poems were written with the authority of the classical myth, yet sound utterly contemporary.

Alongside fine translations from Neruda and Montale and dynamic (and at times horrific) retellings of stories from Ovid, the poems in The Wrecking Light pitch the power and wonder of nature against the frailty and failure of the human.

Robin Robertson, one of the most arresting and powerful poets at work today, will be in conversation with fellow poet and novelist Jem Poster.

744 Michael Scammell - Event Cancelled

event cancelled

764 John Gray

In the midst of the current financial crisis, John Gray, author and Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, revisits his brilliant polemic against the forces of global capitalism and deregulation. Written more than ten years ago, False Dawn is a remarkably prescient book, sharply criticising the greed and unsustainable economic practices that have proved to be the seeds of a worldwide recession.

John Gray now considers how the economic landscape has shifted in a decade and asks the crucial question: where do we go from here?

769 Philip Hoare

In Leviathan, or the Whale, which won last year's prestigious Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, the acclaimed writer Philip Hoare explores his own passion for whales and charts the troubled history of their relationship with man.

He seeks to discover, on his own journey from the north of England to Cape Cod - and finally into the middle of the Atlantic - exactly why these strange, beautiful and mysterious animals still exercise such a hold on our collective imaginations.

Philip Hoare has been obsessed with these creatures all his life. In Leviathan he seeks to locate and identify this obsession.

767 Tin Htar Swe & Maung Zarni

THE ORWELL PRIZE: The Future of Burma
"In Burma there is a joke that Orwell wrote not just one novel about the country, but three: a trilogy composed of Burmese Days, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four," writes Emma Larkin in Finding George Orwell in Burma. Seventy-five years on from the first UK publication of Burmese Days, Orwell's first novel, Burma is synonymous with totalitarianism and a ruthless attitude towards political dissent. Do the promised 2010 elections offer hope for change, or is the continued focus on Aung San Suu Kyi's detention a distraction from the real issues? Tin Htar Swe (Head of Burmese Service, BBC World Service) and Dr Maung Zarni (activist and academic at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, LSE) discuss the issues.

763 John Fox

Jane Whorwood, an unhappy wife of an Oxfordshire squire, was one of Charles I's closest confidantes. When the court moved to Oxford in 1642, at the start of the Civil War, she helped the royalist cause by spying for the king and smuggling a great deal of gold to help pay for his army. When Charles was imprisoned by the Parliamentarians, she set up correspondence networks and organised several escape attempts.

Most Civil War biographies focusing on the men involved, rather than the women. John Fox changes this by describing the life of a fascinating woman who played an important role in the English Civil War.

765 What makes a Good Story ?

The Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award is the world's biggest and most lucrative prize for a single short story, with £25,000 going to the winner. Here, ahead of the announcement of the winning entry at the festival this evening, judges from this year's award - who include Lynn Barber, AS Byatt, Lord Evans, Nick Hornby and Hanif Kureishi - discuss with the prize's founder Cathy Galvin what makes a good short story, the challenges of judging the award, and the individual qualities of this year's six shortlisted entries.

762 Andrzej Klimowski

Picture This: The Illustrator as Author
The golden age of book illustration of the early twentieth century may be over but illustration and the book form have found a different relationship. Illustration survives through the book cover but the most interesting development is the graphic novel. Professor of Illustration at the Royal College of Art and graphic artist, Andrzej Klimowski, whose work includes poster design, book illustration and graphic novels, looks at great names of the past and traces the development of contemporary illustration related to literature. The illustrator is now becoming an author. Experiments with the visually articulated narrative have the ambition of the literary novel, challenging the reader while introducing a rich and imaginative visual world.

761 Dan Cruickshank

The Secret History of Georgian London: How the Wages of Sin Shaped the Capital
"Drawing extensively on contemporary memoirs, court cases and the evidence of art and architecture, architectural historian and television presenter Dan Cruickshank explains how Georgian London was shaped by the sex industry.

His approach is ambitiously wide-ranging, and examines both the smart new streets that sprang up in Marylebone and the squalid alleys around Charring Cross.

He also discusses the impact of prostitution on artists such as William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds, as he argues that prostitution shaped 18th century London and helped determine its future development."

Zippos Circus

The performance may include bright or flashing lighting, non-particle smoke effects and loud sound effects

766 The Orwell Prize: Screening of Burma VJ

"As part of a series of events marking the 75th anniversary of Orwell's debut novel, Burmese Days, the Orwell Prize is delighted to screen Burma VJ. This Oscar-shortlisted documentary by Anders Østergaard looks at the video-journalists risking their freedom - and lives - to document the reality of life inside Burma, and the protests of September 2007.

The film lasts for 85 minutes.

789 Sue Shephard

Sue Shephard's riveting new biography of Constance Spry, the influential floral artist, has been published to commemorate the 50th anniversary of her death.

Constance Spry is best known as the author of that bible of middle-class housewives throughout the land, The Constance Spry Cookery Book, but who was she, and what else did she have to offer? Her story, which Sue Shephard tells so superbly, is that of a profoundly unconventional woman who went from a poverty-stricken childhood to the height of London society. Along the way, she escaped a violent marriage, had a lengthy affair with a cross- dressing lesbian artist and built a hugely successful business as a society florist.

793 Janet Beer and Jessica Harris, Chaired by Madeleine Holt

"Literary references to food and drink, and to the rituals surrounding their preparation and consumption, are a rich source of cultural insights and social commentary. Madeleine Holt presenter of the BBC's Culture Show, will join Janet Beer and Jessica Harris to investigate what literature can reveal about American attitudes to food and drink, and the social standing of, in particular, women and African-Americans.

Professor Janet Beer, Vice Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University, is a specialist in late nineteenth and early twentieth century literature and culture, and contemporary North American women's writing.

Professor Jessica Harris, writer and broadcaster, holds the Ray Charles Chair in African-American Material Culture at Dillard University, New Orleans."

788 John Harris - Whisky Tasting

Bottles outnumber books at this festival event, a tutored journey through Scotland’s unique whisky heritage. From gentle floral and honeyed notes to heather, peat smoke, and the salt sea’s tang: the diversity and appeal of Scotch Malt Whisky continues to grow. Tasting participants will enjoy samples from some less well-known distilleries as well as famous brands. The session will include an example of a unique cask-strength dram

Event lasts from 6pm to 7.30pm

786 Christopher Andrew / Miranda Carter / David Omand Chaired by Jean Seaton

The British Security Services have dealt with a variety of threats to national security during their century of existence: Germany between the wars, the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, and Islamist terrorism since 9/11. But with intelligence once again under the spotlight with another inquiry into the Iraq War, how can we be sure that we are getting the right sort of intelligence, and how has intelligence gathering evolved over the decades, as threats change and technologies advance? Christopher Andrew (historian, author of The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5), Miranda Carter (author, winner of the Orwell Prize 2002 for Anthony Blunt: His Lives) and David Omand (former UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator, former member of the Joint Intelligence Committee) talk about intelligence in the 21st Century. Chaired by Jean Seaton, Director of the Orwell Prize.

785 David Harsent, Tim Kendall, Jon Stallworthy & Chaired by Francine Stock

David Harsent, Jon Stallworthy and Tim Kendall will debate 'Poetry and War', in an event chaired by Francine Stock.

Winner of the 2005 Forward Poetry Prize with Legion, David Harsent's poetry includes versions of the work of Bosnian poet Goran Simic, notably Sprinting from the Graveyard (1997), written during the siege of Sarajevo. Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Oxford, Jon Stallworthy's works include seven volumes of poetry, and biographies of Wilfred Owen and Louis MacNeice and most recently Survivors' Songs. Tim Kendall is Professor of English Literature at the University of Exeter, and author of a collection of poems, a war-poetry blog, and several books on modern war poetry.

Francine Stock presents Radio 4's The Film Programme and is currently writing her third novel.

787 Ian McEwan & Craig Raine

Ian McEwan and Craig Raine are two of the most prominent and accomplished literary figures in Britain. In this rare and special event, arranged by Arete literary magazine, of which Raine is the founder and editor, the two read from and discuss their new novels - Solar, McEwan's outstanding comedy about a Nobel-winning physicist and compulsive womaniser juggling his work on climate change with his disastrous private life; and Raine's forthcoming debut The Divine Comedy, a gripping meditation on sex and death and Gold and the myriad ways in which the human body plays dirty tricks on us.

790 Siobhan Sinnerton & Evan Williams

"As part of a series of events marking the 75th anniversary of Orwell's debut novel, Burmese Days, the Orwell Prize is delighted to screen Orphans of Burma's Cyclone. First shown on TV as part of Channel 4's Dispatches strand, the film - which follows eight Burmese orphans in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis - won a prestigious Rory Peck Award. Siobhan Sinnerton (executive producer, Dispatches: Orphans of Burma's Cyclone) and Evan Williams (director/producer, Dispatches: Orphans of Burma's Cyclone), who produced the film, will talk and take questions afterwards.

The film lasts for 60 minutes followed by Q&A.

Zippos Circus

The performance may include bright or flashing lighting, non-particle smoke effects and loud sound effects

791 Vic Gatrell

BBC Four Screening: Rude Britannia with writer and series consultant Vic Gatrell
Despite the national stereotype, the British are not and never have been a polite people. Some of our greatest writers and artists have mixed high art with a good measure of filth and red-blooded rudeness. BBC Four comes over all vulgar as it unpicks three centuries of rude and satirical writing in Rude Britannia. Join series consultant and author of the acclaimed City of Laughter Vic Gatrell as we explore the 18th century birth of modern satire in an era when philosophy was the cheerful bedfellow of sexual excess, where poetry might easily give way to flatulence, and political ideas descend into bawdy laughter.

Event lasts 1hr 15mins

781 Heidi Thomas

From Page to Screen
Well-loved books are the most challenging to transform to the screen. How to adapt while keeping the essence of the book? Some disappoint while others enhance the original. Award winning screenwriter Heidi Thomas tells how she approached classics such as Madame Bovary and Ballet Shoes. The popularity of her acclaimed adaptation of the heart warming "Cranford" brings it to our TV screens as a Christmas special. "It was both exhilarating and terrifying," explains Heidi. "I had to create new material but time and again went back to the original where the genius of this project lies."

783 Will Hutton

Them and Us: Politics, Greed and Inequality - Why We Need a Fair Society
The suddenness and depth of the recession has raised questions about the workability of capitalism not seen since the 1930s. One of the constraints on recovery is the growing belief that if the old model didn't work there is no new one on offer.

Executive vice-chair of The Work Foundation and a former editor of The Observer, Will Hutton sets out to provide a new model and argues that reconstructing a bust financial system is not just a technical question. It cannot be done without a wholescale revision of the wider system and the values on which it is based. His arguments address the mood of the moment and aim to set the current affairs agenda for 2010 and beyond.

782 Hala Jaber

Sent to Iraq to cover the war, the last thing that prize-winning Sunday Times war correspondent Hala Jaber expected was to find herself trying to save two little girls who had lost everything.

Zahra, aged 3, and Hawra, just a few months older, were the only survivors of a missle strike in Baghdad in 2003. Their parents and five siblings are died. Unable to have children herself, Jaber was determined to do all she could to help them. What happened next tells us far more about the Iraqi conflict than any news bulletin ever could.

‘I read the book in one sitting and confess I cried more than once . . . It is hard to save a country, even harder to save an individual and sometimes, most difficult of all to try and save yourself.’ Wendell Steavenson, Sunday Times

784 Ben Fogle

Race to the Pole
In Race to the Pole, double-Olympic Gold medallist James Cracknell and TV presenter Ben Fogle have written a bracingly honest and gripping account of their dramatic attempt earlier this year to reach the South Pole. Battling, in the first race since Scott's ill-fated race against Amundsen in 1911, against five other teams (including a teak-tough Norwegian team comprised of soldiers trained in Arctic warfare), the two must brave hidden crevasses, frostbite and temperatures as low as minus 45 degrees Celsius in their bid to win the race.

792 K Lette & S Calman, Chaired by P Blezard

Talk about Men!

"Two of the wittiest women writing today join forces to discuss the men in their lives.

Writer and broadcaster, wife and mother Stephanie Calman will highlight the things that annoy her about her husband listed in her latest book How Not to Murder Your Husband, and best-selling novelist, wife and mother Kathy Lette will use her sparkling wit to discuss her book Men - An Owner's Manual, From Toilet Training to Bedtime Battles.

And Paul Blezard is stuck in the middle as he bravely chairs Kathy and Stephanie's views on men. Don't miss what promises to be one of the most hilarious discussions taking place in the Festival."

The Readers' Voice

Second Convention for Readers and Reading Groups

Whatever your taste in books,
this is an opportunity to network with other readers,
meet experts in the book world and
be inspired by reading group projects in the community that change lives.

Talks, debates and hands-on workshops where
you can learn about the reading technologies of the future or
take tuition in performance reading or
open your eyes to the literature of the East.

Morning coffee, afternoon tea & cakes included. Hot lunch included in full-day programme only

Morning and afternoon half-day sessions £20 each . Lunch optional extra £10

No Wheelchair access / No Under 18

See our website http://thereadersvoice.googlepages.com/

806 Cressida Cowell

Suitable for children between 7 and 12 years

On the eve of the animated film (premiering Sunday 28 March by Dreamworks, creators of Shrek) of her book How to Train Your Dragon, Cressida Cowell introduces its hero, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, a very small Viking with a very big name. She will talk about the inspiration for her exciting stories, draw and answer questions. Vikings, dragons, laughter and lots of adventure - what could be better?

802 Christopher Lloyd

What on Earth Evolved? 100 Species that Changed the World
"Join Christopher Lloyd as he takes you on an unprecedented journey through the story of life on Earth. Using a high degree of participation (including props, live experiments, and an interactive quiz) he navigates life on earth as you have never have experienced it before!

Christopher Lloyd shows how the rival systems of Natural Selection and Artificial Selection have brought the planet, life and people to the brink of a major catastrophe for life on Earth. He even demonstrates the natural self-correcting system of evolution using a model railway set.

Along the way he traces 50 of the most successful species to have evolved before humans and 50 species that have thrived as a result of humans. How can humans and nature live together in a way that allows them both to prosper?

Packed with interaction, entertainment and information, this workshop is ideal for all ages from 8 to 100!"

804 Gaynor Arnold & Christine Finn Chaired by Nicolette Jones

Behind Every Successful Man ......
Journalist and radio presenter Christine Finn is an expert on Barack Obama's mother, and on J B Priestley's wife, the archaeologist, style icon and broadcaster Jacquetta Hawkes (and, with Priestley, one of the co-founders of CND). Finn discusses wives and mothers in history and fiction with Gaynor Arnold, author of the enthusiastically reviewed and Booker- and Orange Prize-longlisted Girl in a Blue Dress, a novel whose heroine is loosely based on Charles Dickens's wife. Chaired by Nicolette Jones, Chair of the St Hilda’s Media Network.

805 Richard Miles

The devastating struggle to the death between the Carthaginians and the Romans was one of the defining dramas of the Ancient World. In an epic series of land and sea battles both sides came close to victory before the Carthaginians finally buckled and their capital city, history and culture were almost utterly erased.

Drawing on a wealth of new archaeological research, Cambridge University lecturer Richard Miles makes Carthage vivid as it has never been before and brilliantly brings to life this lost empire.

803 Katie Cleminson & Louise Yates

Children Love Picturebooks
Suitable for children between 3 to 6 years old

Join two of the most exciting new illustrators in this interactive event aimed at 3-6s with Katie Cleminson, winner of the Early Years Book Award for Box of Tricks, about a startling present and a friendly polar bear, and Oxford graduate Louise Yates, author/illustrator of A Small Surprise, in which a small rabbit applies to join the circus, and of Dog Loves Books. Louise and Katie will read their stories, tell you why they both like drawing animals so much and about the magic that goes in to making a beautiful picture book. With craft activities to involve all ages.

801 Lia Mills

WORKSHOP: Writing Diaries, Memoirs and Personal Stories
"""You ought to write a book!"" If your friends often say this to you and you wonder how to go about it, this workshop is for you. How do you organise the chaotic material of your own life into stories worth writing and worth reading? What is the most effective way to tell your story? During this workshop participants are encouraged to write short pieces based on personal experience. It will also look at how to approach a publisher. Lia Mills is the Dublin-based author of two novels and a memoir, In Your Face, which tells the story of diagnosis and treatment of mouth cancer. An experienced facilitator of creative writing workshops, Lia also writes short stories and literary non-fiction.

Please book early as places are limited to 12

Event lasts from 10am-12.30pm

807 Film Oxford Walking Tour

823 Steve Cole

Suitable for children between 6 and 11 years

Don't miss this hilarious event which will make kids, parents and grandparents laugh out of their seats. Steve Cole will tell you all about his bestselling books, including the dino-tastic Astrosaurs, the udderly moo-vellous cows in C.I.A. and his new book Z-Rex. Expect heaps of energy and aching sides. A must-see.

824 Anouchka Harris talks to Philip Pullman

Suitable for Children over 10

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy has been much praised and commented upon by adults, but here is an opportunity for a more youthful perspective on his epic about Lyra and Will, Yorek Byrnisson, Lee Scoresby, Roger, Serafina Pekkala, Ma Costa, Mrs Coulter and Lord Asriel, and their daemons. Philip Pullman will be interviewed by 16-year-old Anoushka Harris about the trilogy. There will also be an opportunity for audience members to ask their own questions."

826 Graham Robb

No one knows a city like the people who live there - so who better to relate the history of Paris than its inhabitants through the ages?

Graham Robb takes us from 1750 to the new millennium, introducing us to some of those inhabitants: we meet spies, soldiers, scientists and alchemists; police commissioners, photographers, and philosophers; adulterers, murderers, prisoners and prostitutes. Entertaining and illuminating, Graham Robb's Parisians is both history and travel guide, yet also part memoir and part mystery.

Interviewed by Andrew Holgate, Literary Editor of The Sunday Times.

827 Naomi Alderman, Amy Sackville and Ali Shaw, Chaired by Rachel Hore

Three talented writers whose novels mark them out as literary stars of the future, discuss their own and each other’s work and the many challenges a fiction writer faces today.

Ali Shaw joins the table with his debut novel, The Girl With Glass Feet, Naomi Alderman will be discussing her second novel The Lessons, and Amy Sackville brings his debut novel The Still Point. They will be in conversation with novelist Rachel Hore whose most recent novel is The Glass Painter’s Daughter.

The work of all three writers has attracted stunning reviews since their books were published, which suggests they can look forward to highly successful writing careers.

821 Don McCullin

The Finest Photographer of a Generation
"During the 18 years that he worked for the Sunday Times, Don McCullin covered every major conflict in his adult life until the Falklands war. Focusing on his career over the decades he discusses his book Shaped by War (accompanied by a major exhibition at The Imperial War Museum North), revealing a life shaped by conflict.

Don McCullin's reputation as the greatest photographer of his generation has in recent years been replaced with an image of McCullin as the great traveller. Here he also talks about his evocative photographs which record his explorations of the fringes of the Roman Empire that appear in his second book Southern Frontiers."

822 P D James

St Hilda's College hosts a weekend conference each September for readers of Barbara Pym, who entered the college in 1931 and went on to be named by both Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil as "the most underrated novelist of the century". The celebrated crime novelist P D James will be speaking about Barbara Pym and her work. P D James is an Honorary Life Member of the Barbara Pym Literary Society based at St Hilda's, and also an Honorary Fellow of the College.

843 Centre for Inquiry Presents Ben Goldacre

Bad Science
Ben Goldacre is the award winning writer, broadcaster, and medical doctor who writes the weekly Bad Science column in the Guardian. Goldacre is widely known for his scathing, satirical attacks on medical quacks, health scares, mumbo-jumbo and pseudo-science, and his book Bad Science has become a best-seller. His approach is passionate, charming, funny and merciless. While investigating television nutritionist Gillian McKeith's membership of the American Association of Nutritional Consultants, Goldacre bought a "certified professional membership" on behalf of his deceased cat, Henrietta, from the same institution for $60.

850 Ashmolean Walking Tour

844 Don Paterson & Stephen Romer

Tower Poetry - Rain and Yellow Studio
Don Paterson teaches at the University of St Andrews and is poetry editor for Picador Macmillan. His most recent poetry collection, Rain was the winner of the 2009 Forward Poetry Prize. Stephen Romer is a lecturer at the University of Tours in France and will be Visiting Fellow at All Souls in Trinity Term 2010. A translator and an anthologist of modern French poetry his latest collection is Yellow Studio (2008), shortlisted for the 2008 T. S. Eliot Prize.

846 Charles Emmerson

The Future History of the Arctic

Always lingering at the margins of global affairs, the Arctic has now found its way to the centre of the issues which will define our world: energy, security and the struggle for natural resources, climate change and its unknown consequences Geopolitics expert Charles Emmerson weaves together the history of the region with reportage and reflection, revealing a vast and complex area of the globe, loaded with opportunity and rich in challenges. He explains how the Arctic is coming of age – through stories of those who live there, those who study it, and those who will determine its destiny.

848 Libby Purves

"Writer and broadcaster Libby Purves' latest novel centres around the death of a child and the bleak landscape a couple are forced to travel to cope with their loss. The reticent progress of their mourning is abruptly broken when a strange ranting woman turns up on their doorstop. Her arrival sparks off a shocking discovery about their lost son's life and friends.

At the heart of the discovery is a miracle that slowly, gradually and surprisingly builds a future and brings a new family together."

842 Julia Churchill & Leah Thaxton, Chaired by Catherine Clarke

BOOKCAMP: How to get a Children's Book Published
A three-hour masterclass on how to get ahead in the children’s book business presented by Leah Thaxton, Senior Publisher at Egmont (publishers of Enid Blyton, Michael Morpurgo and Andy Stanton), and Julia Churchill of the Greenhouse Literary Agency (whose Blue Peter-shortlisted author Harriet Goodwin is also appearing at this Festival). This event will look at how the children’s book business works and prevailing trends, and analyse what makes a submission stand out for an agent and what publishers want to see. Presentations will be followed by a panel discussion and questions, chaired by Catherine Clarke, children's books agent at the Felicity Bryan Literary Agency (whose clients include David Almond, Sally Gardner, Meg Rosoff).

847 Political Oxford Walking Tour

2 - 4pm.

Meet at entrance to Meadow Buildings, Christ Church

849 Robert Lyman, With Ray Ellis, John Riggs and Rudolf Schneider

In 1941 the North African port of Tobruk was surrounded on three sides by the Nazies on the fourth side was the sea. Thirty five thousand of Rommel’s Afrika Corps laid siege to the city, the allies numbered only twenty six thousand. Nevertheless the Allies repelled the Germans for 242 days.

British veterans Ray Ellis and John Riggs will discuss the siege and their experiences during their time in the dessert with Rudolf Schneider, then an 18 year-old German soldier serving with the Afrika Corps, who was Rommel’s driver.

They have been brought together by historian Rob Lyman, who has written a new history of the eight months siege of the Libyan port.

Bach and Pergolesi

The boy choirs of Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum sing Pergolesi's 'Stabat Mater'
Bachs 'Ich habe genug' completes the programme.

841 Edmund Newell & Jeany Spark

Grimm Tales: The Spirituality of Fairy Tales
Jeany Spark (Wallender, BBC1) reads Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s interpretations of Cinderella, Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood, with songs by the award-winning partnership of Philip Ridley and composer Nick Bicât (including the soundtrack of Ridley’s film Passion of Darkly Noon) and reflections on the religious symbolism of the stories by Edmund Newell, Sub-Dean of Christ Church.

Zippos Circus

The performance may include bright or flashing lighting, non-particle smoke effects and loud sound effects

845 Fiona Bird

Haute Cuisine for Small People: Wolsey's Kitchen
Suitable for children between 5 and 9 years

Mediaeval Kitchen Cookery session with Masterchef finalist, mother of six and cookery columnist Fiona Bird, author of Kid's Kitchen: 40 fun recipes to make and share (praised by Prue Leith, Delia Smith, Raymond Blanc). Come and see her prepare and cook food in Christ Church's medieval kitchen, showing how to have fun experimenting and eat healthily. And taste the food too! Book early, only 40 places available.

864 Norman Tebbit and Sophie Grigson

Do Recipes Change Anything?
Norman Tebbit discovered that customers at his local butcher shop shunned game, though it was less expensive, healthier, and tasted better than the "rubber-boned. tasteless chicken" they bought in supermarkets. The game birds had also led a better life than even any organic, free-range chicken bred for the table, and were thus the more ethical choice. The butcher suggested this was because his customers didn't know how to deal with game -- so Norman Tebbit wrote and distributed game recipes, and the shop found that they did help increase sales of pheasants. Sophie Grigson, of whom Norman Tebbit says "I am a fervent admirer," challenges him -- do recipes ever change anything?

861 Geraldine McCaughrean and Philip Reeve, Chaired by Jonathan Douglas

Pure Gold
Suitable for children over 9

Philip Reeve has earned himself a passionate following for his epic and extraordinary Mortal Engines quartet, a fantasy series of such breathtaking imagination and ambition it is one of the finest products of children´s literature of the last decade. He has also won the Carnegie Medal for Here Lies Arthur, a new take on Arthurian legends, that reveals how myths can be made out of ignoble lives. His latest book is A Web of Air, the second of two ingenious and gripping prequels to the Mortal Engines books. His fellow Carnegie Laureate, the multi-award-winning and critically acclaimed Geraldine McCaughrean, is also one of the most skilled children's writers of her generation. Known for her bestselling Peter Pan sequel, Peter Pan in Scarlet, she writes books of astonishing variety, each a masterpiece in its different way. Her latest, the clever and comic The Death-Defying Pepper Roux, is about a boy who evades the doom forecast for him by escaping into other people´s lives, from shipboard to newspaper office. This meeting of great minds is chaired by the dynamic Jonathan Douglas, who, as well as being a fan of both Reeve and McCaughrean, is Director of the National Literacy Trust.

863 Martin Amis

Set in the long hot summer of 1970, as a group of friends live and love round a Tuscan pool, Martin Amis's new novel draws, intriguingly, on his own life as it explores the changing mores of the sexual revolution, the altered roles of men and women, and the damage it all left in its wake. The author of Money, The Rachel Papers and Experience, Amis has never shied away from controversy; part comedy of manners, part highly charged social satire, The Pregnant Widow is both thought-provoking and dramatic.

862 Sarah Baxter, Bettany Hughes & Sue Lloyd-Roberts Chaired by Nicolette Jones

Women in the Media
St Hilda's graduates Sarah Baxter, editor of the Sunday Times magazine, and former Washington correspondent and News Review editor; historian, author (Helen of Troy) and radio and television broadcaster Bettany Hughes; and BBC Human Rights correspondent and former ITN reporter Sue Lloyd-Roberts consider the opportunities and hurdles for women making careers in the press and in television. Chaired by critic, broadcaster and journalist Nicolette Jones.

Visit Bettany Hughes' website: http://www.bettanyhughes.co.uk

865 Ariel Leve & Laurence Shorter

The Glass Half Full or Half Empty

Ariel Leve is the pessimist, Laurence Shorter is the optimist. Together they will discuss their opposing viewpoints using their recently published books as a starting point.

Ariel Leve (The Cassandra Chronicles) is a hypochondriac, neurotic, habitual glass-half empty kind of gall who is most at home when trapped into her inner Cassandra. Laurence Shorter (The Optimist: One Man's Search for the Brighter Side of Life) on the other hand believes we've never had it so good and that it is time to be a little more optimistic. He has set himself the challenge of meeting the world's most cheerful people, whereas Ariel, who writes her Cassandra column for the Sunday Times reminds us things could be worse - we could be her.

888 Alys Fowler

The Edible Garden: How to Have Your Garden and Eat It

"Gardener's World celebrity Alys Fowler is at the forefront of a revolutionary new style of gardening where tomatoes sit happily next to roses, carrots are woven between lavenders and potatoes grow in pots on the patio.

In The Edible Garden, Fowler takes up the challenge of preparing at least one meal a day using only home grown produce that she has grown in her small suburban backgarden. The hearty dishes she serves up show that nobody will go hungry if they follow her avant-garde grow-your-own regime."

886 Lionel Shriver

The Orange Prize winning novelist Lionel Shriver launches her new novel at this year’s Festival. So Much For That is a deeply affecting novel with heart; an unflinching portrayal of illness and its devastating effect on a marriage and family, told with Lionel Shriver’s trademark originality, intelligence and acute perception of the human condition.

The telling of this story drives right to the heart of human relationships as illness brings two central characters closer together, such that in the end the hero Shepherd Knacker observes that maybe you never really know someone until they’re dying.

884 Adele Geras, Victoria Hislop, Anita Mason. Chaired by Nicolette Jones

Bestselling author Victoria Hislop (The Island, The Return), whose novels embrace historical events in Greece and during the Spanish Civil War, Anita Mason, former Booker shortlistee (for The Illusionist), whose latest novel The Right Hand of the Sun is set in the Aztec empire, and Adèle Geras (A Hidden Life), whose enthusiastically received work for both adults and children has ranged from Ancient Greece to the Second World War, discuss their use of the past, both personal and historical, in their fiction. Chaired by Nicolette Jones.

Zippos Circus

The performance may include bright or flashing lighting, non-particle smoke effects and loud sound effects

882 Stuart Clark, Benny Peiser & Gabrielle Walker Chaired by Tony White

Energy Matters: Climate Change; as Dangerous as Al-Qaeda
Does Climate Change really matter? There are those who believe that human ingenuity should not be underestimated and that we could adapt to a changing climate, as we have done in the past. Others take a more pessimistic view and counter that whilst groups of hunter-gatherers might have coped, it is unrealistic that a population edging towards 7bn could be able to negotiate a world encountering dramatically changing weather and associated food production capacity. Some believe that mankind's greenhouse can emissions have no discernable effect on the weather. All sides of the argument will be covered by Gabrielle Walker, broadcaster and co writer of 'Hot Topic', Stuart Clark, astronomy journalist and author of 'Sun Kings' and Benny Peiser, Director of the Global Warming Foundation. Chaired by Tony White who has worked extensively in the energy sector, a founder of Climate Change Capital and currently director of Ytilitu Limited.

OCM Open

Following the success of OCM Open in Spring 2009, Oxford Contempoary Music returns to open up the stage to more of Oxford's finest and most innovative bands and performers. In association with The North Wall Arts Centre & Oxford Fringe Festival.

889 Closing Dinner Black Tie Lynne Truss

7pm reception, 7.30pm Dinner. Includes reception, three-course dinner, and wine. Dress Code: Black Tie.

The Tudor Great Hall At Christ Church, built by Cardinal Wolsey – where the Royalist Court and Parliament met for 4 years during the English Civil War – is once again the setting for the Festival Closing Dinner. Our speaker is Lynne Truss, the bestselling author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Here Lynne talks about her strange journey through the world of sport and sports journalism. Get Her Off the Pitch! is the story of one woman’s foray into the very masculine and rather baffling world of sport. Lynne Truss, spent four years as an unlikely sports writer for The Times. It was a job that took her around the world and introduced her to some of the greatest living sportsmen (and many argumentative men with clipboards). During her time at the newspaper she faced disdain from fellow sports writers; undertook last-minute, pre-fight research into ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’ (Muhammad Ali won, surprisingly); wept at football matches and discovered a lasting love for golf. She was even nominated for Sports Writer of the Year. Lynne gives a hilarious, perceptive and at times moving account of those four strange years.

A second speaker to be confirmed.

Kenny Ball & his Jazzmen in Concert

Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen - 50th Anniversary Tour

Light supper provided

Kenny Ball is a legend. Probably the greatest test of an artist's success is his durability. Kenny is now a genuine institution, and the most successful jazz trumpet player this side of the Atlantic. His landmark recordings of the 1960s such as 'Midnight in Moscow' catapulted him to worldwide fame, and since then he has become a living legend.

http://www.kennyball.co.uk/

All profits will go to Rotary Eradicate Polio Fund

Jakob Lindberg plays Italian music for Chitarrone

The Italian chitarrone was the largest member of the lute family and was both solo and accompanying instrument in the early 17th century.
Here is a rare opportunity to hear Jakob Lindberg, one of the world's leading lutenists, play virtuoso solo repertoire by the three leading composers for the instrument.

887 Sebastian Faulks

Sebastian Faulks' Series on the British Novel
In 2010 the BBC will be celebrating the brilliance of the British novel with a major four part documentary series written and presented by novelist Sebastian Faulks (The Girl at the Lion d'Or, Birdsong, Charlotte Gray, Engleby). The BBC Two series will look at the history of the novel through its characters - each episode focusing on a different archetype and looking at how they have developed over the centuries: Heroes, Lovers, Snobs and Villains.

Journeying around the country, with the occasional foray abroad, Sebastian will use his unique personal knowledge of characterisation to get under the skin of some familiar and not so familiar characters in British literature. From Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe to Martin Amis’ John Self; Jane Austen’s Darcy to Alan Hollinghurst’s Nick Guest; Samuel Richardson’s Lovelace to Zoe Heller’s Barbara Covett and from Jane Austen’s Emma to Monica Ali’s Chanu; Sebastian will put them all on the psychiatrist’s couch.

Event lasts about 1 hour 15 minutes

881 Jane Bussman

In this hugely entertaining memoir, Jane Bussman – award-winning comedian, and scriptwriter on South Park, The Fast Show, Brass Eye and Smack the Pony – writes about her hilarious hunt for the ideal man.

Trapped in Hollywood, and interviewing Paris Hilton and Britney Spears when she wanted to be writing scripts, Bussman had a career that was going nowhere. Then she saw a photograph of a man in Vanity Fair. John Prendergast's day job was ending war. He was also extremely attractive. Jane 'may have inferred she was a Foreign Correspondent', because suddenly she was in Washington, New York and finally equatorial Africa on a lying, cheating, stealing search for love.

With a maverick heroine, an idealist hero, comic disasters and moving tragedy, this is storytelling at its best.

883 Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

1492: The Year Our World Began
The world would end in 1492 - so the prophets, soothsayers and stargazers said. They were right. Ours Began. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto traces key elements of the modern world back to that single, fateful year: the way power and wealth are distributed around the globe and the way major religions and civilisations divide the world.

Described by the Sunday Times as one of the best historians in the world, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto will take you on a journey around the globe of the time, in the company of real-life travellers, drawing together the threads that began to bind the planet and the moment when some of the most striking features of today's world began.

885 Paula Byrne and DJ Taylor

The Same Man, a recent book by American writer, David Lebedoff, made the case that George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh had a lot more in common than simply being born in the same year, 1903. Despite the different paths that their lives and writing would take, Lebedoff argued, they both rebelled against the modern world and foresaw the materially rich but morally poor future. Two leading biographers - one of Orwell (D.J. Taylor, who wrote Geroge Orwell: The Life), one of Waugh (Paula Byrne, who wrote Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead) - consider the two writers and their work.

Miserere

The late renaissance composer, Prince Carlo Gesualdo wrote some of the most expressive and emotionally charged music for Holy Week.
In Merton Chapel's famous acoustic, this event is not to be missed.

905 John Farndon & Libby Purves

Do You Think You’re Clever? The Oxbridge Questions
What is the population of Croydon? What happens if I drop an ant? What percentage of the world’s water is contained in a cow? If you can answer these questions then you could be an ideal candidate for Oxford or Cambridge.

Every year thousands of Oxbridge hopefuls have to answer similarly bizarre and complex questions to stand a chance of earning a place at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. John Farndon has complied one of the most thought-provoking quiz books from the very questions posed in Oxbridge questions in recent years. He will be joined by radio presenter Libby Purves, who is a graduate from St Anne’s College, Oxford.

901 Julie Wheelwright

WORKSHOP: Writing your Family Story
"How can you transform your family research material into a fascinating and readable story? In this practical hands on workshop, Julie Wheelwright, programme director of the MA in creative writing (non fiction) at City University and award winning writer, will work with a small group to help them construct their own family stories by giving practical advice with illustrations from her own books. If you want to write just for your family members or get published, this get started session will appeal both to those who have already gathered material or are just thinking about beginning.

Please book early as places are limited to 18

Event lasts from 10am-2pm

907 John & Caitlin Mathews

Discover the World of Storytelling

Suitable for Children over 8

Have you ever wanted to tell a story, but not known how to begin? StoryWorld is a toolkit for the imagination and is designed to inspire storytellers of all ages. Created by renowned authors and storytellers John and Caitlín Matthews, it will show you ways to make your own stories. Using the beautifully illustrated StoryWorld cards which depict characters, places and objects, you can tell a new tale every time. Unlock your imagination!

Workshop led by John and Caitlin Matthews, authors of over 70 books about Arthurian, Celtic and spiritual traditions. Their imaginative story books for children include titles on knights, princesses, ghosts, goblins, giants and wizards."

904 Jonathan Balcombe

Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals
Since the 1970's scientists have been showing a growing interest in animal's emotions and minds. Marshalling evidence from a wealth of studies from around the world, Jonathan Balcombe has built a new picture of the inner lives of animals that has little concordance with the struggle-or-perish simplicity of so many nature programmes in the popular media. He believes animals have developed their own attributes and intelligences that make them fully worthy of our deepest concern and consideration.

With optimistic vision, he challenges humankind to discard our arcane way of relating to the rest of sentient life.

906 Joanne Harris

Blueeyedboy
Award-winning novelist Joanne Harris will be launching her latest novel, Blueeyedboy, at the festival, which means visitors attending the event will be the first to encounter this gripping psychological thriller.

Blueeyedboy is a dark and intricately plotted tale of a poisonously dysfunctional family, a blind child prodigy and a serial murderer who is not what he seems. Told through posts on a web journal called badguysrock, this is a thriller that makes creative use of all the multiple personalities, disguise and mind games that are offered by paying life on the Internet.

Joanne Harris is the author of the Whitbread-shortlisted Chocolat, made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliet Binoche and Johnny Depp, and seven other best-selling novels.

902 Oliver Bullough Interviewed by Norman Stone

Let Our Fame Be Great: Struggle and Survival in the Caucasus
"The Caucasus Mountains form Russian's southern border and run from the Crimea to the Caspian Sea - a region familiar to us today for the struggle in Chechnya and the 2008 summer of war between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia.

Oliver Bullough recounts the struggle and survival of peoples who have been mostly forgotten for 200 years. Leading us through Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Turkey and the Middle East, where he lived and travelled extensively, he tracks down the nations dispersed by the brutal wars Russia fought to add the Caucasus mountains to its empire. And finally, journeying through the North Caucasus he tells the stories of the land and its peoples.

Oliver Bullough talks to celebrated historian Norman Stone."

908 Literary Oxford Walking Tour

11am - 1pm
Meet outside Magdalen College Lodge, High Street.

Zippos Circus

The performance may include bright or flashing lighting, non-particle smoke effects and loud sound effects

Aquinas Piano Trio

Season Ticket Price: FULL - £96 & Concession - £84

Free Admission To Children between ages of 10 and 5 When Accompanied by an adult

Please note we do not allow children under the age of 5

925 Philip Pullman

Canongate's celebrated The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way.

In The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Philip Pullman - the award-winning author of His Dark Materials - offers a spellbinding retelling of the life of Jesus, possibly the most influential story ever told.

Pullman's radical new take on the myths and mysteries of the gospels, and of the church that has shaped the course of the last two millennia, asks the reader questions that will continue to reverberate long after the final page is turned. For, above all, this is a book about how stories become stories.

Pullman has said that his new book is part novel, part history and part fairy tale. Today he discusses it for the first time.

924 Lyndall Gordon

The commonly told story of poet Emily Dickinson - who published ten poems in her lifetime, but left behind 1,789 - is that of a pathetic recluse, disappointed in love, who shrank from publication.

Lyndall Gordon, author of lives of Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Bronte and Virginia Woolf, argues that Emily Dickinson was very much in control of her life and her poetry, and was a volcanic character who demonstrated unashamed physical response to an older man and was challenged only by her brother's mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd. When Todd made her all-conquering entrance, Emily Dickinson had both met her match and, with horrible irony, her first editor. Here Lyndall Gordon presents a new interpretation of one of the greatest poets of all time.

926 DJ Taylor

Ask Alice
DJ Taylor aims for the big time with this epic novel which ranges from the Kakota badlands to the drawing rooms of Mayfair, and from Norfolk back lanes to the casting couches of the Edwardian theatre. Set at the turn of the 20th century, Ask Alice is a remarkable novel that confirms D J Taylor is a novelist of scope, imagination and great writing. It’s the story of a young woman coming to terms with an unsatisfactory marriage, a country house party that ends in tragedy, and sensational murder trial.

922 Mal Peet & Meg Rosoff

Suitable for Children over 12

What does it mean to write for Young Adults? Carnegie-Medal winners Meg Rosoff (whose latest acclaimed novel is The Bride's Farewell) and Mal Peet (winner of this year's Guardian Children's Fiction award for Exposure) chip away at the limits of teenage fiction, and avoid its comfort zones. The novels they write find enthusiastic readers of all ages. They discuss edginess and the risks they take, not so much with subject matter as with style and emotional complexity.

921 Laura Cumming

A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits
In this lavishly illustrated book, art critic Laura Cumming investigates the drama of the self-portrait, from Durer, Rembrant and Velazquez to Munch, Picasso, and artists of the present day and considers why self-portraits look as they do.

Drawing on art, literature, history, philosophy and biography to examine the creative process in an entirely different way, she asks what these pictures reveal about the artist's innermost sense of self. In so doing she offers a riveting insight into the intimate truths and elaborate fictions of self-portraiture and the lives of those who practise it.

923 David Mitchell and Ed Vaizey, Chaired by Jean Seaton

The last few years have been difficult ones for the BBC, with controversies ranging from Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand’s infamous radio prank to accusations of bias in news coverage, and from the role of BBC Worldwide (the Beeb’s commercial arm) to the Gaza appeal. But fundamentally, why does the BBC exist, and are its traditional aims still relevant in the 21st Century? These are particularly relevant questions given the forthcoming election. With Ed Vaizey (Shadow Minster for Culture, Conservative). Other speakers to be confirmed.

927 Carvery Lunch

£27.00 Two Course Adults’ Menu
£15.00 Two Course Children’s Menu (suitable for age 10 and under)

Come and enjoy a traditional carvery Sunday Lunch in Hall at Christ Church under the direction of Head Chef, Chris Simms and Hall Manager, Andrew Hedges.

Make your choice of Roast Beef of Roast Pork Belly with all the trimmings from the carvery. This will be followed by a traditional British Pudding, served to your table with coffee to follow. Small portions of the same menu are available for children under 10 years of age. The Hall reflects Christ Church’s long association with children’s literature. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was inspired and written in this college by Lewis Carroll. His portrait and the Alice Window can both be seen here. More recently, the Hall was used as the model for the dining hall of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films.

The carvery lunch will be served in three sittings. This is the first sitting at 12:30pm

Please make any special dietary requirements or food allergies known when booking tickets. The Buttery Bar, adjacent to Hall and decorated with rowing memorabilia, will be open for the purchase of drinks and wines from the Christ Church Cellar from 11.30am.

928 Carvery Lunch

£27.00 Two Course Adults’ Menu
£15.00 Two Course Children’s Menu (suitable for age 10 and under)

Come and enjoy a traditional carvery Sunday Lunch in Hall at Christ Church under the direction of Head Chef, Chris Simms and Hall Manager, Andrew Hedges.

The carvery lunch will be served in three sittings. This is the second sitting at 1.15pm

929 Carvery Lunch

£27.00 Two Course Adults’ Menu
£15.00 Two Course Children’s Menu (suitable for age 10 and under)

Come and enjoy a traditional carvery Sunday Lunch in Hall at Christ Church under the direction of Head Chef, Chris Simms and Hall Manager, Andrew Hedges.

The carvery lunch will be served in three sittings. This is the third sitting at 1.45pm

941 Norman Stone

The Atlantic and Its Enemies: A Personal History of the Cold War
"Those who survived the Second World War stared out onto a devastated morally ruined world. Much of Europe and Asia had been so ravaged that it was unclear whether any form of normal life could ever be established again - coups, collapsing empires and civil wars, continued to reshape country after country long after the fighting was mean to have ended.

Everywhere the 'Atlantic' world (the USA, Britain and a handful of allies) was on the defensive and its enemies on the move - as the USSR and its proxies crushed dissent and humiliated the United States on both military and cultural grounds.

Norman Stone's brings to life the terrible fates and choices of so many individuals during the Cold War. While focussing on Europe, he also shows how the Cold War affected countries as diverse as China, Chile and Turkey."

947 Fiona Sampson talks to Jem Poster

Award winning Fiona Sampson, editor of Poetry Review, has published 14 books - including poetry, philosophy of language and studies of writing prose.

Fiona is internationally recognised for her pioneering residencies in health care and contributes to the Guardian, the Irish Times and other publications, Fiona Sampson has received the Newdigate Prize, writers' awards from the Arts Councils of England and Wales and the Society of Authors. In the United States she received the Literary Review's Charles Angoff Award. Here she talks to poet and novelist Jem Poster.

945 Kristina Stephenson

Sing Something Stinky
Suitable for children between 3 to 7 years old

Author and illustrator Kristina Stephenson takes you on a really big adventure in the company of her hero Sir Charlie Stinkysocks, with interactive musical storytelling, hilarious songs and activities.

946 Peter Blake

Peter Blake

Godfather of British Pop Art Sir Peter Blake is one of Britain's best-loved popular artists. His work crosses all generational divides, and inspires great respect from younger artists such as Damien Hirst, Gavin Turk, Pure Evil and Tracey Emin.

Fascinated by all streams of popular culture, he focuses his attention on the beauty to be found in everyday objects and surroundings. Many of his works feature found, printed materials such as photographs, comic strips or advertising texts, combined with bold geometric patterns and the use of primary colours. His recent work perfectly captures the effervescent and optimistic ethos of the sixties, but is also strikingly fresh and contemporary.

Knighted in 2002, an honorary doctor of the Royal College of Art, and with his work represented in major collections throughout the world, Sir Peter Blake truly is a grandee of British Art.

943 Hilary Mantel - Man Booker Prize Winner 2009

Hilary Mantel, winner of Man Booker Prize 2009 for her novel Wolf Hall, is considered a truly great English novelist who has the ability to explore the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. She is also praised for her extraordinary story telling skills.

Wolf Hall, which is based on Henry VIII's advisor Thomas Cromwell and his rise to prominence in the Tudor Court, is seen as a modern novel which just happens to be set in the 16th Century. It introduces the reader to a vast array of characters as it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, smouldering with great passion and suffering with courage.

Galliard Ensemble - A Family Concert (2pm 0-5yrs & 4pm 5-10yrs)

A family concert

2pm - 0-5yr olds & 4pm 5-10 yr olds

Problems problems... HOW TO MAKE A MUSICAL CAKE (5-10 years) and how to get lunch up all those stairs in THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S LUNCH (0-5 years). Solving these will call for a big cooking pot, seagulls,
recipes, games, a swinging basket, children... and music!

A Co-Promotion with Jacqueline du Pre Music Building

www.musicatoxford.com www.st-hildas.ox.ac.uk/index.php/jdp

Book 6 or more events in the Music at Oxford Season Oct 09 – June 2010 and get 15% discount by calling 01865 305305 or in person at Oxford Playhouse ( excludes Chapel Series)

942 David Kesslier, Interviewed by John Krebs

As the then Head of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) David Kessler took on the tobacco industry, and introduced sweeping reforms. Now he's turning the spotlight onto the food industry in order to help us regain control of our eating habits. In the End of Overeating, Kessler uncovers the truth behind our food addiction, and reveals that our brains have been hijacked by the food industry with multi-national corporations not concerned with our health but making us want more even when not hungry. Introduced by John Krebs Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, the first Chairman of the UK Food Standards Agency (2000 - 2005) and among many other roles currently sitting on the UK Climate Change Committee.

Zippos Circus

The performance may include bright or flashing lighting, non-particle smoke effects and loud sound effects

Galliard Ensemble - A Family Concert (2pm 0-5yrs & 4pm 5-10yrs)

A family concert

2pm - 0-5yr olds & 4pm 5-10 yr olds

A Co-Promotion with Jacqueline du Pre Music Building

www.musicatoxford.com www.st-hildas.ox.ac.uk/index.php/jdp

Book 6 or more events in the Music at Oxford Season Oct 09 – June 2010 and get 15% discount by calling 01865 305305 or in person at Oxford Playhouse ( excludes Chapel Series)

963 Catherine Rayner, Chris Riddell & Axel Scheffler Chaired by Nicolette Jones

Macmillan Picture Book Parade
Family Event

Picture books can be a joy for adults and children alike. Three Macmillan authors, Chris Riddell (The Emperor of Absurdia), also known as a political cartoonist, Axel Scheffler (illustrator of The Gruffalo), and this year's Greenaway Medal winner Catherine Rayner (for Harris Finds His Feet), one of The Big Picture's Ten Best New Illustrators, discuss the process of making picture books and why they matter. Chaired by Sunday Times children's books reviewer Nicolette Jones.

962 Tom Fort

Against the Flow: One Man's Journey Across Eastern Europe
Twenty years ago, Tom Fort drove his little red car to Eastern Europe when it was then still a faraway place, just emerging from its half-century of waking nightmare.

Much has changed since then, and in recent years more than a million Poles have settled in Britain. As the tide of people began to leave Eastern Europe and settle in the UK, Tom Fort began to wonder what had happened to the friends he made all those years ago and what had changed since his first trip, so he made the journey again travelling against the flow of the steady human stream to explore once familiar places.

964 Mike Perham in Conversation with Richard Simmonds

Family Event

Robin Knox-Johnston said it could be suicidal. The head of the Royal Yachting Association told him not to go. Mike Perham ignored them and in August 2009, at the age of just 17 years, 5 months and 11 days, became the youngest person to have sailed solo around the world. 'Sailing the Dream' tells the story of that amazing voyage, a nine month odyssey that would be beyond the capabilities of sailors twice his age. Hear Mike's staggering journey in conversation with Richard Simmonds who has witnessed more medals being won by Britain than any other BBC commentator at the last three Olympic Games, such is the success of British Olympic Sailing. He has reported on many of the world's major sailing and adventure stories including climbing on board with Ellen MacArthur and she completed her record breaking solo lap of the planet."

966 James Walton

The writer and host of Radio 4's books quiz The Write Stuff presents a special quiz for the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival. Come in teams of 4-6 to pit your literary wits against the pros from The Sunday Times and the Oxford English faculty - and expect questions in a pub-quiz format on anything from Peter Rabbit to David Hare, Dan Brown to Graham Greene, The Faerie Queene to Stephen King. There are prizes for the winners too.

This event lasts one and a quarter hours.

965 Lance Price, Gordon Rayner & Jon Sopel, Chaired by Vernon Bogdanor

Media, The Power Behind Politics?
"A politician who complains about the media, Enoch Powell once said, is like a sailor who complains about the sea. Today, more than ever before, politicians need presentational skills. But how do the media affect our perceptions of politics? Do they aid understanding, or has there been a relentless dumbing-down due to the ubiquitous sound-bite? Do the media emphasise perceptions at the expense of substance?

These are the questions that we shall be trying to answer with Gordon Rayner Chief reporter of Daily Telegraph ('No Expenses Spared'), Jon Sopel presenter of BBC One's 'The Politics Show' and Lance Price whose latest book 'Where Power Lies, Prime Ministers & the Media' is a history of battles between Downing Street and the media. Chaired by Vernon Bogdanor Professor of Government at Oxford University."

961 Centre for Inquiry Presents Richard Wiseman

Science of The Weird
An introduction to the science of the weird - from psychic powers to fire walking. Prof Richard Wiseman has gained an international reputation for research into quirky areas of psychology, including deception, humour, luck and the paranormal. He is also a trained magician, providing wonderfully entertaining and interactive events that help audiences sharpen their thinking and observational skills and spot more easily when someone may be trying to pull the wool over their eyes. Prof Wiseman is author of The Luck Factor - a best selling book exploring the lives and minds of lucky people.

Bach's St John Passion

Bach's Passion brings the first Merton Festival to a close.
A distinguished group of soloists join the the College Choir and the period Oxford-based ensemble Charivari Agreable

Zippos Circus

The performance may include bright or flashing lighting, non-particle smoke effects and loud sound effects

Brahms' Requiem

Written after his mother's death, Brahms' Requiem speaks of consolation and reassurance. Ignoring liturgical texts, brahms makes his own selection: "A requiem for the whole of humanity". Presented in Brahms' own arrangement for two pianos, the work gains an intimate, hauntingly moving character.

Zippos Circus

The performance may include bright or flashing lighting, non-particle smoke effects and loud sound effects

Zippos Circus

The performance may include bright or flashing lighting, non-particle smoke effects and loud sound effects

Zippos Circus

The performance may include bright or flashing lighting, non-particle smoke effects and loud sound effects

Jack Gibbons Plays Chopin

In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Chopin, award-winning pianist Jack Gibbons performs an all Chopin recital in the first of two Easter concerts, the programme to include the 4 Ballades and the composer’s greatest masterpiece, the Sonata in B minor Op.58, interspersed with mazurkas, waltzes and other musical gems.

Handel Messiah

Easter Concert
HANDEL Messiah

Mhairi Lawson Soprano
Anne Marie Gibbons Mezzo
Richard Edgar Wilson Tenor
David Stout Bass

Oxford Philomusica Orchestra and Chorus
(Chorus Master: Andrew Stewart)
Marios Papadopoulos conductor

Handel famously remarked that he had written his most famous oratorio not so much to entertain his audience but ‘to make them better’. Oxford Philomusica’s well-practised reading of Messiah is sure to deliver enjoyment and improvement in equal measure.

To join Oxford Philomusica’s mailing or e-list please click HERE

African Songs & Urban Rhythms

Oxford’s Afropean Choir perform polyphonic songs in a contemporary style influenced by music from South Africa, the Congo, Mali and many other African traditions.

In a lively and entertaining show, the Afropean choir bring together urban and ethnic sounds in a concert of unique music composed and arranged by Anita Daulne, founding member of acclaimed Belgian/Congo band Zap Mama.

Jack Gibbons Plays Gershwin

Jack Gibbons, hailed by the BBC as “THE Gershwin pianist of our time”, recreates the breathtaking virtuoso piano style of George Gershwin through his famous note-for-note transcriptions of the composer’s original recordings of Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, and the composer’s original improvisations on I Got Rhythm, The Man I Love, etc..

Rhona McKail, Nicky Spence, Kaoru Yamada & Sholto Kynoch

Songs and works works for violin and piano by Debussy, Messeian, Saint-Saens and Schubert as featured on 'Fantasy', the new CD released by Stone Records.

Handel's Messiah

In this classic the singers are joined by Vox Amicorum of Antwerp.

The cathedral provides an atmospheric setting for Handel's best-loved masterpiece.
Two choirs combine with soloists and orchestra in this special performance.

Refreshments available in the interval.

http://www.cathedralsingers.org.uk/

Lucy Crowe and Anna Tilbrook

Lucy Crowe soprano
Anna Tilbrook piano

Rapidly establishing herself as one of the leading lyric sopranos of her generation, Lucy Crowe is joined by acclaimed young pianist, Anna Tilbrook. They have won numerous awards and both currently work with some of the top names in the musical world. They join us for an evening of lieder from Mendelssohn and Schumann, works by Debussy, Gershwin and lushly romantic offerings from Alban Berg, rounded off with a group of delightful English songs.

‘...beautifully poised singing... she rose to the challenge of music that exploited every range of her soprano.’
THE TIMES, 2009

www.musicatoxford.com

Book 6 or more events in the Music at Oxford Season Oct 09 – June 2010 and get 15% discount by calling 01865 305305 or in person at Oxford Playhouse ( excludes Chapel Series)

Tango Dance Workshop

Tango is an improvised dance with highly addictive qualities. It is a dancers response to the music they're hearing. By the end of this beginners workshop you will learn the Tango basics and have fun. Ben and Katja started to teach Argentine Tango some 6 years ago and have danced it for almost a decade. Their main interest lies in Tango as a social dance and not how it is danced on the stage.

This Tango workshop accompanies the show Tangomotion.
The Retreat are offering a ‘Tangomotion Meal Deal’ (from 6.15pm). Full details available at www.dancinoxford.co.uk

Springtime Baroque

Handel Arrival of the Queen of Sheba
Vivaldi Spring
Pachelbel Canon
Vivaldi Concerto for Oboe & Violin
Bach Brandenburg Concerto No.2

Roland Roberts - Director/Violin , Tim Watts - Oboe , Graham Mayger - Flute

Efterklang

Efterklang returns, delivering a stripped back sound that exudes warmth and rich melodies.

“it’s as if the listener has stumbled into a forest glade to find welcoming strings, piano, brass and pump organ, serenaded by rich, mellifluous vocals” Mojo

Heather Woods Broderick supports.

Please note tickets booked for this event will be kept for collection at the O2 on the evening of the show.

Cello and Piano Recital

Jacqueline Johnson - Cello
Tallis Barker - Piano

Beethoven - Sonata in A Major op. 69
Bartok - Rumanian Dances
Martinu - Sonata no.2
Chopin - Polonaise

"Played superbly" Oxford Times

"Music with a sense of joyous purpose" Melbourne Age

Fitkin

Fresh from winning the 2009 British Composer Award, Graham Fitkin has assembled a nine-piece band of virtuoso musicians to perform his latest compositions. Vibrant sounds, pulsating rhythms, with a hint of Jazz and minimalism

Bach & Handel, James Bowman's Choice

James Bowman - Countertenor
London Octave Dietrich Bethge - Director

One of the key personalities of the early music revival joins London Octave. "No countertenor before or since has managed to match his clarion sound" The Independent

Program includes:
Handel - The Arrival of The Queen of Sheba
Handel - Overture to Faramondo
Handel - Arias from the operas and oratorios
Bach - "Agnus Dei" from Mass in B minor
Bach - Concerto for two violins
Mozart - Salzburg Symphony No. 2 in Bb

Behzod Abduraimov

Behzod Abduraimov piano
Winner of the London International Piano Competition

Hot off the press – the very recent winner of the 2009 London International Piano Competition shows how he
impressed judges at the Royal Festival Hall. Recent winners of the competition have included artists such as Simon Trpceski, Paul Lewis, Leon McCawley, Ashley Wass and Herbert Schuch who have all emerged to careers of international stature. Do join us to see the very impressive Behzod Abduraimov on his journey to the world-wide stage.

www.musicatoxford.com

Book 6 or more events in the Music at Oxford Season Oct 09 – June 2010 and get 15% discount by calling 01865 305305 or in person at Oxford Playhouse ( excludes Chapel Series)

Mozart, Bartol, Schumann

Andrew Fardell conducts The Oxford Sinfonia, viola soloist Martin Outram of the Maggini Quartet

Mozart Symphony no 35 ‘Haffner’
Bartok viola concerto
Schumann Symphony no 3 ‘Rhenish’

Badke String Quartet

Haydn: Quartet in D minor op 76 no 2
Bartok: Quartet no 3
Ravel: Quartet in F major

The Badke Quartet was formed in 2002 and is one of Britain's finest young quartets, having held Leverhulme Junior and Senior Chamber Music Fellowships at the Royal Academy of Music, the Bulldog Scholarship for String Quartet at Trinity College of Music, and taking First Prize and the Audience Prize at the 5th Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition in 2007. The Quartet has studied at Prussia Cove with Gabor Takacs-Nagy and in Cologne with the Alban Berg Quartet, and has been 'in residence' at Britten-Pears in Aldeburgh. Festival appearances include Montreux, Aldeburgh, Lichfield, Cork, Mecklenburg and Verbier.

Full time students under the age of 25 will be admitted free of charge if they provide details of their college/school and full address

Nizar Rohana, Oud

Nizar Rohana is a prominent oud (Arabic lute) player and composer on the Palestinian musical scene and internationally. He is known for his original compositions which are firmly based in the classical Arabic tradition but which employ a very personal expressiveness and innovative rhythms.

Oxford May Music Festival in Holywell Music Room

Now in its third year, Oxford May Music returns with its authoritative mix of concerts from some of the leading musicians performing in the UK today and exciting lectures from experts in their fields. Science, music and the arts meet in creative harmony.The festival runs from April 28th – May 3rd, with a format of lectures starting at 5:30pm and recitals at 8:00pm. On the opening day there is additionally a Colloquium in which members of the Faculty of Music in Oxford will engage with the general public on different approaches to the creative process in music. This year’s lecturers include Professor Eric Clarke on creativity in musical performance, Nobel Laureate Sir Peter Mansfield (tbc) on MRI scanning, Professor Russell Foster on the science of the body clock, Sir Jeremy Dixon on music and architecture, Professor Colin Gough on the secrets of Stradivari, and Clive Marks on music composed under oppression. Midway between lecture and music, Rainer Hirsch will entertain us with his hilarious take on classical music in “All Classical Music explained”. A stellar array of musicians includes the Elias String Quartet, Bengt Forsberg, Gabriel Schwabe, Nicolai Gerassimez, Piers Lane, Clara Mouriz, Julius Drake, Kate Gould, Matthew Jones, Maximiliano Martin, Victoria Sayles and of course our artistic director, Jack Liebeck.

A 'Festival Pass' for all events is available for £80, or '3 for 3 pass' for 3 concerts and 3 lectures for £39.99
For information on becoming a Patron of Oxford May Music, contact Brian Foster on brian@oxfordmaymusic.co.uk.
For more details see www.oxfordmaymusic.co.uk

Creativity and Musical Composition – a colloquium

Creativity and Musical Composition – a colloquium by members of the Faculty of Music, Oxford University

In this afternoon of presentations and discussion, a number of composers from the Faculty of Music at Oxford will discuss, and illustrate, their different approaches to the creative process in composition. Composers will include Nirmali Fenn, Mena Hanna, Martyn Harry, Thomas Hyde, and Robert Saxton.

Free entry to the Colloquium by showing a ticket for the evening recital or lecture (subject to availability).

Communication and creativity in musical performance

Communication and creativity in musical performance – Professor Eric Clarke, Heather Professor of Music, University of Oxford

At some level of detail, every human musical performance differs from every other, and in that respect could be said to be 'creative' in a minimal sense. But what makes performances interestingly creative? What scope for creativity is there in different kinds of performance - score-based, memorized, improvised, collaborative? How do performers handle the influence of the huge number of recorded performances? This talk looks at ways in which performance can be said to be creative, considers the relationship between communication and creativity in music, explores manifestations of creativity in performance, and propose various ways in which creativity is distributed across minds and materials.

Free entry to the lecture by showing a ticket for the evening recital or colloquium (subject to availability).

Elias String Quartet with Jack Liebeck (violin) & Bengt Forsberg (piano)

The Elias String Quartet with Jack Liebeck and Bengt Forsberg

Hadyn: String Quartet in E flat op. 64 no.6;
Schubert: String Quartet in D minor D810 - “Death and the Maiden”
Interval
Chausson: Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Quartet

The brilliant Elias Quartet return to the Festival to play Haydn in the hall in which he rehearsed his Oxford symphony, and Schubert's greatest string quartet, "Death and the Maiden". After the interval, they are joined by our Artistic Director and our Musician in Residence in Chausson's wholly original chamber "concerto".

“The Elias are a quite exceptional quartet” Gramophone

The following offers are available by phone 01865 305305 and in person at Oxford Playhouse:
Festival pass for all lectures and concerts: £80
Festival “3-for-3” pass – 3 concerts and 3 lectures of your choice: £39.99

Cavatina Ticket Scheme: Free tickets for 8 - 22 year-olds in full-time education can be reserved by calling 01865 273323 or are available on the door. Details of place of study MUST be given on arrival at Holywell

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): the first forty years

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI): the first forty years

Professor Sir Peter Mansfield, FRS, Nobel Laureate 2003, Department of Physics, University of Nottingham (tbc).

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revolutionised medical diagnosis within a decade from its theoretical conception. Imaging times have been reduced from many minutes to a few hundredths of a second, enabling motion to be effectively frozen. With the development of functional MRI (fMRI), neuroscientists have acquired a non-invasive window into the workings of the human mind, arguably the greatest unsolved scientific mystery. The lecture concludes with a discussion of new developments that herald the next revolution in MRI.

Free entry to the lecture by showing a ticket for the evening recital (subject to availability).

Gabriel Adriano Schwabe (Cello) & Nicolai Gerassimez (Piano)

Pierre Fournier Award Prize Concert
Gabriel Adriano Schwabe (Cello) & Nicolai Gerassimez (Piano)

Debussy: Sonata for Cello and Piano
Beethoven: Sonata in A major Op.69
Interval
Takemitsu: Orion
Brahms: Sonata No.2 in F major, Op. 99

The current Fourier Award Winner plays an attractive programme ranging from the passion of Brahms F major Sonata to the haunting sonorites of Takemitsu's "Orion" by way of Beethoven's A Major Sonata and the Debussy Sonata, with its distant echoes of the music of Couperin.

Cavatina Ticket Scheme: Free tickets for 8 - 22 year-olds in full-time education can be reserved by calling 01865 273323 or are available on the door. Details of place of study MUST be given on arrival at Holywell

La Belle France - John Rutter

Ravel Le tombeau de Couperin
John Rutter Suite Lyrique
Debussy Danse Sacrée et Danse Profane
Bizet Symphony in C

John Rutter makes a welcome return to conduct Suite Lyrique, for which the Orchestra will be joined by Catrin Finch, described as the ‘The Queen of harps’. This delightful springtime concert opens and closes with two Gallic backward glances – Ravel’s formalised tribute to friends fallen in the First World War, and Bizet’s only, but brilliant and classically-conceived, symphonic excursion.

To join Oxford Philomusica’s mailing or e-list please click HERE

Rhythms of Life – the 24-hour body clocks that rule our lives

Rhythms of Life – the 24-hour body clocks that rule our lives.
Professor Russell Foster, FRS, Department of Ophthalmology, University of Oxford

The past decade has witnessed remarkable progress in understanding our 24h biological clock (circadian clock) which controls, modulates and fine-tunes every aspect of our physiology and behaviour. There has also been a growing appreciation of the severe consequences of ignoring the impact of these rhythms on our health and quality of life. The talk will consider how circadian rhythms are generated and why internal time must be taken into consideration in both medical treatments and in our increasingly 24/7 society.

Free entry to the lecture by showing a ticket for the evening recital (subject to availability).

Piers Lane & Bengt Forsberg (Pianos)

Piers Lane & Bengt Forsberg (piano)

Schubert: Two Characteristic Marches D968b
Brahms: Waltzes for Piano Duet Op 39
Schumann: Impromptus on a Theme by Clara Wieck Op 5
Chopin: Nocturnes Op 37 No 2 in G; Op 48 No 12 in C minor; Op 55 No 2 in Eb; Op post in C sharp minor
Schumann: Variations on a Nocturne of Chopin
Lord Berners: Chinoiserie; Valse Sentimentale; Kasatchok
Percy Grainger: Country Gardens (Handkerchief Dance)
Arthur Benjamin/Trimble: Jamaican Rumba

Piers Lane makes a welcome return to Oxford May Music and joins Bengt Forsberg in a varied programme of solo piano music and music for four hands. The duets include pieces by Schubert and Brahms and stray into exotic climes via that fascinating English eccentric, Lord Berners and Arthur Benjamin’s Jamaican Rumba; the solo piano repertoire is represented by Chopin Nocturnes and a great favourite from Percy Grainger.

“dazzling, bustling, hustling and terrifically entertaining” Glasgow Herald (PL)

“Forsberg is a piquant, vivid accompanist” Gramophone

Music and Architecture - Contrasts – The Royal Opera House & King’s Place

Music and architecture -
Two contrasting venues – The Royal Opera House & King’s Place
Sir Jeremy Dixon, Dixon Jones Ltd.

The ROH and Kings Place are set in contrasting areas of London, requiring both attention to the technical challenges of creating music spaces and responsible urban planning.
The impact of stringent acoustic requirements on architecture, as well as the differences in working with a large number of ‘clients’, as in the ROH, compared to a single man with a vision, Peter Millican in King’s Place, will be discussed.

Sir Jeremy Dixon has been one of the UK’s leading architects for more than forty years; his buildings include the two discussed this evening as well as the National Portrait Gallery and the Venice Bus Terminus.

Free entry to the lecture by showing a ticket for the evening recital (subject to availability).

The following offers are available by phone 01865 305305 and in person at Oxford Playhouse:
Festival pass for all lectures and concerts: £80
Festival “3-for-3” pass – 3 concerts and 3 lectures of your choice: £39.99

“All Classical Music Explained” by Rainer Hirsch; Jack Liebeck & Bengt Forsberg

"All Classical Music Explained” by Rainer Hersch

Comedian Rainer Hersch’s simple and stupid approach to a difficult subject! Is the triangle hard? What do conductors actually do? …and why classical music is so much like sex. All Classical Music Explained is an erudite and witty hour-long journey through the world of classical music peppered with irreverent spoofs and the common touch. Rainer has performed on every major comedy stage in Britain and abroad, including twelve times at the Edinburgh Fringe – the show has become a series on BBC radio.

“This is a Broadway caliber show" – Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Jack Liebeck (violin)
Bengt Forsberg (piano)

Kreisler: Selected pieces
Debussy: Sonata
Rachmaninov: Deux Morceau de Salon

Follow that, as they say! Jack and Bengt will do their best with a light-hearted programme to end the evening consisting of delightful miniatures by Fritz Kreisler and Rachmaninov as well as Debussy’s ethereal Sonata.

“Wondrous and compelling” Daily Telegraph (JL)

Schola Cantorum 50th Anniversary Concert - OAE - Emma Kirkby

Schola will be joined by many former members, including Emma Kirkby the world-renowned soprano soloist, for its 50th anniversary reunion concert.

Handel The King shall rejoice
Handel Dixit Dominus
James MacMillan Bring us O Lord God (premiere of a new commission)
Bach Magnificat
Bach Singet dem Herrn (from cantata 190)

James Burton, Conductor
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

The Stradivarius Secret - Myth or Reality

"The Stradivarius Secret - Myth or Reality”

Professor Colin Gough, Department of Physics, University of Birmingham

Antonio Stradivari is widely accepted as the greatest violinmaker of them all. Did he have a “secret”, either in how he selected his wood, made his violins, the recipe for his varnish, or some other arcane mystery? Distinguished physicist and amateur violinist Colin Gough explores this question with scientific methods and the latest measurements on many Strads and the other great Cremonese makers, as well as their modern counterparts.

Free entry to the lecture by showing a ticket for the evening recital (subject to availability).

Clara Mouriz (mezzo Soprano) and Julius Drake (piano)

Clara Mouriz (mezzo Soprano)
Julius Drake (piano)

Falla, "Siete canciones populares"
Granados, "Canciones Dolorosas"
Montsalvatge, "Cinco canciones negras"
Falla's Cancion Andaluza,
songs by Villa Lobos and others

Doyen of pianists Julius Drake makes a welcome return to the festival in the company of an astonishing new talent. Spanish-born Clara Mouriz has taken the concert halls and opera houses of Europe by storm since making her Wigmore Hall debut last year. Her programme centres around songs from her native Spain and Portugal by composers including Falla, Granados, Montsalvatge and Villa Lobos, many of which appear on her debut CD with Sonimage.

“A classy act: a light, agile mezzo of great charm and elegant intelligence” Times (CM)

“One of the most sought-after pianists by UK singers” Guardian (JD)

Stalin: the mother of all music critics

"Stalin: the mother of all music critics” – music composed under oppression

Clive Marks

Clive Marks has been lecturing on music for over fifty years. For many years he was a director of Britain’s oldest music publishing firm, Novello and Co and has been a trustee of Trinity College of Music and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. His lecture will cover many aspects of the impact of oppressive regimes on musical composition, with examples from the Nazis, the Second World War and Stalinist Russia.

Free entry to the lecture by showing a ticket for the evening recital (subject to availability).

Festival Finale: Music for Clarinet, String Quartet and Piano

Bengt Forsberg (Piano)
Kate Gould (Cello)
Matthew Jones (Viola)
Jack Liebeck (Violin)
Maximiliano Martin (Clarinet)
Victoria Sayles (Violin)

Beethoven Clarinet Trio B flat major Op.11
Mendelssohn String Quartet No 2 in E minor Op. 44
Bartok “Kontrastes” for Violin, Clarinet and Piano
Weber Clarinet Quintet in B flat major Op.34

The final concert of the festival is full of contrasts – not least the eponymous piece by Bartok! Mendelssohn’s youthful and exuberant string quartet is a foil to the beauty of Beethoven’s Op. 11 clarinet trio. The concert and festival ends with Weber’s famous and scintillating Clarinet Quintet.

“Martin’s masterful combination of liquid tone and dazzlingly articulate virtuosity are compelling” Scotsman (MM)

“An irresistible mixture of high drama and exquisite sensitivity” Bridgwater Mercury (VS)

“Breathtakingly beautiful” Classic FM Magazine (KG)

Xuefei Yang (Chapel Series)

Xuefei yang guitar

This brilliant young guitarist can already claim an international concert career. Her programme is true to her reputation for choice of repertoire that intrigues and delights, one of the ingredients which has led to the success of her award-winning discs. Bach, Albeniz, Chopin and Regondi are to be enjoyed in the crystalline acoustic of Merton College Chapel.

www.musicatoxford.com

Book all 3 Chapel Series events and get 20% discount by calling 01865 305305 or in person at Oxford Playhouse

Chopin Bicentenary Concert

Recital given by Oxford Pianist, Geoffrey Hopkins, to commemorate the bicentenary of Chopin's birth.

Programme: 24 Preludes op.28, Berceuse, Ballade no.1 in G minor op.23, Nocturne in C minor op.48 no 1, Ballade in F minor op.52.

Popular Classics

Leader - Mariette Richter

Music Director - Robert Max

Soloist - Nicola Eimer (Piano)

Programme: Smetana - Bartered Bride Overture
Shostakovitch - Piano Concerto 2
Berlioz - Symphonie Fantastique

Jeremy Waldron, Dignity, Defamation and Rights...

Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2010 Self-Evident Truths? Human Rights and the Enlightenment

Jeremy Waldron, Professor of Law and Philosophy, New York School of Law.

This lecture is part of a series. Visit www.oxford-amnesty-lectures.org for more details and to sign up for our e-newsletter.

Hauschka, Nancy Elizabeth & James Blackshaw

Inspired line-up of musicians, all combining folk, classical and contemporary song with wide-ranging results. Prepared piano player Hauschka, singer and multi-instrumentalist Nancy Elizabeth and 12-string guitarist James Blackshaw harness wild impulses into measured musical journeys.

The Eight Seasons

VIVALDI Four Seasons (from ‘Il cimento dell`armonia e dell`inventione` Op. 8)
PIAZZOLLA The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires

Tamás András director/violin

Oxford Philomusica’s recently appointed and highly-distinguished leader, Tamás András, makes his solo debut with the Orchestra in this fascinating double bill. Vivaldi’s familiar four concertos are presented in tandem with the colourful companion pieces written late last century by the Argentinian master of the ‘new tango’, Astor Piazzolla.

To join Oxford Philomusica’s mailing or e-list please click HERE

Cushion Concert - Trumpet

45 minute informal concert with Mark Hooper especially devised for children. Fun for all the family.
Bring your own cushion! All concerts sell out, and numbers are limited for each concert, so please book in advance for your preferred time.

9.30am, 10.30am & 3pm for Under 5's. 11.30am for Over 5's

Cushion Concert - Trumpet

9.30am, 10.30am & 3pm for Under 5's. 11.30am for Over 5's

Cushion Concert - Trumpet

9.30am, 10.30am & 3pm for Under 5's. 11.30am for Over 5's

Cushion Concert - Trumpet

9.30am, 10.30am & 3pm for Under 5's. 11.30am for Over 5's

Mark Padmore and Kristian Bezuidenhout

Mark Padmore tenor
Kristian Bezuidenhout fortepiano

Schumann Dichterliebe
Schumann Liederkreis Op 24

Free Pre-concert Talk/Discussion for all ticket holders at 7pm by Mark Padmore

Schumann’s ultimately romantic treasure, ‘Dichterliebe’ is brought to life by two of the world’s’ finest musicians, Padmore and Bezuidenhout. Schumann’s powerful unfolding of passion, tension, conflict and love are all played out in this stunning song cycle which evokes an atmosphere of longing and uncertainty to the very end. The richly expressive melodies are sure to reward all who hear them especially in the hands of such illuminating artists.

www.musicatoxford.com

Book 6 or more events in the Music at Oxford Season Oct 09 – June 2010 and get 15% discount by calling 01865 305305 or in person at Oxford Playhouse ( excludes Chapel Series)

Rutter & Lambert at Dorchester Abbey

Come and hear Cranford Choral Society sing Rutters Requiem and Gloria , together with the exuberant and extraordinary
Rio Grande by Constant Lambert in the exquisitely atmospheric surroundings of Dorchester Abbey.

Groups buy 10 tickets for price of 9 (not available online. please call 01865 305305)

Spiro

Musical innovators Spiro create distinctly contemporary music rooted in English folk tunes. The result is complex, driving and uplifting combining minimalism, dance rhythms, classical harmonies and discords to entrancingly joyful effect.

Cliff Stapleton supports with hurdy-gurdy.

Hanging Hooke

BACK by popular demand, Take the Space return to Oxford with their sell-out success, Hanging Hooke, to mark the 350th anniversary of The Royal Society. This tale of intrigue and betrayal is here for two nights only..

Starring Chris Barnes, and written and directed by Siobhán Nicholas, Hanging Hooke explores the captivating 17th century world of The Royal Society, new science, discovery and intense rivalry. Was ‘England’s Leonardo’ buried by another Da Vinci plot? In hot-blooded times, passions explode… History is on trial. Robert Hooke, your time has come.

Hanging Hooke

The King's Singers

The King’s Singers
will you, won’t you join the dance?

This stellar group is regarded as one of the world’s elite classical musical ensembles. They return to our Season with an entertaining exploration of music inspired by dance over the centuries including works by Byrd, Schubert and Poulenc. Wit, waltzes and a world tour of dance from one of our most sought-after vocal ensembles.

www.musicatoxford.com

Book 6 or more events in the Music at Oxford Season Oct 09 – June 2010 and get 15% discount by calling 01865 305305 or in person at Oxford Playhouse ( excludes Chapel Series)

Mozart's Requiem - Bring & Sing

700 singers will be coming together to perform Mozart’s Requiem to raise £10,000 for Macmillan Cancer Support and celebrate the wealth of singing talent in Oxfordshire. Singers of all abilities welcome.

See www.voicesofoxford.com for more details.

You will need to book in your ticket in one of the voice parts Soprano, Contralto, Tenor or Bass

Doors open from 2pm

Rehearsals 3pm - 6pm

Concert 8pm - 9pm

Verdi Requiem

VERDI
Messa da Requiem

Teresa Cahill Soprano
Rosalind Plowright Mezzo
Adrian Dwyer Tenor
TBC Bass

London Symphony Chorus
(Chorus Master: Joseph Cullen)
Marios Papadopoulos conductor

When the greatest operatic composer of his day turned his attention to the innately dramatic text of the Latin mass for the dead, a work of extraordinary theatricality was the inevitable result. For this performance of Verdi’s still truly awe-inspiring masterpiece, Oxford Philomusica is joined by the London Symphony Chorus.

To join Oxford Philomusica’s mailing or e-list please click HERE

Rossini: Petite Messe Solennelle

The Petite Messe Solennelle was one of Rossini's two late religious choral masterpieces, written only a few years before his death. It has been described as spare, unsettling and emotionally complex, and is certainly unlike any other mass.

Cushion Concert - Viola

9.30am, 10.30am & 3pm for Under 5's. 11.30am for Over 5's

Cushion Concert - Viola

9.30am, 10.30am & 3pm for Under 5's. 11.30am for Over 5's

Cushion Concert - Viola

9.30am, 10.30am & 3pm for Under 5's. 11.30am for Over 5's

Cushion Concert - Viola

9.30am, 10.30am & 3pm for Under 5's. 11.30am for Over 5's

Sergei Leferkus & Semion Skigin

Legendary baritone Sergei Leiferkus will be joined by pianist Semion Skigin in an all-Russian programme to include Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death. Leiferkus has been hailed the world over as one of the great singers of this repertoire and this is an unmissable opportunity to hear him in the intimate setting of the Holywell Music Room.

"THE GREAT SERGEI LEIFERKUS MAKES A BRIEF BUT SHOW-STEALING APPEARANCE AS HIS EXCELLENCY"
NOV. 2009, THE GUARDIAN, REVIEWING THE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE'S THE TSARINA'S SLIPPERS

The Halle

Sir Mark Elder conductor
Anne Schwanewilms soprano

Strauss Sextet from Capriccio
Strauss Vier Letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs)
Mahler Symphony No 4

Free Pre-concert Talk/Discussion for all ticket holders at 6.30pm by Sir Mark Elder

The dream combination of the Halle Orchestra and their chief conductor Sir Mark Elder is heavenly enough, but with the added excitment of their Strauss/Mahler programme and an internationally renowned soloist, this becomes a sumptuous temptation not to be resisted! German soprano Anne Schwanewilms is considered one of today’s finest interpreters of music by Strauss and Mahler and because of her unique stage presence and her multi-faceted voice, she is one of the most coveted singers on the international opera scene. Unmissable!

www.musicatoxford.com

Book 6 or more events in the Music at Oxford Season Oct 09 – June 2010 and get 15% discount by calling 01865 305305 or in person at Oxford Playhouse ( excludes Chapel Series)

The Barbirolli Quartet with Daniel Norman & Sholto Kynoch

The Barbirolli Quartet are widely regarded as one of the most exciting young ensembles in the UK and are currently touring Europe as ECHO “Rising Stars”. They open the concert with Haydn’s jaunty D major quartet (Op. 20, no. 4), followed by Vaughan Williams’ beautiful setting of A.E. Housman, On Wenlock Edge. They are joined for this by tenor Daniel Norman, who will be remembered by many for his exceptional readings of Britten’s complete Canticles at last year’s Festival. In the second half of the concert, the Barbirolli Quartet and Sholto Kynoch will perform Brahms’s mighty F minor Piano Quintet.

Music from the Genome

What makes some people musical and others not? Composer Michael Zev Gordon explores this question in a new work performed by New London Chamber Choir, plus other contemporary works on the theme of light, talks and tour of the synchrotron.

Synchrotron tour - starts 7pm - You muyst be at the venue by 6.30pm

Advance bookings only, limited tour spaces (12 years must by accompanied by an adult) - Tour Only

Performance starts 8pm - You must be at the venue by 7.30pm

Olli Mustonen Piano Rectial

Oxford Philomusica Piano Festival and Summer Academy

TCHAIKOVSKY The Seasons
MUSTONEN Jehkin Iivana, Sonata for piano
SCRIABIN Etudes, Op. 8

Olli Mustonen piano

Olli Mustonen is a world renowned Finnish pianist, conductor and composer with an impressive recording catalogue
His brilliant technique and startling interpretations have challenged and fascinated audiences throughout Europe
and America.

To complement the Piano Festival concert programme, the 12th Summer Academy offers over 50 hours of
masterclasses to outstandingly gifted pianists, open to the public.

Olli Mustonen masterclass: Tuesday 3 August, 9.30-12.45, JDP. Observer tickets £9 available from 020 8450 1060

To join Oxford Philomusica’s mailing or e-list please click HERE

Michael Roll Piano Recital

Oxford Philomusica Piano Festival and Summer Academy

BEETHOVEN 6 Bagatelles Op. 126
HAYDN Sonata in C Hob 48
CHOPIN Impromptu No. 1 in A flat, Nocturne in F, Fantasie - Impromptu in C minor, Waltz in G flat
SCHUMANN Fantasy in C

Michael Roll piano

Michael Roll is widely considered one of Britain’s most distinguished pianists and has established a career as a
deeply probing and expressive artist. “The fact is that Roll remains one of the most perceptive and intelligent
pianists this country can claim.” The Independent

To complement the Piano Festival concert programme, the 12th Summer Academy offers over 50 hours of
masterclasses to outstandingly gifted pianists, open to the public.
Michael Roll masterclasses: Wednesday 4 August, 2.15-4.15pm and 4.30-6.30pm, JDP. Observer tickets £6 available
from 020 8450 1060

To join Oxford Philomusica’s mailing or e-list please click HERE

Fou Ts'ong Piano Recital

Oxford Philomusica Piano Festival and Summer Academy

Fou Ts’ong Piano

Hailed as 'the greatest Chinese musician alive today' Fou Ts’ong returns to the festival after his spellbinding Haydn
recital in 2009. Dubbed ‘The poet of the piano’, Fou Ts’ong is famous for his deeply spiritual interpretations of
works by Chopin, Schubert and Mozart. This year he presents a Chopin recital to celebrate the composer’s 200th
anniversary.

To complement the Piano Festival concert programme, the 12th Summer Academy offers over 50 hours of
masterclasses to outstandingly gifted pianists, open to the public.
Fou Ts’ong masterclass: Thursday 5 August, 2.15-5.30pm. Observer tickets £9 available from 020 8450 1060

To join Oxford Philomusica’s mailing or e-list please click HERE

Piano Festival Orchestral Concert - Chopin & Beethoven

Oxford Philomusica Piano Festival and Summer Academy

CHOPIN Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3 in E flat ‘Eroica’

Cristina Ortiz piano
Marios Papadopoulos conductor

It is the passion, spontaneity and allure so characteristic of Cristina Ortiz’s Brazilian cultural heritage, which are
central to her music-making. She returns for the fourth time to the festival to appear as soloist with Oxford
Philomusica in Chopin’s unmistakably romantic Piano Concerto No. 2.

To complement the Piano Festival concert programme, the 12th Summer Academy offers over 50 hours of
masterclasses to outstandingly gifted pianists, open to the public.
Cristina Ortiz masterclass: Friday 6 August, 9.30am-12.45pm. Observer tickets £9 available from 020 8450 1060

To join Oxford Philomusica’s mailing or e-list please click HERE

Participants Recital

Oxford Philomusica Piano Festival and Summer Academy

Oxford Philomusica International Piano Festival welcomes every year many extraordinarily talented pianists from all
over the world. In this recital by Festival Participants, you will witness exceptional playing by pianists on the verge of
international careers.

To complement the Piano Festival concert programme, the 12th Summer Academy offers over 50 hours of
masterclasses to outstandingly gifted pianists, open to the public.

Piano Festival masterclasses: 1-8 August, 9.30am-12.45pm, 2.15-4.15pm and 4.30-6.30pm. Observer tickets £9 or
£6 available from 020 8450 1060

To join Oxford Philomusica’s mailing or e-list please click HERE

Andras Schiff Piano Recital

Oxford Philomusica Piano Festival and Summer Academy

BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 14 ‘Moonlight’
Sonata No. 21 ‘Waldstein’
SCHUMANN Sonata No. 1 in F minor,
Davidsbundlertanze Op. 6

András Schiff Piano

Festival President and world-acclaimed pianist, András Schiff makes a welcomed return to the stunning setting of
Christ Church Cathedral. The Hungarian-born pianist’s thoughtful and fresh performances challenge traditional
interpretations while critics claim, ‘There is nothing more reliable in the world of classical music today.’

To complement the Piano Festival concert programme, the 12th Summer Academy offers over 50 hours of
masterclasses to outstandingly gifted pianists, open to the public.
András Schiff masterclass: Sunday 8 August, 9.30am-12.45pm, JDP. Observer tickets £9 available from 020 8450
1060

To join Oxford Philomusica’s mailing or e-list please click HERE

"Action and Contemplation: Franciscan Spirituality Today"

This is a Two day conference on Friday 3rd & Saturday 4th September 2010 with Richard Rohr, OFM Both Days 10am-4.30pm

www.st-james-piccadilly.org/rohrintro.html

"The greatest vocation is not the contemplative, nor is it the active, but the utter art form of putting the two together." (Fr Richard)

Are you a social activist? Or do you prefer to remain in the background and pray or meditate for peace with justice? It’s been said that we should pray as if everything depended on God, and act as if everything depended on us. Either way, the Franciscan priest Fr Richard Rohr, who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in New Mexico, tells us the most important word in that three word phrase is “and":

“And teaches us to say yes
And allows us to be both-and
And keeps us from either-or
And teaches us to be patient and long suffering
And is willing to wait for insight and integration
And keeps us from dualistic thinking
And does not divide the field of the moment
And helps us to live in the always imperfect now
And keeps us inclusive and compassionate toward everything
And demands that our contemplation become action
And insists that our action is also contemplative.
And heals our racism, our sexism, heterosexism,
and our classism
And keeps us from the false choice of liberal or conservative...
...And is the mystery of paradox in all things...”

Fr Richard will lead this challenging two-day conference, teaching the art form of holding together compassionate service grounded in a contemplative lifestyle. Sponsored by the Third Order of the Society of St. Francis - European Province.