The Oxford Literary Festival

I spent the weekend at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival and, once again, had a fantastic time. The weather was gorgeous, the location (Christ Church college) both beautiful and convenient, and attendance at nine events, shoe-horned into a little less than forty-eight hours, saw the setting of a new personal record!

The highlights included an extremely entertaining debate between children’s writers Helena Pielichaty and Penny Dolan (Penny arguing in favour of fantasy in children’s books, whilst Helena championed reality), a wonderful talk by former Children’s Laureate, Michael Morpurgo, and a moving presentation by ex-Royal Marine, Pen Farthing, who not only managed to rescue a large number of mistreated dogs while serving in Afghanistan, but has also now set up the charity Nowzad Dogs to continue the good work. You can read more about Pen's experiences (and help the dogs by doing so) in his brilliant book, One Dog at a Time: Saving the Strays of Helmand.

I also very much enjoyed Martin Brasier and Emma Darwin's fascinating joint event, which was ostensibly concerned with Charles Darwin and the Cambrian explosion, but turned out to be incredibly wide-ranging, covering everything from fossils to metaphors, by way of the Wars of the Roses! I was delighted to get my copy of Emma's latest book, A Secret Alchemy, signed afterwards and greatly look forward to reading it - the first paragraph has me hooked!

The train home to Paddington was sweltering, though thankfully not as crowded as the one up to Oxford two days beforehand had been, and we arrived back in London to discover that the Hammersmith and City Line was closed for 'engineering works' - grrr! Despite these hitches, however, nothing was able to dampen my spirits after such a great weekend - nor to dissuade me from going again next year!

The News in Brief

1. Uncle Alonzo will shortly be enjoying life in foreign climes! Yes, the excessively beardy fellow’s nefarious plans for world domination continue apace – various rights have been bought and sold and he will soon be making guest appearances in Denmark, Korea and Brazil!

2. Whilst Alonzo is gadding about the globe, my own travel ambitions are rather more modest. I am heading off to the Oxford Literary Festival tomorrow at (almost) the crack of dawn - hence the extreme brevity of this post! I have now signed up for a ridiculous number of talks, presentations and panel events. One of the talks that I was originally due to attend was cancelled a week or so ago, so I naturally went looking for a replacement. I found three. I'm not sure that I am fully prepared for the weekend of madness, mayhem and 'frantic rushing about the place' that now awaits me.

3. I am still waiting for John Lewis to get in some replacement Leg Master machines. In fact, forget ‘some’, a simple ‘one’ would be fine – as long as they sold that one to me, of course!

4. This week’s rather abbreviated vital statistics:
Books In: 17
Books Out: O
(People are starting to complain and the shelves are definitely showing signs of sagging...)

Visits and Valentines

My lovely god-daughter, Lilia, and her mother have been staying with me for a couple of days and yesterday we spent a few hours at the London Wetland Centre. The weather was as perfect as possible for the time of year – crisp, blue-skied and sunny – and the Centre itself was starkly beautiful. I am always amazed that a place like this, 43 hectares of wetlands – wide open stretches of water and grassy walkways, teeming with wildlife – can exist in a corner of one of the busiest cities in the world. I love taking visitors along there to see the surprise in their faces when they enter the observatory, a glass-walled room, two storeys high, that looks out across the main lake. On a day like yesterday, so bright and clear, the view really is breathtaking and each new visitor’s astonishment at the sight mirrors my own. If any non-Londoners out there are planning a trip to the capital soon, then I recommend that you pencil a visit to the Wetland Centre into your itinerary. And if there are any Londoners reading who haven’t yet paid it a call, then what are you waiting for?

I have just booked this year’s trip to the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival and I am already looking forward to it. Just as last year – which was, astoundingly, my first ever visit to a literary festival – I will be staying in Christ Church College, at the heart of the action. And again, just as last year, I’ve booked more events than are probably good for me: in the space of a day and a half, I’ve committed myself to five different events and a Carvery Lunch! It’s bound to be a hectic couple of days, but also, I’m sure, extremely interesting and great fun at the same time. Another experience that I can highly recommend!

‘Sonnet: For the 14th of February’
Thomas Hood (1799-1845)

Thy bright eyes govern better than the Sun,
For with thy favour was my life begun,
And still I reckon on from smiles to smiles,
And not by summers, for I thrive on none
But those thy cheerful countenance compiles;
Oh! if it be to choose and call thee mine,
Love, thou art every day my Valentine!


Happy Valentine’s Day, one and all!