Fifth Hexham book festival fires up

Mar 3 2010 by Barbara Hodgson, The Journal

THE programme for the Hexham Book Festival was unveiled yesterday, and will doubtless cause a flurry of date-circling in the diaries of literature lovers all over the North East.

The festival website – which went live yesterday – boasts that there is an “outstanding line-up of award-winning writers, leading thinkers, controversial speakers and bon viveurs”.

Well, here’s a selection from the line-up, and one which pretty much backs up their boasts. The cast list includes Margaret Drabble, PD James, Val McDermid, Shirley Williams, Jodi Picoult, Philippa Gregory, AL Kennedy, Wendy Cope, Ruth Padel, Simon Hoggart, Stephen Anderton, Martin Wainwright, Barbara Trapido, Tamasin Day-Lewis, and the River Cottage team, among others. Told you.

All in all, the Festival will welcome more than 30 authors of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, gardening, history, politics, food and wine, crime and children’s books to Hexham, between April 23 and May 2.

It is the fifth such event, and one which is building on the success of those gone by.

This year, for the first time, literary proceedings and celebrations are extending their geographical reach too.

Historian and best-selling writer Philippa Gregory will be at Alnwick Castle, where she will be talking about murder and betrayal in 15th-century England.