Cheltenham Literature Festival - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, a large-scale international festival of literature in the Spa town of Cheltenham

Cheltenham

Cheltenham , also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a large spa town and borough in Gloucestershire, on the edge of the Cotswolds in the South-West region of England. It is the home of the flagship race of British steeplechase horse racing, the Gold Cup, the main event of the Cheltenham Festival held...

, and part of Cheltenham Festivals

Cheltenham Festivals

]Cheltenham Festivals is a registered charity that organises four festivals every year in the spa town of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire: the Jazz, Science, Music and Literature. In addition to this it promotes the use of several venues for private and commercial use ]Cheltenham Festivals is a...

: also responsible for the Jazz

Cheltenham Jazz Festival

Cheltenham Jazz Festival is one of the UK’s leading jazz festivals, and is part of Cheltenham Festivals: also responsible for the Science, Music and Literature Festivals that run every year.]-Introduction and history:...

, Music

Cheltenham Music Festival

The Cheltenham Music Festival is one of the oldest music festivals in Britain, held annually in Cheltenham in June/July since 1945. The festival is renowned for premieres of contemporary music, hosting over 250 music premieres as of July 2004....

and Science

Cheltenham Science Festival

The Cheltenham Science Festival is one of the UK's leading science festivals, and is part of Cheltenham Festivals: also responsible for the Jazz, Music and Literature Festivals that run every year.-Introduction and History:...

Festivals that run every year.

The 2011 festival will be held from 7-16 October.

]

Introduction and history

Formed in 1949, The Cheltenham Literature Festival is the longest-running festival of its kind in the world. The Festival was started by the Spa Manager George Wilkinson, in conjunction with the Tewkesbury-based author John Moore, who served as its first director. Actor Ralph Richardson

Ralph Richardson

Sir Ralph David Richardson was an English actor, one of a group of theatrical knights of the mid-20th century who, though more closely associated with the stage, also appeared in several classic films....

, who was born in Cheltenham, launched the festival, and poet Cecil Day Lewis, who taught at Cheltenham College

Cheltenham College

Cheltenham College is a co-educational independent school, located in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England.One of the public schools of the Victorian period, it was opened in July 1841. An Anglican foundation, it is known for its classical, military and sporting traditions.The 1893 book Great...

, read a selection of contemporary verse. The Festival currently has the national newspaper 'The Times'

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

as its 'title' sponsor: therefore making the full name of the festival "The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival". The Festival's current Artistic Director is Sarah Smyth.

The Festival prides itself in showcasing the biggest names from contemporary culture with award- winning authors, up-and-coming writing talent and controversial debate. With over 87,000 tickets sold in 2007, the Festival remains one of the most prestigious literary events in the world.

Each Festival contains a number of ‘features’ that group the events, as well as an underlying 'theme' throughout the Festival. Each year, 'Guest Directors' are also assigned, who curate short series of events throughout the Festival: these have included Armando Ianucci, A. C. Grayling

A. C. Grayling

Anthony Clifford Grayling is a British philosopher. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, a private undergraduate college in London. Until June 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991...

, Diran Adebayo

Diran Adebayo

Diran Adebayo is a British novelist, cultural critic and broadcaster best known for his vivid portrayals of modern London life and his distinctive use of language.-Education and career:...

, Dominic Dromgoole

Dominic Dromgoole

Dominic Dromgoole is an English theatre director and writer about the theatre. He is married with three daughters, and lives in London.-Early life:...

, Kate Adie

Kate Adie

Kathryn "Kate" Adie , OBE , is a British journalist. Her most high-profile role was that of chief news correspondent for BBC News, during which time she became well known for reporting from war zones around the world...

and Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin, OBE, DL , is a Scottish crime writer. His best known books are the Inspector Rebus novels. He has also written several pieces of literary criticism.-Background:He attended Beath High School, Cowdenbeath...

.

The festival also sees the presentation each year of the Nick Clarke Award

Nick Clarke Award

The Nick Clarke Award is a journalism prize created by the BBC in honour of Nick Clarke, former presenter of BBC Radio 4's The World At One, who died in November 2006...

for best broadcast interview.

Previous guests

Described as a 'literary lovers dream', the Festival has hosted the talents of some of the world's leading novelists, poets, humorists, historians, philosophers, actors and politicians. Previous guests include:

Sue Townsend

Sue Townsend

-Adrian Mole series:* The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ , her best selling book, and the best-selling new British fiction book of the 1980s.* The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole * The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole...

, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith is a British novelist. To date she has written three novels. In 2003, she was included on Granta's list of 20 best young authors...

, Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell

Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, , who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is an English crime writer, author of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries....

, Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown

James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...

, Martin Amis

Martin Amis

Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...

, Judi Dench

Judi Dench

Dame Judith Olivia "Judi" Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA is an English film, stage and television actress.Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo...

, Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry

Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...

, Michael Palin

Michael Palin

Michael Edward Palin, CBE FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries....

, Ian Hislop

Ian Hislop

Ian David Hislop is a British journalist, satirist, comedian, writer, broadcaster and editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye...

, Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking

Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA is an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, whose scientific books and public appearances have made him an academic celebrity...

, Richard Hammond

Richard Hammond

Richard Mark Hammond is an English broadcaster, writer, and journalist most noted for co-hosting car programme Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson and James May, as well as presenting Brainiac: Science Abuse on Sky 1.-Early life:...

, Armando Iannucci

Armando Iannucci

Armando Giovanni Iannucci is a Scottish comedian, satirist, writer, director, performer and radio producer. Born in Glasgow, he studied at Oxford University and left graduate work on a PhD about John Milton to pursue a career in comedy....

, Rik Mayall

Rik Mayall

Richard Michael "Rik" Mayall is an English comedian, writer, and actor. He is known for his comedy partnership with Ade Edmondson, his over-the-top, energetic portrayal of characters, and as a pioneer of alternative comedy in the early 1980s...

, Rory Bremner

Rory Bremner

Roderick "Rory" Keith Ogilvy Bremner, FKC is a Scottish impressionist, playwright and comedian, noted for his work in political satire...

, Jon Snow

Jon Snow

Jon Snow is an English journalist and presenter, currently employed by ITN. He is best known for presenting Channel 4 News.He was Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University from 2001 to 2008.-Early life:...

, Simon Schama

Simon Schama

Simon Michael Schama, CBE is a British historian and art historian. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. He is best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC documentary series A History of Britain...

, Michael Buerk

Michael Buerk

Michael Duncan Buerk is a BBC journalist and newsreader, most famous for his reporting of the Ethiopian famine on 23 October 1984, which inspired the Band Aid charity record.-Early life:...

, Bruce Parry

Bruce Parry

Bruce Parry is a Former Royal Marines Officer and Instructor who is now a TV presenter and adventurer, known particularly for the documentary programme series Tribe , co-produced by the BBC and the Discovery Channel...

, Sophie Dahl

Sophie Dahl

Sophie Dahl , born Sophie Holloway, is an English author and former model. She was born in London, the daughter of actor Julian Holloway and writer Tessa Dahl. Her maternal grandparents were author Roald Dahl and actress Patricia Neal. Her paternal grandparents were actor Stanley Holloway and...

, Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan

Ian Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"....

, Anne Enright

Anne Enright

Anne Enright is a Booker Prize-winning Irish author. She has published essays, short stories, a non-fiction book and four novels. Before her novel The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, Enright had a low profile in Ireland and the United Kingdom, although her books were favourably reviewed...

, A. C. Grayling

A. C. Grayling

, Sebastian Faulks

Sebastian Faulks

-Early life:Faulks was born on 20 April 1953 in Donnington, Berkshire to Peter Faulks and Pamela . Edward Faulks, Baron Faulks, is his older brother. He was educated at Elstree School, Reading and went on to Wellington College, Berkshire...

, Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization.-Family:...

, Tony Benn

Tony Benn

Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC is a British Labour Party politician and a former MP and Cabinet Minister.His successful campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963...

, Terry Jones

Terry Jones

Terence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator, and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....

, Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby is an English novelist, essayist and screenwriter. He is best known for the novels High Fidelity, About a Boy, and for the football memoir Fever Pitch. His work frequently touches upon music, sport, and the aimless and obsessive natures of his protagonists.-Life and career:Hornby was...

, Bob Geldof

Bob Geldof

Robert Frederick Zenon "Bob" Geldof, KBE is an Irish singer, songwriter, author, occasional actor and political activist. He rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats in the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside the punk rock movement. The band had hits with his...

, Jeremy Paxman

Jeremy Paxman

Jeremy Dickson Paxman is a British journalist, author and television presenter. He has worked for the BBC since 1977. He is noted for a forthright and abrasive interviewing style, particularly when interrogating politicians...

, Rupert Everett

Rupert Everett

Rupert James Hector Everett is an English actor. He first came to public attention in 1981, when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country as an openly gay student at an English public school, set in the 1930s...

, Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt

Francis "Frank" McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, best known as the author of Angela’s Ashes, an award-winning, tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood....

, Brenda Blethyn

Brenda Blethyn

Brenda Anne Blethyn, OBE is an English actress who has worked in theatre, television and film. Blethyn has received two Academy Award nominations, two SAG Award nominations, two Emmy Award nominations and three Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one...

, Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing

Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....

and Patrick Stewart

Patrick Stewart

Sir Patrick Hewes Stewart, OBE is an English film, television and stage actor, who has had a distinguished career in theatre and television for around half a century...

2008 Festival

'Festival Features'
Features included a series of readings from past Man Booker Prize winners, BBC Radio 4 recordings, and "The Times Debate".

Guest Directors
Kate Adie

Kate Adie

and Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin

Theme
"The family, and how it shapes who we are and how we live, read and write. Why have particular families become dynasties shaping entire nations? How have writers drawn on their family experiences and those of others?"

Artists and authors
Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...

, Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin

, Kate Adie

Kate Adie

, Patrick Stewart

Patrick Stewart

Sir Patrick Hewes Stewart, OBE is an English film, television and stage actor, who has had a distinguished career in theatre and television for around half a century...

, Richard Attenborough

Richard Attenborough

Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough , CBE is a British actor, director, producer and entrepreneur. As director and producer he won two Academy Awards for the 1982 film Gandhi...

, Simon Schama

Simon Schama

, David Starkey

David Starkey

David Starkey, CBE, FSA is a British constitutional historian, and a radio and television presenter.He was born the only child of Quaker parents, and attended Kendal Grammar School before entering Cambridge through a scholarship. There he specialised in Tudor history, writing a thesis on King...

, Antony Sher

Antony Sher

Sir Antony Sher, KBE is a double Olivier Award winning South African-born British actor, writer, theatre director and painter.- Early years :...

, Michael Parkinson

Michael Parkinson

Sir Michael Parkinson, CBE is an English broadcaster, journalist and author. He presented his interview programme, Parkinson, from 1971 to 1982 and from 1998 to 2007.- Early life :...

, Terry Jones

Terry Jones

, Tony Robinson

Tony Robinson

Tony Robinson is an English actor, comedian, author, broadcaster and political campaigner. He is best known for playing Baldrick in the BBC television series Blackadder, and for hosting Channel 4 programmes such as Time Team and The Worst Jobs in History. Robinson is a member of the Labour Party...

, Sandi Toksvig

Sandi Toksvig

Sandra Brigitte “Sandi” Toksvig is a Danish comedian, author and presenter on British radio and television.-Career:...

, Dawn French, Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage CBE is a British poet, playwright, and novelist.-Life and career:Simon Armitage was born in Marsden, West Yorkshire. Armitage first studied at Colne Valley High School, Linthwaite, Huddersfield and went on to study geography at Portsmouth Polytechnic...

, Clive James

Clive James

Clive James, AM is an Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet and memoirist, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs, for his chat shows and documentaries on British television and for his prolific journalism...

, Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell

Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE, , who also writes under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, is an English crime writer, author of psychological thrillers and murder mysteries....

, Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE, is a Rhodesian-born Scottish writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. In the late 20th century, McCall Smith became a respected expert on medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees...

, Bruce Parry

Bruce Parry

, Ray Mears

Ray Mears

Raymond Paul "Ray" Mears is an English woodsman, instructor, author and TV presenter. His TV appearances cover bushcraft and survival techniques, and he is best known for the TV series Ray Mears' Bushcraft, Ray Mears' World of Survival, Extreme Survival, Survival with Ray Mears, Wild Britain with...

, Frank Skinner

Frank Skinner

Frank Skinner is a British writer, comedian and actor. He is best known for his television presenting, often alongside David Baddiel, with whom he also collaborated for the football song "Three Lions."He is a radio presenter on the Saturday morning slot on Absolute Radio.-Youth and early career...

, Janet Street-Porter

Janet Street-Porter

Janet Street-Porter is a British media personality, journalist and television presenter. She was editor for two years of The Independent on Sunday. She relinquished the job to become editor-at-large in 2002...

, Roger Moore

Roger Moore

Sir Roger George Moore KBE , is an English actor, perhaps best known for portraying British secret agent James Bond in seven films from 1973 to 1985. He also portrayed Simon Templar in the long-running British television series The Saint.-Early life:Moore was born in Stockwell, London...

, Tony Curtis

Tony Curtis

Tony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...

, John Barrowman

John Barrowman

John Scot Barrowman is a Scottish-American singer, actor, dancer, musical theatre performer and media personality. Born in Glasgow yet growing up in Illinois after his family emigrated to the United States when he was eight years old, Barrowman was encouraged to further his love for music and...

, Russell T Davies, Dave Gorman

Dave Gorman

David James Gorman is an English author, stand-up comedian and presenter. He has performed comedy shows on stage in which he tells stories of extreme adventures and presents the evidence to the audience in order to prove to them that they are true stories...

, Charley Boorman

Charley Boorman

Charley Boorman is an English TV adventurer, travel writer and actor. He is well known for his association with motorcycles and enthusiasm for biking.-Education:...

, Alexei Sayle

Alexei Sayle

Alexei David Sayle is a British stand-up comedian, actor and author. He was a central part of the alternative comedy circuit in the early 1980s. He was voted the 18th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-ups in 2007...

, Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas

Mark Clifford Thomas is a left-wing English comedian, presenter, political activist and reporter from south London. He first became known as a guest comic on the BBC Radio 1 comedy show The Mary Whitehouse Experience in the late 1980s. He is best known for political stunts on his show, The Mark...

, and Laura Ulewicz

Laura Ulewicz

Laura Ulewicz was an American Poet.Born in Detroit, Michigan to Polish-American auto workers with strong union ties, she lived in Chicago and New York before moving to San Francisco in 1950...

.

Expansion
More than 450 writers and over 350 events, a new outdoor voices off stage in the town centre, more free events for children, and more events in The Centaur.

Cheltenham Festivals

The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival is just one of the four festivals that Cheltenham Festivals

Cheltenham Festivals

run each year. Combined with the Jazz

Cheltenham Jazz Festival

, Science

Cheltenham Science Festival

and Music

Cheltenham Music Festival

Festivals, Cheltenham Festivals

Cheltenham Festivals

host over 700 events across 12 months. The four festivals have worked together to ensure Cheltenham's

Cheltenham

enviable reputation as the festival capital of Britain, and attract some of the art's biggest names.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.