Laetitia Maklouf
HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?
10am Bix Manor £8 including coffee, tea and cake
Years after living in a flat meant gardening in window boxes and on the balcony until Laetitia moved into a house with her own garden. In a year she created her own garden from scratch and has written what is a bible for the gardening beginner. Irreverent, practical and funny, she sets out how to plan, plant and maintain a garden in ten easy steps. We love our gardens, learn how to get more out of yours…and still have time to enjoy it.
Sweet Peas for Summer – How to create a garden in a year – Bloomsbury
Philip Ardagh
FAMILY TROUBLE
10.30 am Kenton Theatre £4
He is the award-winning creator of the successful Eddie Dickens Trilogy and the Grubtown Tales, as well as the popular Grubtown Herald blog. His latest creation is The Grunts in Trouble about a disgustingly disgruntled family, for whom the words “bad” and “luck” were invented. He wrote BBC radio’s first truly interactive radio drama, collaborated with Sir Paul McCartney on his first children’s book and is a ‘regularly irregular’ reviewer of children’s books for The Guardian.
The Grunts in Trouble – Nosy Crow
Josceline Dimbleby
MINCING WORDS
11.30am Bix Manor £8 including coffee, tea and cake
A book about mince? Really? Yes, indeed. One of the country’s most popular food writers turns her attentions to the world of mince. Across the globe mince forms the basis of great food – the Americans have hamburgers, the Greeks moussaka, the Mexicans chilli con carne and the Italians have Bolognese. Fried, baked, roasted or stewed; used to stuff, top or fill; and spiced, soaked or left plain, and economical. First published 30 years ago, this new version confirms proves the lasting appeal of mince and its versatility. Come along and learn more from a wonderful cookery writer.
Marvellous Meals with Mince -
Quadrille Publishing
Bix Pantry lunches
£12.50
You can no longer pre-order Bix Pantry Lunches but there will be some available to buy on the day (Subject to availability)
Hugh Thomson and Dan Kieran
TRAVELLING LIGHT
1pm Bix Manor £7 including coffee, tea and cake
Travel isn’t all about going first class, taking packages and heading for the same destinations as thousands of others and two men who understand this better than most will inspire you to travel to places you have never been in a style that is very different. Dan is the author of the The Idle Traveller: The Art of Slow Travel and he believes, among other things, we should ditch the guidebook and follow our instincts in order to have a real travelling experience. Hugh, a leading travel writer and film maker who strongly holds the view that the world is not as explored a we like to suppose. His latest book, The Green Road Into The Trees: An Exploration of England, and is a journey from the very centre of England to the outermost edges following ancient trails and drover tracks. Be prepared to be inspired.
Sarah Raven
WILD WONDERS
2.30pm Bix Manor £10 including coffee, tea and cake
Nothing typifies our countryside more than the proliferation of wild flowers and Sarah has travelled the length and breadth of the British Isles to find 500 of the most beautiful. They cover both the rare and common including pulsatillas, fritillaries, bluebells, wild garlic, harebells, forget-me-nots, foxgloves, wood spurge, silverweed, purple cranesbill, deadly nightshade, orchids, wood sorrel and snowdrops. Learn more about the wonders of the countryside from a true expert with a wonderful skill in describing these natural joys.
Sarah Raven’s Wild Flowers – Bloomsbury
If you want to be added to the waiting list please email boxoffice@henleyliteraryfestival.co.uk with the name of the event in the subject
Victoria Mather
SOCIAL STEREOTYPES
4pm Bix Manor £10 including coffee, tea and cake
Her wonderfully witty and sharply observed columns in The Daily Telegraph became a staple of British humour. We all knew someone who matched the descriptions of the people who were so skillfully portrayed from ‘Appalling Guests’ to ‘Embarrassing Parents’ and The ‘Party Blonde’. Now you have the opportunity to hear what inspired Victoria to write this hugely popular slice of very British life featuring such a wonderful and diverse range of characters – the loveable, the eccentric and the downright ghastly.
Social Stereotypes – John Murray
John Major
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!
6pm Kenton Theatre £12
It might seem incongruous that a former Conservative Prime Minister would pen a history of the British Music Hall but Sir John has very good reason to be fascinated by the world of variety that packed theatres across the country before the television age. His performer father, Tom Major Ball inspired this fascinating journey into the bygone world of entertainment as did famous and highly paid stars like Marie Lloyd, Vesta Tilley and George Robey. It is an affectionate tribute to the journey of music hall from its beginnings in Elizabethan England to its 19th Century heyday, when every town had at least one music hall, to its decline.
My Old Man – HarperCollins
Sponsored by SJD Events
If you want to be added to the waiting list please email boxoffice@henleyliteraryfestival.co.uk with the name of the event in the subject
Crime and Wine – Sophie Hannah and Simon Kernick
LICENSED TO THRILL
7pm Bix Manor £8 including glass of Laithwaite’s wine
You’ve read their books, now meet two of the best writers at pulling the nerves taut.
In what should be a fascinating meeting of minds, it’s a chance to learn about the skill of creating tension in words. Sophie’s psychological crime novels feature Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailler and her seventh is Kind of Cruel. There is mystery, there is suspense and there is Amber Hewerdine who has lost her best friend in an arson attack and then is arrested for the murder of a woman she has never heard of.
Simon’s latest is bound to be a bestseller. It is another step in a career that has seen him gain a legion of followers around the world. Siege is set in a hotel in London’s Park where a normal afternoon turns into a nightmare when gunmen burst into the Stanhope Hotel begging the question …who will survive? Brace yourself to hear the secrets of suspense from two surprisingly charming writers. Kind of Cruel – Hodder and Stoughton. Siege – Arrow
Sandy Gall
ON THE FRONTLINE
7.30pm Kenton Theatre £8
With his rugged demeanor he is the epitome of the foreign correspondent and in his fascinating account of Afghanistan he draws on his own interviews with NATO military leaders, Western diplomats, Afghan and US politicians and ordinary Afghans to shine a fresh light on this war-torn country. He asks why the reconstruction of Afghanistan has withered on the vine; and how we have allowed a presidential style of government to concentrate power in one man’s hands and what are the challenges facing those now fighting on the most dangerous frontier in the world. War Against the Taliban: Why It All Went Wrong in Afghanistan – Bloomsbury
