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Saturday 15th June 2013
Warwick Arts Centre
P ~ 02
Warwick Book Festival
Welcome to the University of
Warwick Book Festival 2013!
We are delighted to present the University of Warwick
Book Festival, “Worlds of History”, in which we
celebrate an outstanding array of authors whose books
capture the latest ideas on a diverse range of historical
themes. The Festival represents an exciting opportunity
for the University to extend our engagement with the
local community, and we look forward to welcoming
new audiences to Warwick’s campus to join us in what
will be an inspiring day.
The University of Warwick has a strong tradition in
writing and literary events, and a number of Warwick’s
excellent literary initiatives are represented at the
Festival, including the Warwick Prize for Writing, the
Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine and The
Warwick Review. The Festival further strengthens our
collaboration with Queen Mary, University of London,
and we are pleased to welcome authors from Queen
Mary to speak at the Festival.
We are also delighted to be working with local literary
partners Warwick Words and the Coventry Book
Festival, and pleased to be enhancing the literary
culture of the region. The world-class facilities of the
Warwick Arts Centre provide an excellent venue for
the Festival, and we are happy to be advancing this
wonderful collaboration between the University and
the Arts Centre.
Nigel Thrift
Vice Chancellor and President,
University of Warwick
***
Warwick Book Festival
P ~ 03
Contents
Ben Macintyre Ronan Fanning Hippocrates Initiative for Poetry and Medicine
Paula Byrne
Alex Danchev
Giorgio Riello
Lucinda Hawksley
The Warwick Prize for Writing
Literary Clubs and Societies
Bletchley Park The Warwick Review
Pamela Cox
Mike Dash on Writing History
Angie Hobbs
Ian Sansom
Patrick French
Jerry Brotton
The Lessons from History
Richard Holmes
Louise Foxcroft
Nicholas Roe
A Year of Shakespeare
Michael Scott
Writing Emotion
Spies and Secrecy
Katy Price
Nicola Gardini
Writing Wildness at Warwick: Poetry Workshop
Writing Historical Fiction Workshop
Cover Image: Su Blackwell - The Quiet American Book - Sculpture
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P ~ 04
Warwick Book Festival
Ben Macintyre
Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies
Theatre, 10-11am
Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies
is the story of five key D-Day spies: a bisexual
Peruvian playgirl, a tiny Polish fighter pilot,
a Serbian seducer, a wildly imaginative
Spaniard with a diploma in chicken farming,
and a hysterical Frenchwoman whose obsessive
love for her pet dog very nearly wrecked the
entire deception.
Their enterprise was saved from catastrophe
by a shadowy sixth spy whose heroic sacrifice
is revealed for the first time in this widely
acclaimed story.
Ben Macintyre is a columnist and
Associate Editor on The Times. He is
the author of nine books including
Agent Zigzag (2007) shortlisted
for the Costa Biography Award and
the Galaxy British Book Award for
Biography of the Year 2008, and
the number 1 bestseller Operation
Mincemeat (2010).
Ronan Fanning
Fatal Path: British Government and the Irish Revolution 1910-1922
Conference Room, 10-11am
Fatal Path: British Government and Irish
Revolution 1910-1922 is a magisterial narrative
of the most turbulent decade in Anglo-Irish
history: a decade of unleashed passions that
came close to destroying the parliamentary
system and to causing civil war in the United
Kingdom.
It was also the decade of the cataclysmic Great
War, of an officers’ mutiny in an elite cavalry
regiment of the British Army and of Irish armed
rebellion. It was a time, argues Ronan Fanning,
when violence and the threat of violence
trumped democratic politics.
Ronan Fanning is a Member of the
Royal Irish Academy, and Professor
Emeritus of Modern History at
University College Dublin. Among
his books are the definitive history of
the Irish Department of Finance and
a remarkable biography (co-written
with Michael Lillis) of Eliza Lynch,
wife of the 19th-century Paraguayan
dictator Francisco Solano López.
More recently, he has been one of
the chief editors of the Dictionary of
Irish Biography.
Warwick Book Festival
P ~ 05
Hippocrates Initiative
for Poetry and Medicine
featuring Wendy French, Michael Henry,
Jane Kirwan, Michael Hulse and Donald Singer
Helen Martin Studio, 10-11am
The Hippocrates Initiative began in 2009 as the
Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine for an
unpublished poem on a medical subject.
Since its launch the annual prize has attracted over 4000
applicants from 44 countries, and now includes annual
international symposia at which the Hippocrates awards
are presented, an international research forum for poetry
and medicine, and The Hippocrates Press. In 2011 the
initiative was awarded the Times Higher Education award
for Excellence and Innovation in the Arts.
This session will be led by founders of the Hippocrates
Prize for Poetry and Medicine Michael Hulse and Donald
Singer, and feature award-winning poets Wendy French,
Jane Kirwan and Michael Henry presenting their work.
***
Wendy French won the Hippocrates Prize in the
NHS category in 2010 (and second prize in 2011, with
two further poems commended by the judges). She
lives in London and facilitates writing in healthcare
and educational settings. She has published two full
collections of poetry, most recently surely you know this
(tall-lighthouse press, 2009). Her collaborative book on
the NHS, co-written with Jane Kirwan, is published this
year by the Hippocrates Press.
Jane Kirwan’s poetry collections, Stealing the Eiffel
Tower (1997) and The Man Who Sold Mirrors (2003), were
published by Rockingham Press. She won an English Arts
Council Writer’s Award in 2002.
In 2011, a prose and poem collaboration with Aleš
Machácek came out in English and Czech. She was placed
third (NHS category) in the 2012 Hippocrates Prize, with
four further poems commended by the judges, and
recently completed a book about the NHS written with
Wendy French.
Michael Henry has published four collections of poetry
with Enitharmon Press, the latest being After the Dancing
Dogs (2008). George Szirtes has praised his “poignant
elusive poetry full of surprises” and David Constantine has
applauded his “honest, sympathetic and enquiring” verse.
He won the Hippocrates Prize in the open category in 2011.
Michael Hulse’s most recent collection of poetry is The
Secret History (Arc, 2009) and his latest publication
the anthology The Twentieth Century in Poetry (Ebury,
2011), co-edited with Simon Rae. He has translated over
sixty books from the German, and with Donald Singer
co-founded the Hippocrates initiative for poetry and
medicine, which took a Times Higher Education Award in
2011. A new book of poems, Half-Life, is published shortly.
Donald Singer has been Professor of Clinical
Pharmacology & Therapeutics in the Warwick Medical
School since 2003. He has published widely, and since
2007 has been President of the Fellowship of Postgraduate
Medicine. Since 2010 he has been Secretary of the
European Association for Clinical Pharmacology &
Therapeutics, and Chair of the Heads of Pharmacology
and Therapeutics (BPS). In 2009 he co-founded the
Hippocrates initiative with Michael Hulse.
P ~ 06
Warwick Book Festival
Paula Byrne The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things
Theatre, 11am -12pm
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things is a
new biography exploring the forces that shaped
the interior life of Britain’s most beloved novelist.
Using objects that conjure up key moments or
themes in Austen’s life and work - a silhouette,
a vellum notebook, a topaz cross, a laptop
writing box, a royalty cheque - Byrne builds up
a picture of a writer who is far tougher, more
socially and politically aware, and altogether
more modern than the conventional picture of
‘dear Aunt Jane’ would allow.
Paula Byrne is a bestselling
biographer and Fellow of Oxford
University’s Harris Manchester
College.
Her books include Mad World:
Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of
Brideshead (2009) and Perdita:
The Life of Mary Robinson (2005),
which was long-listed for the
prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize.
Alex Danchev
Cezanne: A Life
Conference Room, 11am -12pm
Cézanne: A Life is the first comprehensive
assessment of the revolutionary work and
restless life of Paul Cézanne to be published in
decades.
Danchev’s account shows how Cézanne was the
exemplary artist-creator of the modern age who
changed the way we see the world. Cézanne
is not only the fascinating life of a visionary
artist and extraordinary human being but also a
searching assessment of his on-going influence
in the artistic imagination.
Alex Danchev is Professor of
International Relations at the
University of Nottingham.
His publications include a biography
of the military historian Basil Liddell
Hart (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998)
which was listed for the Whitbread
Prize for Biography and the Samuel
Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction.
Warwick Book Festival
P ~ 07
Giorgio Riello
Cotton: the Fabric that Made the Modern world
Helen Martin Studio, 11am-12pm
Cotton: the Fabric that Made the Modern World
explores the early globalised economy of the
cotton trade and its transformation after 1750
as cotton led the way in the industrialisation of
Europe.
By the early nineteenth century India, China
and the Ottoman Empire switched from world
producers to buyers of European cotton textiles,
a position they retained for over two hundred
years. This fascinating and insightful story
ranges from Asian and European technologies
and African slavery to cotton plantations in the
Americas and consumer desires across the globe.
Giorgio Riello is a Professor in
the Department of History at the
University of Warwick.
His recent work includes The
Spinning World: A Global History of
Cotton Textiles, 1250-1850 (ed. with
Prasannan Parthasarathi, 2009) and
How India Clothed the World: The
World of South Asian Textiles, 15001850 (ed. with Tirthankar Roy, 2009).
Lucinda Hawksley
March, Women, March
Conference room, 12-1pm
March, Women, March explores the women’s
movement in Britain, from the passing of the
Marriage and Divorce Act in 1857 to women
attaining the vote in 1928.
Published to commemorate the centenary of the
death of the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison,
who threw herself under King George V’s horse
during the Derby and thus sustained fatal
injuries, this fascinating book uses anecdotes
and accounts by both famous and hitherto
lesser known suffragettes and suffragists to
explore how the voice of women came to be
heard throughout the land in the pursuit of
equal votes for females.
Lucinda Hawksley’s interest in the
history of the women’s movement
increased after researching the lives
of several fascinating women of the
19th and early 20th centuries.
Her biographies of women
include Lizzie Siddal, The Tragedy
of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel; Katey, The Life and Loves of Dickens’s
Artist Daughter, and an upcoming
biography of the sculptor Princess
Louise (November 2013). Lucinda
is a lecturer in literature and art
history and is a regular speaker at the
National Portrait Gallery in London.
P ~ 08
Warwick Book Festival
The Warwick Prize for Writing
featuring Peter Forbes with Ian Sansom
Theatre, 12-1pm
The Warwick Prize for Writing is an innovative literature
prize that involves global competition, and crosses
all disciplines. The Prize was launched in 2008 and
is awarded every two years for an excellent and
substantial piece of writing in the English language, in
any genre or form.
Peter Forbes, winner of the 2011 Prize, will read from
his winning work Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and
Camouflage. Professor Ian Sansom, chair of the 2013
judging panel, will lead the session which will include
the announcement of the longlist for the 2013 Prize.
***
Peter Forbes is a science writer with a special interest
in the relationship between art and science. He initially
trained as a chemist and worked in pharmaceutical and
popular natural history publishing, whilst writing poems,
and articles for magazines such as New Scientist and
World Medicine.
He has written numerous articles and reviews for
newspapers and magazines, many specializing in the
relation between the arts and science; his books include
The Gecko’s Foot: How Scientists are taking a leaf from
nature’s book (2005) and Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry
and Camouflage (2009).
Ian Sansom is a Professor in the Department of English
and Comparative Literary Studies at the University
of Warwick and teaches on the Warwick Writing
Programme.
He is the author of nine books, including The Truth About
Babies (2002), Ring Road (2004), and the popular
Mobile Library series of novels. Ian Sansom writes for The
Guardian and is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 3 and
Radio 4.
Warwick Book Festival
P ~ 09
Literary Clubs and Societies
Helen Martin Studio, 12-1pm
This panel will trace the histories of literary clubs and
societies from the eighteenth century to the present
day. Jon Mee, researcher into late 18th-century literary
clubs, will be joined by Matthew Sangster talking about
the Royal Literary Fund, and John Burton, chair of the
George Eliot Fellowship.
***
Networks of Improvement: Literary Clubs and
Societies, 1760-1840 looks at the role of clubs, societies,
and other forms of association in the circulation of
knowledge in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
In this talk, Jon Mee looks at the take off in book clubs
and reading societies in the late eighteenth century - why
they formed, what they did, and how they related to each
other - discussing case studies from across the country,
including local examples in Birmingham and Coleshill.
Jon Mee is a Professor in the
Department of English and
Comparative Literary Studies at the
University of Warwick. He researches
culture and politics in the long
romantic period (1760-1832) and
has recently published Conversable
Worlds: Literature, Contention,
and Community 1762-1830 (Oxford
University Press) which was
nominated for the Louis Gottschalk
Prize of the American Society for
Eighteenth-Century Studies.
The George Eliot Fellowship was founded in 1930 to
further interest in the writer. In those days membership
was largely local but it now has members all over the
world, but especially in Japan and America. It runs study
days, outings, readings and performances and does
whatever it can to raise interest in George Eliot the person
and the writer. Next year it hopes to open a George Eliot
Visitor Centre at Griff House, her home until she was 21.
The Royal Literary Fund, founded in 1790, has operated
continuously for over two centuries, providing confidential
aid to writers in financial difficulties. As well as assisting
prominent figures including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John
Claire, Joseph Conrad and James Joyce, the Fund has
provided support for hundreds of less famous writers.
Their travails are recorded in detail in its extensive archives,
which document both the persistence of writers and their
networks and the enduring difficulties of living by the pen.
John Burton was a secondary
school English teacher and Head
of Department in Coventry and
Nuneaton schools. He has been
chairman of the George Eliot
Fellowship since 2008. He also
helps to run Heritage centres in
Bedworth and Nuneaton, takes many
photographs and writes local history
books when he has spare time.
Matthew Sangster recently
completed his PhD at Royal Holloway,
University of London, submitting a
thesis entitled Living as an Author in
the Romantic Period: Remuneration,
Recognition and Self-Fashioning. As
part of this project, he catalogued
the archive of the Royal Literary
Fund at the British Library, where he
also co-curated the 2011 exhibition
The Worlds of Mervyn Peake. He is
currently conducting research on
eighteenth-century reading habits at
the University of St Andrews.
P ~ 10
Warwick Book Festival
Bletchley Park
featuring Sinclair McKay, Michael Smith and Richard Aldrich
Theatre, 1-2.30pm
Intelligence specialists Michael Smith, Sinclair McKay
and Richard Aldrich will speak on this panel about
Bletchley Park, the historic site of secret British
codebreaking activities during WWII and birthplace of
the modern computer. Bletchley Park was where one
of the war’s most famous – and crucial – achievements
was made: the cracking of Germany’s “Enigma” code
in which its most important military communications
were couched. The Buckinghamshire country house was
home to Britain’s most brilliant mathematical brains,
like Alan Turing, and the scene of immense advances
in technology. This panel gives three compelling new
insights into the untold stories of Bletchley Park.
Sinclair McKay writes for The
Telegraph and Mail on Sunday, and
is the author of the bestselling book
The Secret Life of Bletchley Park: The
History of the Wartime Codebreaking
Centre by the Men and Women Who
Were There (2010).
Michael Smith is a number one
bestselling author of books on
intelligence and special operations.
He served in the British Army before
becoming a journalist, working for
the BBC, the Daily Telegraph and the
Sunday Times.
This is the first history for the general
reader of life at Bletchley Park, and
an amazing compendium of firsthand accounts from people now in
their eighties who lived and worked
there during the war; it has been
praised as “an eloquent tribute to
a quite remarkable group of men
and women, whose like we will not
see again” (Mail on Sunday) and a
“remarkably faithful account of what
we did, why it mattered, and how it
all felt at the time’” (The Guardian).
He is now a full-time writer, whose
publications include The Secrets
of Station X: How the Bletchley
Park Codebreakers helped win the
War (2011), The Emperor’s Codes:
Bletchley Park and the Breaking of
Japan’s Secret Ciphers (2002) and
The Spying Game: The Secret History
of British Espionage (2003), which
revealed details of how MI6 and
members of the British Special Boat
Service were operating inside Basra
throughout the 2003 war in Iraq.
***
Richard J. Aldrich is Professor
of International Security at the
University of Warwick.
He recently lead the AHRC project
“Landscapes of Secrecy: The
Central Intelligence Agency and
the Contested Record of US Foreign
Policy, 1947-2001”, a team of eight
scholars at the universities of
Nottingham and Warwick examining
the creation of the public record of
the CIA in realms such as history,
memoirs, novels and film.
His publications include GCHQ: the
Uncensored Story of Britain’s Most
Secret Intelligence Agency (2010),
a gripping exploration of the last
great unknown realm of the British
secret service.
Warwick Book Festival
P ~ 11
The Warwick Review
featuring Kirsty Gunn, Lesley Saunders and Michael Hulse
Conference Room, 1-2.30pm
The Warwick Review is published four times
a year from the English Department at the
University of Warwick. It is international in
scope, including poetry, prose fiction, essays
and reviews, symposia and thematic sections.
It is interested in history and politics, and
hospitable to emergent as well as established
writers. As Sean O’Brien writes, “curiosity,
imagination and readiness to encounter the
unfamiliar are qualities the Review asks of the
reader, and in turn does much to embody.”
Kirsty Gunn’s first novel, Rain, was
praised by Edna O’Brien and Faye
Weldon when it appeared in 1994,
and since then her fiction has been
acclaimed by Jayne Anne Phillips,
John Carey and many more around
the globe.
Widely translated and anthologised,
her work has been turned into film
and dance theatre and has won
numerous awards. Her latest novel,
The Big Music (Faber, 2012), was
hailed by Michael Bywater in The
Independent as “a masterpiece”. She
is Professor of Writing Practice and
Study at the University of Dundee.
In March 2013 The Warwick Review
celebrates its silver jubilee issue.
To mark the occasion, this event
features readings by two electrifying
Review contributors, award-winning
novelist Kirsty Gunn and acclaimed
poet Lesley Saunders, and by the
Review’s editor, poet Michael Hulse.
Lesley Saunders has published
several books of poetry, most
recently Cloud Camera (Two Rivers
Press, 2012), and has performed her
work at literary festivals and on the
radio.
Michael Hulse’s most recent
collection of poetry is The Secret
History (Arc, 2009) and his latest
publication the anthology The
Twentieth Century in Poetry (Ebury,
2011), co-edited with Simon Rae.
She has worked on collaborative
projects with artists, sculptors,
musicians, photographers and
dancers, and has held several
residencies including, in 2013, at the
Museum of the History of Science,
Oxford. She works as an independent
researcher in education and is a
visiting professor at the Institute of
Education, London.
He has translated over sixty books
from the German, and with Donald
Singer co-founded the Hippocrates
initiative for poetry and medicine,
which took a Times Higher Education
Award in 2011. A new book of poems,
Half-Life, is published shortly.
P ~ 12
Warwick Book Festival
Pamela Cox
Servants: the True Story of Life Below Stairs
Helen Martin Studio, 1-2pm
In the recent BBC 2 series Servants: the True
Story of Life Below Stairs, Pamela Cox revealed
the history of Britain’s domestic workers
throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, from
the grand houses of the Victorian elite to the
decline of domestic service in the 20th century.
The series links to her book Bad Girls in Britain:
Gender, Justice and Welfare, 1900-1950, which
traces the history of delinquent and destitute
girls and explores the central role of domestic
service training as a means of reforming them.
Pamela Cox is a senior lecturer
in Sociology at the University of
Essex, teaching and researching
across social history, social policy
and criminology. She has published
widely on female delinquency and is
currently developing a new project on
crime history.
The talk will be chaired by Dr Laura
Schwartz, Assistant Professor
in Modern British History at the
University of Warwick, who appeared
on the BBC series.
Mike Dash on Writing History
Theatre, 2.30-3.30pm
In a weekly history essay for the Smithsonian,
Mike Dash writes “history with all the interesting
bits left in”, covering such diverse topics as
slave rebellions in the Caribbean, Chilean witch
trials, and hermits in the Siberian taiga.
In this talk, Mike will reflect on different forms of
writing history for popular audiences.
Mike Dash is the author of books
including The First Family: Terror,
Extortion and the Birth of the
American Mafia (2009) and
Satan’s Circus: Murder, Vice, Police
Corruption, and New York’s Trial of
the Century (2007), both of which
were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize
for History.
Warwick Book Festival
P ~ 13
Angie Hobbs
The Erotic Magus: Socrates, Eros and Magic
Conference room, 2.30-3.30pm
In Plato’s dialogue on erotic love, the Symposium,
Eros is portrayed as a magician and a daimôn,
a necessary intermediary spirit between
mortal and divine realms, both revealing and
strengthening usually hidden harmonies in
apparently disparate subject matter.
As Eros is said to be a philosopher, and as
Socrates is depicted partially as a representative
of Eros, Plato invites us to reflect on the relation
between magic and rational, philosophic life
- an aspect which current philosophers either
deliberately ignore or unconsciously overlook.
With the help of Renaissance philosopher
Ficino, I argue that a true understanding of the
Symposium entails a profound review of the
nature of reason itself.
Angie Hobbs is Professor of the
Public Understanding of Philosophy at
the University of Sheffield. Her chief
interests are in ancient philosophy
and literature, ethics (both
theoretical and applied) and political
theory, and she has published widely
in these areas, including Plato and
the Hero (2000; paperback 2006).
She is currently writing a book on
heroism, courage and fame and
producing a new translation of, and
commentary on, Plato’s Symposium,
a vivid dramatic dialogue exploring
different views on the origins, nature,
aims and effects of erotic love.
Ian Sansom
The Norfolk Mystery
Helen Martin Studio, 2.30-3.30pm
Ian Sansom’s new novel The Norfolk Mystery
begins a thrilling new detective series, The
County Guides.
It is 1937 and disillusioned Spanish Civil War
veteran Stephen Sefton is stony broke. So when
he sees a mysterious advertisement for a job
where ‘intelligence is essential’, he applies.
Thus begins Sefton’s association with Professor
Swanton Morley, an omnivorous intellect.
Morley’s latest project is a history of traditional
England, with a guide to every county. They
start in Norfolk, but when the vicar of Blakeney
is found hanging from his church’s bellrope,
Morley and Sefton find themselves drawn into
a rather more fiendish plot. Did the Reverend
really take his own life, or was it – murder?
Ian Sansom is a Professor in
the Department of English and
Comparative Literary Studies at the
University of Warwick and teaches on
the Warwick Writing Programme.
He is the author of nine books,
including The Truth About Babies
(2002), Ring Road (2004), and the
popular Mobile Library series of
novels. Ian Sansom writes for The
Guardian and is a regular broadcaster
on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4.
P ~ 14
Warwick Book Festival
Patrick French
India: A Portrait
Theatre, 3.30-4.30pm
India: A Portrait is an intimate biography of
1.2 billion people, telling the story of how
India emerged from a turbulent struggle for
independence to become a vibrant democracy
with one of the fastest-growing economies
in the world. Patrick French travelled across
the country talking to everyone from political
leaders to mafia dons, from chained quarry
workers to self-made billionaire entrepreneurs,
to tell the story of post-independence India as
never before.
Patrick French is the author
of several books including
Younghusband: The Last Great
Imperial Adventurer (1994), and The
World Is What It Is: the Authorized
Biography of V.S. Naipaul (2008)
which won the National Book Critics
Circle Award in the United States of
America.
Jerry Brotton
A History of the World in 12 Maps
Conference room, 3.30-4.30pm
A History of the World in Twelve Maps examines
the significance of 12 maps, from the mystical
representations of ancient history to the
satellite-derived imagery of today.
He vividly recreates the environments and
circumstances in which each of the maps was
made, showing how each conveys a highly
individual view of the world - whether the
Jerusalem-centred Christian perspective of
the 14th century Hereford Mappa Mundi or the
Peters projection of the 1970s which aimed to
give due weight to ‘the third world’.
Jerry Brotton is a Professor in the
Department of English at Queen
Mary, University of London. His books
include Trading Territories: Mapping
the Early Modern World (1997) and
The Sale of the Late King’s Goods
(2006), and he has been shortlisted
for prizes including the Samuel
Johnson Prize for non-fiction in 2006.
He is a regular broadcaster, critic
and feature writer, most recently
presenting the BBC 4 series Maps:
Power, Plunder and Possession in
2010.
Warwick Book Festival
P ~ 15
The Lessons from History
with Alex Danchev, Andrew Mumford and Louise Sullivan
Helen Martin Studio, 3.30-4.30pm
Can we learn from history? What does it have to teach
us? How do we know that we’ve learned well? This panel
considers various approaches to the vexed question
of ‘the lessons of history’ in public and in private, in
government policy and in pursuit of the good life. Alex
Danchev, Andrew Mumford, and Louise Sullivan will
discuss these engaging questions in an hour-long panel.
***
Alex Danchev is Professor of International Relations at
the University of Nottingham; his publications include
a biography of the military historian Basil Liddell Hart
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998) which was listed for the
Whitbread Prize for Biography and the Samuel Johnson
Prize for Non-Fiction.
Andrew Mumford is a Lecturer in Politics & International
Relations at the University of Nottingham; his main area of
research is state responses to sub-state violence, explored
in his recent book The Counter-Insurgency Myth: The
British Experience of Irregular War (Routledge, 2011).
Louise Sullivan is a doctoral student in the School of
Politics & International Relations at the University of
Nottingham. Her research examines historical learning
within British overseas security, seeking to address why
learning from history is important and how historical
learnings are identified, stored and utilised.
Richard Holmes
Falling Upwards: How we took to the Air
Theatre, 4.30-5.30pm
Falling Upwards: How we took to the Air is
a compelling adventure story following the
pioneer generation of balloon aeronauts, from
the first heroic experiments of the Montgolfiers
in 1780s to the tragic attempt to fly a balloon to
the North Pole in the 1890s.
Why they did it, what their contemporaries
thought of them, and how their flights revealed
the secrets of our planet in unexpected ways, is
the subject of this account.
Richard Holmes is an award-wining
author best known for his biographical
studies of major figures of British
and French Romanticism. His works
include The Age of Wonder: How the
Romantic Generation Discovered the
Beauty and Terror of Science (2008),
Dr Johnson and Mr Savage (1993),
which won the James Tait Black award
for biography in 1993, and Coleridge:
Darker Reflections (1998).
P ~ 16
Warwick Book Festival
Louise Foxcroft
Calories and Corsets: A History of Dieting over 2000 years
Conference room, 4.30-5.30pm
Calories and Corsets: A History of Dieting over
2000 years tells the epic story of how we have
tried - and failed - to battle the bulge, and
how the fashions and fads of body shape have
changed over time.
Drawing on material from letters, medical
journals and the dieting bestsellers we continue
to devour, Foxcroft reveals the extreme and
often absurd lengths people will go to in order
to achieve the perfect body.
Louise Foxcroft writes about medical
perceptions of the human body and
the ways these are related to present
human experience.
Her books include The Making of
Addiction: the “use and abuse” of
opium in nineteenth-century Britain
(2007), Hot Flushes, Cold Science:
a history of the modern menopause
(2009), which won the Longman/
History Today Book of the Year Award
2009, and she writes for publications
including The Times, Independent,
and New Scientist online.
Nicholas Roe
John Keats: a New Life
Theatre, 5.30-6.30 pm
John Keats: A New Life is a landmark biography
of the celebrated Romantic poet which explodes
entrenched conceptions of Keats as a delicate,
overly sensitive, tragic figure.
Roe reveals the real flesh-and-blood poet: a
passionate man driven by ambition but prey
to doubt, suspicion, and jealousy; sure of his
vocation while bitterly resentful of the obstacles
that blighted his career; devoured by sexual
desire and frustration; and in thrall to alcohol
and opium.
Nicholas Roe is Professor of English
Literature at the University of St
Andrews and author of acclaimed
biographies and critical studies
including Fiery Heart: The First Life
of Leigh Hunt (2005), John Keats
and the Culture of Dissent (1997)
and Wordsworth and Coleridge: The
Radical Years (1988).
Warwick Book Festival
P ~ 17
A Year of Shakespeare
Reliving the World Shakespeare Festival
Helen Martin Studio, 4.30-5.30pm
A Year of Shakespeare: Reliving the World Shakespeare
Festival gives a uniquely comprehensive, expert and
exciting overview of the largest Shakespeare festival the
world has ever known: The World Shakespeare Festival,
2012.
The book fully documents all 74 productions which
formed part of the Festival in 2012, from a Lithuanian
Hamlet, an Israeli Merchant of Venice and Jonathan
Pryce’s King Lear. This panel will feature editor Erin
Sullivan and contributors Will Sharpe and Peter Kirwan
discussing the highlights and legacy of the Festival.
***
Erin Sullivan is a Lecturer and Fellow of the Shakespeare
Institute, University of Birmingham. She was the principal
organizer of the Year of Shakespeare project, an online
forum featuring reviews, discussion, and debate about
the more than 70 Shakespearean productions staged in
the UK as part of the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival
and Cultural Olympiad. She is one of the editors of the
subsequent book from Arden / Bloomsbury A Year of
Shakespeare: Re-living the World Shakespeare Festival.
Will Sharpe is a visiting lecturer at the Shakespeare
Institute and a contributor to the Year of Shakespeare
project. He is associate general editor of the RSC
Shakespeare series, as well as associate editor of
the forthcoming RSC volume Collaborative Plays
by Shakespeare and Others published by Palgrave
Macmillan.
Peter Kirwan is Lecturer in Shakespeare and Early
Modern Drama at the University of Nottingham, and was
awarded his PhD by the University of Warwick in 2011.
He is a prolific theatre and book reviewer for a number
of academic journals and websites. His theatre review
blog The Bardathon was begun at Warwick in 2006 and
is read widely. He contributed four reviews to A Year of
Shakespeare, as well as to other books and websites on
the World Shakespeare Festival.
P ~ 18
Warwick Book Festival
Michael Scott
Delphi: Bellybutton of the Ancient World
Conference Room, 5.30-6.30pm
Michael Scott’s new work brings together the
historical and archaeological evidence for the
oracle and sanctuary of Delphi over its 1000+
year life-span, presenting the very latest
scholarship in order to understand how and
why this small remote community became,
and managed to remain, a crucial centre of the
ancient Mediterranean world for so long.
Michael Scott is an Assistant
Professor in Classics and Ancient
History at the University of Warwick.
His publications include From
Democrats to Kings: the brutal dawn
of a new world from the downfall of
Athens to the rise of Alexander the
Great (2009).
Michael has written and presented a
number of BBC programmes including
Guilty Pleasures: Luxury in the
Ancient Greek and Medieval Worlds
(BBC 4, 2011). He is currently working
on new series for BBC 4 and BBC 2.
Writing Emotion
featuring Katherine Angel
Helen Martin Studio, 5.30-6.30pm
In what ways do experiences of pain and
pleasure come together in the act of writing?
How does a writer’s desire to write express
itself on the page? Why might we read a writer’s
emotional investment in her text through the
lens of gender? In conversation with Julie
Walsh, writer and academic Katherine Angel
will be exploring such questions and sharing
her experience of writing her book Unmastered:
A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell.
Julie Walsh is a Global Research Fellow at
Warwick University where she works on the
topics of narcissism, shame and contemporary
identity practices. Part of Julie’s project entails
a psychoanalytic examination of ‘Shame and the
Act of Writing’.
Katherine Angel is a Leverhulme
Early Career Fellow at the Centre for
the History of Emotions, Queen Mary.
She has been published in academic
publications, and written for the
Independent, Prospect, and the New
Statesman. Unmastered: A Book on
Desire, Most Difficult to Tell is an
incisive, moving, and lyrical work that
allows us to think afresh about desire.
Touching on experiences of desire
and pleasure, as well as grief and
pain, the book probes the porousness
between masculine and feminine,
thought and sensation, self and
culture, power and pliancy.
Warwick Book Festival
P ~ 19
Spies and Secrecy
Featuring Peter Hennessy, Christopher Moran
and Calder Walton
Theatre, 6.30-8pm
Peter Hennessy is Attlee Professor
of Contemporary British History at
Queen Mary, University of London
and was recently elected a Fellow of
the British Academy. Before joining
the Department in 1992, he was
a journalist for twenty years with
spells on The Times as a leader
writer and Whitehall Correspondent,
The Financial Times as its Lobby
Correspondent at Westminster and
The Economist. He was a regular
presenter of the BBC Radio 4 Analysis
programme from 1987 to 1992.
His book The Secret State: Whitehall
and the Cold War (2002) offered
a sensational account of Cold
War Britain, drawing on recently
declassified intelligence and warplanning documents, and interviews
with key officials, to reveal a chilling
behind-the-scenes picture of the
corridors of power when the world
teetered on the brink of disaster. It
was highly acclaimed by The Times
as “riveting, path-breaking and
wonderfully readable”.
“Spies and Secrecy” brings together three leading
intelligence experts - Peter Hennessy, Calder Walton and
Christopher Moran – whose ground-breaking works have
revealed compelling new insights into British state history.
Christopher Moran is an Assistant
Professor in US National Security
in the Department of Politics and
International Studies (PAIS) at
Warwick University. His research
concerns the relationship between
President Richard Nixon, his National
Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, and
the Central Intelligence Agency.
Calder Walton is a leading
intelligence historian who has worked
on British intelligence history at
Cambridge University as a doctoral
and postdoctoral researcher. He was
a Research Assistant on Christopher
Andrew’s unprecedented authorized
official history of MI5 Defence of the
Realm (2009).
He has recently published Classified:
Secrecy and the State in Modern
Britain (2013), a fascinating account
of the British state’s long obsession
with secrecy and the ways it sought
to prevent information about its
secret activities from entering the
public domain. The book reveals
new insights into seminal episodes
in British post-war history, including
the Suez crisis, the D-Notice Affair
and the treachery of the Cambridge
spies, identifying a new era of
offensive information management,
and putting the contemporary battle
between secret-keepers, electronic
media and digital whistle-blowers
into long-term perspective.
His book Empire of Secrets: British
Intelligence, the Cold War and the
Twilight of Empire (2013) offers a
compelling new chapter in Britain’s
imperial history, revealing the largely
untold activities of British intelligence
in the last days of Empire and adding
to our understanding of the Cold
War and the history of international
relations since 1945. It has striking
resonances for today, uncovering
the use and abuse of intelligence by
governments in the past, ‘rendition’
during the Second World War, the
use of torture during interrogations
in counter-insurgencies, and the
balance that western countries struck
between security and civil liberties.
P ~ 20
Warwick Book Festival
Katy Price Loving Faster than Light: Romance and Readers in Einstein’s Universe
Conference Room, 6.30-7.30pm
Loving Faster than Light explores the popular
reception of Einstein’s theory of relativity in
Britain, demonstrating how abstract science
came to be entangled with class politics, new
media technology, changing sex relations,
crime, cricket, and cinematography in the
British imagination during the 1920s.
Blending literary analysis with history of
science, Price reveals how cultural meanings
for Einstein’s relativity were negotiated in
newspapers with differing political agendas,
popular science magazines, pulp fiction
adventure and romance stories, detective plots,
and esoteric love poetry.
Katy Price is a lecturer in modern
and contemporary literature at Queen
Mary, University of London.
She has also published on William
Empson, and on music technology,
and is currently researching
precognitive dreams as a site
of negotiation between cultural
authority and popular experience in
Britain from 1925-1970.
Nicola Gardini
Le parole perdute di Amelia Lynd (The Lost Words of Amelia Lynd)
Theatre, 8-9pm
In a Milan suburb in the early 1970s, Chino is
trying to grow up. His school is the apartment
building where his mother Elvira works as a
concierge: a grotesque seedbed of meanness
and selfishness, against which Elvira heroically
stands up with her good heart and dreams of
social redemption.
One day, a new, utterly bizarre tenant appears,
a lady of superior sensibility and education:
Amelia Lynd, an aged idealist, a faded grande
dame of cosmopolitan heritage, the author of
a mysterious dictionary and the keeper of an
unimaginable secret. Guided by his “second
mother” and by Elvira’s benevolence, Chino
undertakes a restorative journey of discovery
into the complexities of words, ideas and human
relations.
Nicola Gardini teaches Italian
Literature at the University of Oxford.
He has published essays, poetry
collections and novels.
These include Così ti ricordi di me (Sironi 2003), Lo sconosciuto (Sironi
2007) and I baroni (Feltrinelli, 2009
and 2013). He edited the Meridiano
Mondadori of Ted Hughes’ Poems and
published Per una biblioteca
indispensabile: Cinquantadue classici
della letteratura italiana (Einaudi
2011) and Rinascimento (Einaudi,
2010). Le parole perdute di Amelia
Lynd won the Viareggio Prize (2012)
and the Zerilli Marimò – City of Rome
Prize (2012).
Warwick Book Festival
P ~ 21
Writing Wildness at Warwick:
Poetry Workshop with Yvonne Reddick
National Grid Room, 1 - 2.30pm
This innovative poetry workshop will help
participants to create their own poem
inspired by walking in wild places. A half-hour
‘fieldwalk’ through the scenic surroundings
of Warwick’s campus will provide a starting
point for participants to experiment with form,
rhythm and shape. The workshop will explore
humanity’s fascination with journeys, our
love of favourite places and our own personal
narratives of travelling in the outdoors.
A creative and fun way to be inspired.
Yvonne Reddick is a scholar and
poet based at Warwick University,
where she is a postdoctoral
researcher. She teaches at the
Warwick Writing Programme and
the Department of English, and
publishes research on mankind and
literature’s long fascination with
landscape. Her poetry pamphlet
LandForms was published in 2012.
Please note: this workshop will include a short walk
around campus lakes, so please wear suitable shoes.
Writing Historical Fiction Workshop
With Tim Leach
National Grid Room, 2.30-4pm
Aimed at the aspiring writer of historical fiction,
this workshop offers an exploratory overview of
the novel writing process. Through discussion
and exercises led by a published author of
historical fiction, learn how to approach
research with a novelist’s eye, refine your ideas
into a workable plan of action, and to draft and
edit your manuscript.
Attendees are encouraged to bring notes and
ideas for projects they would like to develop.
All levels of experience are welcome.
Tim Leach is a novelist and teacher
of creative writing. His first book,
The Last King of Lydia, is set in the
ancient world, and was published in
Spring 2013 by Atlantic Books.
He has taught fiction at
undergraduate level on the Warwick
Writing Programme, where he also
studied for his MA Writing. He now
writes full time, and is currently
based in Sheffield.
P ~ 22
Warwick Book Festival
Programme
Information
10am
Ben Macintyre Theatre
Tickets and Booking
Ronan Fanning Conference Room
Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine Helen Martin Studio
11am
Paula Byrne Theatre
Alex Danchev Conference Room
Giorgio Riello Helen Martin Studio
12pm
The Warwick Prize
for Writing Theatre
Tickets can be booked by
Lucinda Hawksley Conference Room
― Calling the Arts Centre on 02476 524524
Literary clubs and
societies Helen Martin Studio
1pm
Bletchley Park
(-2.30pm) Theatre
The Warwick Review
(-2.30pm) Conference Room
Pamela Cox (-2pm) Helen Martin Studio
Writing Wildness at
Warwick (-2.30pm) National Grid Room
2.30pm
Mike Dash Theatre
Angie Hobbs Conference Room
Ian Sansom Helen Martin Studio
Writing Historical
Fiction (-4pm) National Grid Room
3.30pm
Patrick French Theatre
Jerry Brotton Conference Room
The Lessons from
History Helen Martin Studio
4.30pm
Richard Holmes Theatre
Louise Foxcroft Conference Room
A Year of Shakespeare Helen Martin Studio
5.30pm
Nicholas Roe Theatre
Michael Scott Conference Room
Writing Emotion Helen Martin Studio
6.30pm
Spies and Secrecy Theatre
Katy Price Conference Room
Nicola Gardini Theatre
8pm
The Festival is taking place at the Warwick
Arts Centre, located on the University of
Warwick Campus.
Tickets are £5 per event
(£4 concessions; 50p booking fee per ticket)
― Visiting the Box Office in person
― Emailing ticketing@warwick.ac.uk
― Visiting the Book Festival website at
www.go.warwick.ac.uk/bookfestival
Accessibility
All venues in the Arts Centre are fully
accessible and dedicated wheelchair
spaces are available; please mention
any special requirements at the time of
booking.
Accessible parking spaces for visitors with
limited mobility are available in all car
parks, and there is a setting-down point
outside the Arts Centre.
For full details regarding accessibility see
the Arts Centre access pages.
Book Signings
Authors will be available for book signings
after each event; books can be purchased
at the signing, or in advance from the
University of Warwick Bookshop.
***
Warwick Book Festival
P ~ 23
Getting to the Festival
Warwick Arts Centre is at the heart of the
University of Warwick campus, located
between Coventry and Kenilworth.
By Train
The nearest mainline station is Coventry. From Coventry station
you can catch a No. 12 bus, which takes approximately 15
minutes, or a taxi. For further information, visit the National
Rail Enquiries website.
By Car
The full address and postcode for route planning is: Warwick
Arts Centre, The University of Warwick, Gibbet Hill Road,
Coventry, CV4 7AL. The Arts Centre and University are clearly
signed from the A46.
By Bus
There are over 2000 parking spaces near to the Arts Centre.
Parking is free all day Saturday. The closest car parks to the
Arts Centre are Car Parks 7, 4 and 4a.
From Leamington, Stagecoach Unibus routes travels to the
University. From Coventry and Kenilworth, National Express
Coventry routes 11 and 12 stop at the University.
Regular services run between Coventry, Leamington and
Kenilworth to the University of Warwick.
Coventry City Centre
POLICE STATION
HOMEBASE
FIRE STATION
A
ell
A45
A45
Birmingham,
M42, M6
ue
A45
Rugby, London,
M45, M1, M6, M69
w
art
SUPERMARKET
en
d
Ro
a
University of Warwick
Central Campus
15
18
A46
A429 Kenilworth Road
Kir
by
Co
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WE
ST
WO
O
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CA
MP
U
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Av
A45 Kenpass Highway
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Coventry M6 & M1
07
06
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04/04a
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Gibbet Hill Road
Stoneleigh Road
Follow the brown signs
for Warwick Arts Centre.
For general information about travelling
around the West Midlands see Network West
Midlands or call Traveline on 0871 200 22 33.
Kenilworth
M40 (J15) and Oxford
Saturday 15th June 2013 Warwick Arts Centre
Thanks to:
Staff and Fellows at the Institute of Advanced Study; Queen Mary Centre
for Public Engagement; Laura Elliot and the team at Warwick Arts Centre;
University of Warwick Bookshop; Helen Meeke and Warwick Words Festival;
Joy Court and Literally Coventry Book Festival; Writing West Midlands;
the Wolfson Research Exchange; Maria Luddy and the Department of History,
Warwick; Michael Hulse and the Warwick Writing Programme; the Warwick
Prize for Writing; Kelly Parkes-Harrison; Nadine Lewycky; Mark Bobe;
Andy Roadnight; Ken Sloan; Jim Cochrane at Fieldpoint Studio.