Authors
The 2009 Throckmorton Literary Festival has now finished.
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Kate Adie
Kate Adie, author and broadcaster, became a familiar figure to people through her work as Chief News Correspondent, BBC News (British Broadcasting Corporation), and is considered to be among the very finest reporters, as well as one of the first British women, sending despatches from danger zones around the world. She is also familiar as the presenter of Radio Four’s From Our Own Correspondent and a guest on many other radio and television programmes. She has been named ‘Reporter of the Year’ twice by the Royal Television Society; the first occasion was for her coverage of the SAS end to the Iranian Embassy siege in 1973. She also won the Monte Carlo International Golden Nymph Award in 1981 and 1990, and was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 1993.
Kate grew up in Sunderland and gained her BA from Newcastle University where she read Swedish. She is an avid reader of both fiction and history, and has served as a judge for literary prizes, including the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Costa Book Awards. Into Danger: risking your life for work is her latest book.
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Rosie Alison
Rosie Alison, author and film and television producer, was born in 1964. She read English at Keble College, Oxford, and went on to spent over 10 years working in television, as a producer-director of arts documentaries – her director credits include The South Bank Show, Omnibus and Grand Designs. Currently Head of Development at Heyday Films in the UK – the production company of the Harry Potter film series – she has recently co-produced two feature films: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Is There Anybody There? The Very Thought of You is Alison’s debut novel.
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Gaynor Arnold
Gaynor Arnold was born and brought up in Cardiff. She read English at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she acted in many plays, notably at the Edinburgh Festival and in a tour of the US. She has two grown up children and works for Birmingham’s Adoption and Fostering Service.
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- Fr. Alex Austin
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Julian Baggini
Julian Baggini, author and journalist, is the editor and co-founder of The Philosophers’ Magazine. His books include Do You Think What You Think You Think? (with Jeremy Stangroom), What’s It All About? – Philosophy and the Meaning of Life, the bestselling The Pig That Wants to be Eaten, and The Duck that Won the Lottery.
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Professor Jonathan Bate
Jonathan Bate is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick, chief editor of The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works and the author of many books, including most recently John Clare: A Biography, which won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature and the James Tait Black Prize for Biography. A Fellow of the British Academy, he was awarded a CBE in 2006. Soul of the Age is his latest book.
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Tracy Borman
Tracy Borman, author and historian, studied and taught history at the University of Hull, where she was awarded a PhD in 1997. She went on to a successful career in heritage and has worked for a range of historic properties and national heritage organisations, including the Heritage Lottery Fund, the National Archives and English Heritage. Tracy has recently been appointed Chief Executive of the Heritage Education Trust, which encourages children to visit and learn from historic properties. She also works part-time as Head of Interpretation for Historic Royal Palaces and has worked on the newly presented Tudor rooms at Hampton Court to mark the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession.
Tracy Borman has regularly appeared on television and radio, and has featured in a range of magazine and newspaper articles. She is a regular contributor to history magazines, including articles in BBC History Magazine on the history of beauty and 18th century ‘It’ Girls. Borman’s first book, Henrietta Howard: King’s Mistress, Queen’s Servant, was published in 2007. Elizabeth’s Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen is her latest book.
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Katie Campbell
Katie Campbell is a journalist and fiction writer. Her plays have been performed on stage and radio and she has published a number of books including Icons of Twentieth-Century Landscape Design and Policies and Pleasaunces: A Guide to the Gardens of Scotland. She writes about art and landscape and lectures at Birkbeck College, London, and Bristol University.
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Mavis Cheek
Mavis Cheek was born and grew up in Wimbledon. She began her working life at Editions Alecto, the contemporary art publishers. After Alecto, she attended Hillcroft College for Women from where she graduated in Arts. After her daughter Bella was born, she began her writing career in earnest; journalism and travel writing at first, then short stories, and eventually, in 1988, her novel Pause Between Acts won the She/John Menzies First Novel Prize. Amenable Women is her thirteenth novel. She now lives and writes in the heart of the English countryside.
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Anne Chisholm
Anne Chisholm is the author of biographies of Nancy Cunard and Rumer Godden, and of Faces of Hiroshima, a book about the Hiroshima Maidens. With Michael Davies, she wrote Beaverbrook: A Life (1992). She reviews widely and is the current chair of the Royal Society of Literature. Her latest book is Frances Partridge: A Life; Chisholm knew Frances Partridge, one of the great diarists of the 20th Century and a member of the Bloomsbury group, well during the last years of her life. She lives in London and Oxford.
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Crux Dublin Choir
Crux was founded in Dublin in 2006 to perform a combination of ancient and contemporary music in the dramatic architectural and acoustic settings they were customarily designed for. An all-male group, Crux enjoys a residency at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, one of Dublin's most ancient, sacred buildings.
The ensemble often features two groups, one specialising in polyphony, the other in earlier chant and organum. Through the interplay of the two groups, both spatial and musical, costumed and candle-bearing, a narrative of Europe’s – and Ireland’s – choral music is portrayed, from earliest times to the current day.
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Andrew Clover
Andrew Clover does the 'Dad Rules' column at the back of the Sunday Times Style magazine. He is a comedian, writer and trophy husband. He lives with his wife, his three daughters and a female dog. Yes, that's a lot of women. In his house, he never rules.
Clover used to read books about Russian people who discover, after a long, long, long, long time, that life is bad. He now reads books about sheep who like hiding behind bushes. These books are much better. You can lift the flap and find a sheep. With the other books, you can't lift a flap and find a Russian. Dad Rules is his latest book.
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Fr. Michael Collins
Father Michael Collins was born in Dublin and ordained as a priest in 1985. He worked in a number of Dublin parishes and, following postgraduate studies at the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology in Rome, he lectured on world religion at the American University in Rome. He presently holds a pastoral appointment in Dublin. Father Collins writes for a number of Catholic journals and is a frequent contributor to radio and television. The Vatican: Secrets & Treasures of the Holy City is his latest book.
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Jonathan Conlin
Jonathan Conlin is a cultural historian of modern Britain who teaches at the University of Southampton. Born in New York, he studied at Oxford, Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute. He is the author of The Nation's Mantelpiece: a history of the National Gallery (2006), Civilisation (a study of the 1969 television series, 2009) and is working on a book comparing Paris and London in the years 1750-1914. A former Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Jonathan was appointed Lecturer in Modern History at Southampton University in 2005 and awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship the following year, in support of a project on Charles Kingsley and Victorian historiography. He most recently organised a season of events at the National Gallery, the BFI and the National Gallery of Art (Washington) to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Sir Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation.
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Alan Deegan
A native of Liverpool, Alan Deegan is an award-winning chef who has cooked for many heads of state, including the Royal Family, and has worked at Claridge’s, The Savoy and Quaglinos restaurant in London, as well as top establishments in Holland, Germany, France, and Switzerland.
Having worked in vocational education for many years, Deegan has worked in culinary education for many years. As Head of Hospitality and Catering at Stratford-upon-Avon College, Deegan has helped many students to achieve their own dreams of working in eminent restaurants and hotels around the world. He is a member of the British Culinary Federation, a judge for numerous cookery competitions and served as an assessor for the City and Guilds of London Institutes. He is a founding trustee of the Ark Foundation, and invited to be the Chairman of Ark Global. These two organisations work to help members of the hospitality industry who suffer from substance abuse. He is the author of Introduction to Food and Beverage Service (Longman, 1998). Deegan has had an extraordinary culinary career from holding The Guinness Book world record for creating “The World’s Largest Steak Pie,” to being called upon to rejuvenate the bruised reputation of the Bramley Apple.Events:
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Linda Kooluris Dobbs
Linda Kooluris Dobbs, a painter and photographer, is a native of New Jersey, but has lived more than half her life in Canada. She studied at the La Sorbonne before receiving degrees from eminent schools Pine Manor College, Massachusetts, and The School of Visual Arts in New York. Dobbs has done extensive work in both painting and photography and has had many solo exhibitions, as well as being featured in national and international publications. Her portraits, landscapes, still lifes, limited edition prints and photographs are found in corporate and private collections worldwide. She is married to Kildare Dobbs, with whom she created the recently published The Gardens of the Vatican.
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Kildare Dobbs
Kildare Dobbs is an award-winning essayist, poet and the author of 17 books. He was born in India in 1923, raised in Ireland, and educated in Dublin, Cambridge and London. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II and in East Africa, before migrating to Canada in 1952. There he earned a living in journalism and publishing, wrote Running to Paradise, that won a Governor General's Award, concocted The Great Fur Opera (1970), a subversive vision of Canadian history with the artist Ronald Searle, and broadcast regularly on CBC radio and television. The Eleventh Hour was his first volume of poetry. He is recipient of the Canadian National Magazine Award and in 2000 was invested with the Order of Ontario, and made writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto in 2002. He is married to Linda Kooluris Dobbs, with whom he created the recently published The Gardens of the Vatican.
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Valerie Grove
Valerie Grove is a biographer and journalist. She was born in South Shields and read English at Girton College, Cambridge. She joined the London Evening Standard in 1968, later becoming its literary editor. Her first biography was the acclaimed Dear Dodie, a life of the playwright and novelist Dodie Smith, followed by Laurie Lee: The Well-Loved Stranger. She is married with four children and lives in North London. A Voyage Round John Mortimer is her latest book.
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John Guy
John Guy is an author, academic and journalist. A Fellow at Clare College, Cambridge, Guy reviews regularly for the Sunday Times. He has been a visiting fellow or professor at the University of St Andrews, the University of California, Berkeley, The Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Rochester, New York.
He broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 4, and has presented or contributed to historical documentaries for BBC2 and Channel 4.
Guy’s many books include Tudor England, The Tudors: A Very Short Introduction and “My Heart is My Own”: the Life of Mary Queen of Scots, which won the 2004 Whitbread Biography Award and the Marsh Biography Award and his latest, A Daughter’s Love. His next book is a new biography of Thomas Becket. He lives in London and is married to the historian and author Julia Fox.
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Gabrielle Hatfield
Unfortunately Gabrielle Hatfield is unable to attend this year's festival.
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Edward Hollis
Born in London in 1970, Edward Hollis studied Architecture at the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh before joining a practice, working first on ruins and follies in Sri Lanka and then on villas, breweries and town halls in Scotland. He now teaches at Edinburgh College of Art and The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories is his first book.
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Michael Holroyd
Biographer Michael Holroyd was born in 1935 and was educated at Eton College. His first book was a biography of the writer Hugh Kingsmill, published in 1964. The publication in 1967 and 1968 of his biography of Lytton Strachey was hailed as a landmark in contemporary biography and, six years later, his biography of the painter Augustus John confirmed his place as one of the most influential modern biographers. His biography of Strachey was used as a basis for Christopher Hampton's film Carrington (1994). The four volumes of Holroyd's life of Bernard Shaw appeared between 1988 and 1992 to critical acclaim.
Besides the lives of Augustus John, Bernard Shaw and Lytton Strachey, Michael Holroyd has written two volumes of memoirs, Basil Street Blues and Mosaic. He is the current president of the Royal Society of Literature and the only non-fiction writer to have been awarded the British Literature Prize. He lives in London and Somerset with his wife, the novelist Margaret Drabble.
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Nicki Howarth
Nicki Howarth is a professional writer who is currently working on her next project – Resisting Rome: The Women Who Defied an Empire. Cartimandua: Queen of the Brigantes was her first book and the idea took shape as she was researching the life of the Brigantian queen’s contemporary, Boudica. Nicki lives in Atherstone in Warwickshire.
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Professor Eric Ives
Professor Eric Ives studied at London University and Yale before holding academic posts at the Universities of Birmingham and Liverpool. He returned to Birmingham and he was elected as Professor of English History there in 1984. He was subsequently elected Dean of Arts, then Pro-Vice-Chancellor and in 2000 was awarded the OBE for services to History and to the University of Birmingham. His most recent books are: The First Civic University: Birmingham 1880-1980, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII. His latest book, Lady Jane Grey: a Tudor Mystery, will be published in October 2009.
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Leanda de Lisle
Leanda de Lisle was educated at Somerville College, Oxford, where she took an honours degree in Modern History. A successful journalist and writer, she has been a columnist for The Spectator, The Guardian, Country Life and the Daily Express as well as writing for the Daily Mail and the Sunday Telegraph. Her books include Catholics and their Houses, After Elizabeth and, her latest, The Sisters Who Would Be Queen, which will be published in October. She lives in Leicestershire with her husband and three children.
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Jessica Mann
Jessica Mann has written 20 novels, the latest being The Mystery Writer, several non-fiction books, most recently Out of Harm's Way. She and her archaeologist husband have four children and 10 grandchildren, and live in together in Cornwall. Godrevy Light is the first of their publications to be produced as a joint effort.
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Michael McNay
Michael McNay worked for the Guardian for thirty-seven years, during which time he wrote and edited features, was the paper’s first arts editor and wrote frequently on fine art and cinema. He was closely involved in the paper’s root and branch redesign of the late 1980s and, to see it through, moved on to laying out and editing the front page for several years. He is now a freelance writer and Hidden Treasures of England is his latest book.
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Franny Moyle
Franny Moyle is a key figure in cultural television programming and, until 2005, she was the BBC’s commissioner of Arts and Cultural programming.
She left the corporation to write Desperate Romantics, her first book, and to pursue a freelance executive producing career. She is also an executive producer of the BBC 2 drama of Desperate Romantics, the first instalment of which be broadcast this July.
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John Julius Norwich
Unfortunately John Julius Norwich is unable to attend this year's festival due to ill health.
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Kachi A Ozumba
Author Kachi A. Ozumba was born in Nigeria. He is a winner of the Arts Council England’s Decibel Penguin Short Story Prize, and holds an MA (with distinction) in Creative Writing from the University of Leeds. His short stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and appeared in journals and anthologies such as PEN International Magazine, Wasafiri, BBC Focus on Africa Magazine, The Decibel Penguin Anthology, Pulp Net, and In Posse Review where he was the Featured Writer for the tenth anniversary issue. He lives in Newcastle with his new wife, pursuing a research degree at the School of English Literature, Newcastle University, while working on his next novel. His debut novel, The Shadow of a Smile, is published by Alma Books.
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Jon Payne
Jon is an accomplished musician, based in Birmingham. He was born in Skegness in 1975, and attended Skegness Grammar School. He graduated from Surrey University in 1996 with a degree in Academic and Practical Applications of Music, and was appointed Director of the renowned Wenhaston Boys' Choir in Suffolk, during which time he was actively involved with the Aldeburgh Festival. From 1999 to 2001, he was Organ Scholar at Norwich Cathedral, during which time he took part in a number of broadcasts and recordings, whilst also developing his career as a freelance choral conductor.
After Norwich, he was recruited to Norfolk Music Education Service, where he directed the County Youth Choir, and subsequently took on a similar role in the Borough of Solihull on behalf of the British Federation of Young Choirs. He was assistant organist at St Alphege Church, Solihull, for two years. He has led workshops and longer term projects across the country, working with over sixty youth and adult choirs. He has also worked for Making Music, Youth Music, Singworks, youngchoirs, and the Royal School of Church Music.Events:
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Anthony Quinn
Author and journalist Anthony Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1964. Since moving to London in 1986, he has written about film and books for a number of newspapers and magazines, including The Independent, Daily Telegraph, New York Times and Mail on Sunday. For three years, he was the arts editor at Harpers & Queen. Since 1998, he has been film critic for The Independent. In 2006, he was one of the judges of the Man Booker Prize. He is currently wine correspondent for Esquire magazine. The Rescue Man is his debut novel.
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Stella Rimington
Stella Rimington joined the Security Service (MI5) in 1965 and was appointed Director-General in 1992. She was the first woman to hold the post and the first Director-General whose name was publicly announced on appointment. Following her retirement from MI5 in 1996, she became a non-executive director of Marks and Spencer and published her autobiography, Open Secret. The first Liz Carlyle novel, At Risk, was published in 2004. Her fifth thriller, Present Danger, is published this October.
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Leigh Russell
Author Leigh Russell is a secondary school English teacher, specialising in supporting pupils with Specific Learning Difficulties. She is married with two daughters and lives in Hertfordshire. Cut Short was her debut novel; her second novel in the series, Road Closed, will be published in 2010.
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Charles Saumarez Smith
Charles Saumarez Smith was Director of the National Gallery from 2002-2007, during which time he was in charge of the acclaimed campaign to save Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks for the nation and also presided over the successful East Wing development.
Born in outside Salisbury in 1954, he was educated at Marlborough and King’s College, Cambridge, where he was a scholar and got a double first in history and history of art. After graduating, he spent a year at Harvard University as a Henry Fellow studying at the Fogg Art Museum and then returned to the Warburg Institute as a postgraduate student. In 1979, he was elected Christie’s Research Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge and, in 1982, he joined the staff of the Victoria and Albert Museum as an Assistant Keeper with special responsibility for V&A/RCA MA in the History of Design, where he went on to become Head of Research in 1990. In 1994, he was appointed Director of the National Portrait Gallery, before moving to the National Gallery in 2000. He has been President of the Museums Association and Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford.
He is now Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts and was awarded a CBE in 2008. His book, The National Gallery: A Short History, is a behind the scenes look at the enduring tensions through the centuries between the management and the board that have always been a feature of the National Gallery.
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Alycia Smith-Howard
Alycia Smith-Howard is a leading Shakespeare scholar, writer and theatre director. She is a former Fellow of The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington and an Assistant Professor of Shakespeare Studies at New York University. Currently, she is a Guest Lecturer with The Royal Shakespeare Company and The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and a Visiting Scholar at The Shakespeare Institute, in Stratford-upon-Avon. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. (Shakespeare Studies: Text & Performance) from The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, Stratford-upon-Avon.
Alycia Smith-Howard is the author of Studio Shakespeare: the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place, The Critical Companion to Tennessee Williams and the lead editor of Suzan-Lori Parks: A Casebook. She has also published regularly in national and international magazines and journals.
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David Starkey
David Starkey is Honorary Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and the author of many books, including Elizabeth, Six Wives and Monarchy. He is a winner of the WH Smith Prize and the Norton Medlicott Medal for Services to History presented by Britain's Historical Association. He is a well-known TV and radio personality. He was made a CBE in 2007. His latest novel, Henry: Virtuous Prince, was published in paperback in March.
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Edward Stourton
Edward Stourton is a Presenter of Radio 4's Today programme. He has been involved in news broadcasting since 1979, working for Channel Four News as their Washington Correspondent, the BBC as their Paris Correspondent and ITN as Diplomatic Editor. He presented the One O'clock News for the BBC for six years before joining Today and has also written and presented many television and radio documentaries for the BBC on politics, foreign affairs and religion. He has written books on St Paul, Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church; It’s a PC World is his latest book.
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Katherine Swift
Katherine Swift lives at The Dower House, Morville Hall, in Shropshire. She worked as a rare book librarian in Oxford and Dublin before becoming a full-time gardener and writer in 1988. She was for four years gardening columnist of The Times, and has written widely in the gardening press, including an acclaimed series on the gardens and landscapes of Orkney for Hortus. She is the author of Preserving Our Printed Heritage: Long Room Project at Trinity College Dublin with Anthony Cains and Pergolas, Arbours and Arches: Their History and How to Make Them with Paul Edwards and Jessica Smith. The Morville Hours, published in paperback in April 2009, is her third book.
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- Professor Christopher Tadgell
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Laura Thompson
Laura Thompson is a writer and freelance journalist. Thompson won the Somerset Maugham Award for her first book, The Dogs, and is also author of the critically acclaimed biography of Nancy Mitford, Life in a Cold Climate. Agatha Christie: An English Mystery is her latest book.
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- Paul Torday
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Richard Vinen
Richard Vinen teaches history at King's College London. His most recent books are A History in Fragments: Europe in the Twentieth Century and The Unfree French: Life under the Occupation. He reviews regularly for the Independent and the Times Literary Supplement. He has also served as historical consultant for The Sun's book of the millennium – Hold Ye Front Page. Thatcher’s Britain is his latest book, published this April.
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Gee Williams
Gee Williams was born and brought up in North Wales and now lives in Cheshire with her husband. A widely-published poet, dramatist and author of two short story collections Blood, Etc. (shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2009) and Magic and Other Deceptions. Many of her scripts have been broadcast by BBC Radio 4. She has won both The Rhys Davies and The Book Place Contemporary Short Story Awards, was Poetry Review's New Poet, Summer 1997, shortlisted for The Geoffrey Dearmer Award and (in collaboration with Sol B. River) shortlisted for the Race in the Media Radio Drama Award 2001. Her debut novel, Salvage, was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2008 and was voted winner of the Pure Gold Fiction Award by Welsh readers.
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Harriet Harvey Wood
Harriet Harvey Wood studied mediaeval languages and literature at Edinburgh University and worked as an orchestral manager before joining the British Council, where she was head of its Literature Department for 14 years. She has published editions of poetry and letters, collaborated with Peter Porter on a collection of banned poetry for Index on Censorship in 1987 and, with A. S. Byatt, edited an anthology on memory. She was appointed OBE in 1992. The Battle of Hastings: The Fall of Anglo-Saxon England is her first book.
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