Writing Military History This panel discussion brings together three well known military historians, all of whom are experts in their respective fields. A must for anyone interested in military history, our panel will discuss what drew them to this fascinating subject; how they go about researching, planning and writing their books; tackling controversial subjects in a new way; interviewing techniques and amusing encounters; the art of publishing and publicity; the state and purpose of the subject.

Professor Gary Sheffield holds the Chair of War Studies at the University of Birmingham, where he is also Director of Military History. He has published extensively on twentieth century British military history, including the best-selling Forgotten Victory: The First World War - Myths and Realities (2001) and Somme (2003). His latest book is The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army, published by Aurum Press in 2011.

Dr Tim Benbow is Senior Lecturer in the Defence Studies Department, King’s College, London at the JSCSC. Tim specialises in naval history, his latest book is British Naval Aviation (Ashgate,2011).

The discussion will be chaired by Dr Saul Kelly (see below), Reader in International History in the Defence Studies Department of King’s College, London, also based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Shrivenham. His latest book is War and Politics in the Desert (Silphium,2010).

Historical Fiction Panel – Featuring S J Parris and James Aitcheson
This panel discussion brings together a number of writers and aims to provide an insight into what makes historical fiction writing so thrilling. What is it like to write in this genre? How do readers respond? How much and what sort of research is involved?

S J Parris’ historical thrillers, ‘Heresy’ and ‘Prophecy’, set in Elizabethan England and featuring Giordano Bruno, renegade monk, philosopher and heretic, have delighted fans of the genre and proved incredibly successful novels. ‘Prophecy’ was published earlier this year. It is set in the autumn of 1583 when Queen Elizabeth's rule is under threat. Plans for an invasion to put Mary Stuart on the throne of England are secretly being laid. And an astrological phenomenon believed to herald the death of one age and the dawn of another has led to frenzied speculation of terrible events to come.

James Aitcheson is a debut novelist. ‘Sworn Sword’ is set in 1069 during the turbulent aftermath of the Norman Conquest. Its narrator is a Norman Invader, an ambitious knight named Tancred, who seeks revenge upon the English rebels responsible for murdering his lord. Even as he does so, however, he finds himself caught up in a conspiracy that harks back to the very day of the Battle of Hastings. Get to know the works of these writers and listen in as they discuss their craft.

Eleanor Rawling: Ivor Gurney’s Gloucestershire
Eleanor Rawling is a geographer and writer who grew up on the Cotswold Edge in Gloucestershire, in the same area that was so sensitively portrayed by the poet, Ivor Gurney. Gurney is often remembered for his war poetry and his music, but her book explores the particular landscapes - the Cotswolds, Severn Meadows and city of Gloucester – that stimulated his creativity. As a geographer, she uses maps, photographs and landscape drawings to illuminate the poetry. Her talk will draw on these and use examples of his poetry to trace the intimate relationship between the poet, the poetry and the place. The author is a research fellow at Oxford University, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a member of the Ivor Gurney Society.

Saul Kelly: Britain and Libya, the origins of a Special Relationship
This promises to be a fascinating and topical talk. Dr Saul Kelly is a Reader in International History in the Defence Studies Department of King's College, London, currently based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Shrivenham. War and Politics in the Desert: Britain and Libya during the Second World War was published in 2010. His book The Lost Oasis tells the true story behind The English Patient.

John O’Connell – Author: The Baskerville Legacy
John O’Connell’s first novel, The Baskerville Legacy tells the story behind the writing of Sherlock Holmes’ most renowned adventure, The Hound of the Baskervilles – originally conceived as a collaboration between Arthur Conan Doyle and his journalist friend Bertram Fletcher Robinson. John is a former Books Editor of Time Out magazine. He writes regularly for the Guardian and the Times and has published two previous books, I Told You I Was Ill (a memoir of his hypochondria) and The Midlife Manual (co-written with Jessica Cargill Thompson). He was born in 1972 and lives in south London with his wife and two children.

Colin Tudge – Author: Fellow Creatures
Colin Tudge’s areas of interest and expertise include natural history, evolution and genetics, food and agriculture, and philosophy, including the relationship between science and religion. He is the author of many books, including ‘The Secret Life of Trees’, ‘Feeding People is Easy’, ‘Consider the Birds’ and ‘Good Food For Everyone Forever’. Here, Colin Tudge will talk about the worldview that lies behind three of his recent books - one that has to do with respect for fellow creatures, and all that goes with this. He will also address the role of science in framing that worldview and the way that science has been perverted by an ethos based on acquisition and power.

Colin Tudge is an excellent speaker who wears his considerable erudition with a light touch and this promises to be an excellent talk.

Tim Pears - Author : The Disputed Land
Tim Pears is the author of six novels: In the Place of Fallen Leaves (which won the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award), In a Land of Plenty, A Revolution of the Sun, Wake Up and Blenheim Orchard. In a Land of Plenty was made into a ten-part BBC TV series. Tim Pears has also received the Lannan Award in USA.His latest novel The Disputed Land has been shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Award.

Leonard and Rosemary Cannon summon their middle-aged offspring, along with their partners and children, to the family home in the Welsh Marshes for the Christmas holiday. As the gathered family settle in to their first Christmas together for some years, the grown siblings – Rodney, Johnny and Gwen – are surprised when they are asked to each put stickers on the furniture and items they wish to inherit from their parents. Disputed Land is narrated by Leonard and Rosemary’s thirteen-year-old grandson, Theo, who observes how from these innocent beginnings age-old fissures open up in the relationships of those around him.

Sir Max Hastings:
Sir Max Hastings is an award winning author, journalist and broadcaster whose work has appeared in every British national newspaper. He has published twenty-two books, of which the most recent are DID YOU REALLY SHOOT THE TELEVISION ?: A Family Fable (2010); FINEST YEARS: Churchill As Warlord 1940-45 (2009); ARMAGEDDON: The Battle for Germany 1944-45 (2004) and NEMESIS: The Battle For Japan 1944-45 (2007). The son and grandson of writers, he was educated at Charterhouse (scholar) and University College, Oxford (exhibitioner), from which he dropped out to become a journalist. He was editor, then editor-in-chief, of The Daily Telegraph from 1986-1995, and of the Evening Standard 1996-2002. His history of World War II INFERNO will be published in 2011.

He has presented many TV documentaries. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of King’s College, London, he has also received honorary degrees from Leicester and Nottingham universities. He was President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England 2002-2007, and a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery 1995-2004. He was knighted in 2002 for services to journalism. Now 65, he has two grown-up children and lives with his wife Penny in West Berkshire, where they garden enthusiastically.

Alexandra Harris – Author : Romantic Moderns. Winner of the Guardian First Book Award.
'A groundbreaking reassessment of English cultural life in the thirties and forties' In the 1930s and 1940s, while the battles for modern art and modern society were being fought in Paris and Spain, it seemed to some a betrayal that John Betjeman and John Piper were in love with a provincial world of old churches and tea shops...

Romantic Moderns tells a different story: eclectically, passionately, wittily, urgently, English artists were exploring what it meant to be alive at that moment and in England. They showed that “the modern” need not be at war with the past: constructivists and conservatives could work together, and even the Bauhaus émigré László Moholy-Nagy was beguiled into taking photos for Betjeman’s nostalgic An Oxford University Chest. A rich network of personal and cultural encounters was the backdrop for a modern English renaissance.

Alexandra Harris is a lecturer at the Univerrsity of Liverpool teaching Modernist and American fiction and runs Liverpool's new MA in Contemporary Literature.'An exceptionally well-written and deeply illuminating account of mid-20th- century British writers and painters.' - Andrew Motion in the Guardian 'Books of the Year'

Christopher Lloyd – Author: The What on Earthof Natural History? Children’s Event.
Christopher Lloyd is author of best selling world history book, “What on Earth Happened? The Complete Story of Planet, Life and People from the Big Bang to the Present Day” and its sequel, “What on Earth Evolved? 100 Species that Changed the World.” He is also famous for his “What on Earth” Giant Wallbook, which tells the story of everything from the beginning of time to the present day in more than 1,000 pictures and captions. The enormous timeline: 2m high and nearly 8m long, combines natural and human history over the course of nearly 14 billion years. On the back is a 7,000-word narrative guide to the history of the world.

This giant wallbook also exists in a more portable A3 hardback version which unfolds into a unique 2.3m long timeline that can either be read like a book or hung on a wall. In this talk, join Christopher Lloyd, for an illustrated look at life on Earth from the very beginning to the present day (plus questions and answers) in just one hour! Using his latest book, “The What on Earth? of Natural History”, he will use 20 everyday objects to explain the seismic moments in the story of Earth’s natural history.

Highly educational, completely mind-boggling and thrillingly entertaining!

Cita Stelzer – Author: Dinner with Churchill
Dinners meant a lot to Churchill – a friend once said of him, “He is a man of simple tastes; he is quite easily satisfied with the best of everything.” But meals were always more for him than just good food and fine wine. Over seventy years the dinner table became a stage for his own brilliant conversational talents, an intimate world in which both gossip and diplomatic secrets could be shared…

In this riveting, entertaining book, Cita Stelzer examines ten of the key dinners at which Churchill presided during WWII, and shows how in this crucial period he used his superlative social and rhetorical skills to bring about serious political change. With fascinating new material on the food he ate, the champagnes he loved, as well as original menus, seating plans, and unpublished photographs, Dinner with Churchill is a sumptuous treat. It reveals the care with which Churchill planned his charm offensives against both friends, like Roosevelt, and enemies, like Stalin, on his favourite battlefield – a luxurious dining-room, primed and loaded, from soup to nuts, from cocktails to liqueurs.

A freelance editor and journalist, Cita Stelzer majored in history and went on to work for John Lindsay, mayor of New York and Governor Hugh Carey. She is currently a reader at Churchill College, Cambridge; and a director of the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum

Pam Ayres - Poet: The Necessary Aptitude
Pam Ayres comes to the Wantage Betjeman Literary Festival to talk about her newly published autobiography, The Necessary Aptitude.

The Necessary Aptitude tells the story of Pam’s 1950s childhood, as the youngest of a family of six, growing up in the Vale of the White Horse in Berkshire. In her autobiography Pam describes her journey from a modest start to becoming a bestselling author and successful solo theatre performer. After a variety of jobs, where she was always told that she didn’t have the ‘necessary aptitude’, in 1965 Pam joined the WRAF, where against the lush backdrop of RAF Seletar in Singapore, she first began to write and perform her own work.

Since her first appearances on TV, over 35 years ago, Pam has been an audience favourite for her sharp perception of the comic detail of everyday life. She is a regular on TV and Radio, on programmes such as Just A Minute, Ayres On The Air, QI, Countdown, and The Paul O’Grady Show.

Jim Powell – Author The Breaking of Eggs
Jim Powell is a direct descendant of the early 19th century novelist Thomas Love Peacock. At 20, he was reading History at Cambridge University and doing holiday work for the Beatles. At 30, he was about to be Managing Director of a large London advertising agency. By 40, he had stood for Parliament and was running a pottery business that produced hand-painted tableware for Conran, Heal’s and Bloomingdale’s. At 50, he was on the dole. At 60, he had major publishing deals in the UK and America for his first novel The Breaking of Eggs. In March 2011, The Breaking of Eggs was chosen as one of the best first novels of the past two years by BBC2’s The Culture Show.

Marcus Moore and Sara-Jane Arbury – Spiel Unlimited
The country’s leading Poetry Slam organisers and presenters, Spiel Unlimited, host up to a dozen slams a year for arts festivals and theatres, while orchestrating countless written and spoken word activities through workshops, residential weekends and lively performances in schools, libraries, pubs, cafés and elsewhere.

Marcus recently appeared in a two-person show called Still Kicking, written with a friend and performed in several Gloucestershire garden sheds. This year saw him complete a number of commissioned poems for installation at the Cotswold Water Park.

Sara-Jane has just finished a series of tutorials across the West Midlands for the prestigious Ledbury Poetry Festival. She is currently touring nationally with a performance poetry show called Flash, while planning a follow-up to her popular murder mystery event, Poetic License… To Kill!

Antony Woodward - Author : The Garden in the Clouds
For eighteen years Antony Woodward sat in a London advertising agency sucking a pencil and trying to think up ideas for ad campaigns. Now he sucks a pencil in an old railway carriage, halfway up a Welsh mountain, trying to write books. The hilarious and inspiring story of one man’s unlikely quest to create out of a mountainous Welsh landscape a garden fit for inclusion in the prestigious Yellow Book - a comic masterpiece.

Lucy Cavendish
Lucy Cavendish is an author and journalist. Her career began when she won her first award in journalism as Cosmopolitan's Young Travel Writer of the Year. Since then, she has gone on to carve a very successful career in journalism writing for the Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Observer, the Daily Mail and many women's magazines. She writes a column for Stella magazine for the Sunday Telegraph about her life as a Country Mother of Four. A few years ago, she was asked to take her experiences as a mother, a wife, a partner and an ex-partner to write a fictitious book. Her heroine, Samantha Smythe, is loosely based on herself but, as the Samantha Smythe trilogy grew, so her characters and story lines became increasingly less-associated with her life. Her fourth novel, Jack and Jill (Quick Reads/Penguin) is out now and has received a tremendous amount of praise. Her fifth novel, The Broken Hearted Wives Club, will be out next year.

Lucy Cavendish is also a member of the influential Contemporary Womens Writers' Group (www.cwwc.co.uk) and has contributed two stories to their first collection The Leap Year. A second collection of stories, Ten Past Eight, will be out this spring. She is also a founder member of Queen Bee press (www.queenbee.co.uk). She lives in Oxfordshire with her partner, their four children, two dogs, two cats, a horse, a pony, two goldfish and four chickens. Lucy is thinking of getting a goat.

For the festival, Lucy will be talking about her life and work and, more importantly, how to get published in this increasingly tough arena

Natasha Solomons
Natashas lives in Dorset. Her debut novel, MR ROSENBLUM’S LIST: Or Friendly Guidance for the Aspiring Englishman was an international bestseller, shortlisted for the Galaxy National Book Awards and has been translated into ten languages. Together with her husband, she has written the screenplay for MR ROSENBLUM’S LIST for Film 4/Cowboy Films.

While MR ROSENBLUM’S LIST was inspired by her grandfather, her great-aunt Gabi Landau provided the inspiration for her latest book THE NOVEL IN THE VIOLA. Gabi, like many others, escaped Europe on a domestic service visa – swapping cosseted lives for the harsh existence of an English servant.

In the spring of 1938, Elise arrives at Tyneford. Forced to become a parlour-maid she is confident that she will hate everything about England. As servants polish silver and serve drinks on the lawn, Elise wears her mother’s pearls beneath her uniform, and causes outrage by dancing with a boy called Kit. But war is coming and the world is changing. And Elise must change with it. As the start of an affair signals the end of an ear, THE NOVEL IN THE VIOLA explores what it means to find yourself cast adrift and to reinvent yourself. It’s also a wonderful love story. www.natashasolomons.com.

Paul Mayhew-Archer
Paul began his working life as a teacher at John Mason School in Abingdon. He organised one school trip and got left behind. Since then he has worked in radio and television comedy. Among the radio shows he has produced are “I’m sorry I Haven’t a Clue”, “Radio Active” and “Old Harry’s Game”. He has script edited a number of television comedies, from "Spitting Image" to “Miranda”.

As a comedy writer his credits include "My Hero", the Superhero sitcom starring Ardal O'Hanlan, and "The Vicar Of Dibley", co-written with Richard Curtis. Most recently he was the Commissioning Editor for Radio Four Comedy until he left the BBC earlier this year.


Kevin Cecil
Kevin Cecil has been a comedy writer for 20 years, often working in a team with Andy Riley. Together, they created the sitcoms The Great Outdoors and Hyperdrive as well as winning BAFTAs for their work on Black Books and Robbie The Reindeer.

Gnomeo And Juliet, the film Kevin co-wrote, opened at number one in the UK and got to number 2 in the US in February 2011.

Sketch shows Kevin has worked for include Armstrong & Miller, Come Fly With Me, Little Britain, Smack The Pony, Spitting Image and The Armando Iannucci Shows. Radio work includes The 99p Challenge which Kevin co-created. Kevin has strong family connections with Wantage, spending regular time there since 1996.


Andrew Dawson
Andrew Dawson is one of the The Dawson Bros - a comedy writing trio also consisting of his brother Steve and childhood friend Tim Inman. Together they have written on a range of British comedy and entertainment shows including The One Ronnie, That Mitchell & Webb Look, The IT Crowd, Total Wipeout, The Brits and The Peter Serafinowicz Show. They were staff writers on Funny Or Die's UK website, and their "Blackberry Sketch" starring Ronnie Corbett is currently the BBC's most watched online clip.

Sarah Morgan
Sarah was a staff writer on Loaded, Bliss and In Style before quitting in 2007 to write comedy full-time. On television, she is part of the writing team on BAFTA-nominated Sorry I've Got No Head, and CBBC's Hotel Trubble and Scoop! She has written sketches for The Stephen K Amos Show, The Wrong Door, and ITV's Comedy Cuts. In 2008 she was writer’s assistant on My Family. On radio, she writes Radio 4's critically-acclaimed Bigipedia (with Nick Doody and Matt Kirshen), co-wrote Radio 2's Byrne in Hell (with Ed Byrne) and has contributed to Lawrence and Gus: Hearts and Minds and The Now Show.

Last year her comedy drama series pilot Broken Love was picked up by Talkback Thames and developed with Simon Wilson at the BBC. She is currently developing Grace, a solo-written sitcom, for Kudos Generator, and Beauty School (with co-writer Hannah McKay) for Rough Cut. She is also currently working on a TV adaptation of Bigipedia with David Tyler for Pozzitive/Simon Wilson for BBC.

Valerie Laws – Poetry reading
Valerie Laws is a prize-winning poet, playwright, novelist and science writer. With current Residencies at a London Pathology museum and Newcastle University, Valerie specialises in science-themed poetry installations and commissions including the infamous Quantum Sheep, an Arts Council funded project spray-painting random haiku onto live sheep. A playwright for stage and BBC radio, she has written 12 commissioned plays. Four of her 8 books are poetry, from Peterloo Poets and Iron Press.
www.valerielaws.co.uk


Jane Draycott – Poetry reading
Jane Draycott is a UK-based poet with a particular interest in sound art and collaborative work.   Her latest collection Over (Carcanet/OxfordPoets) was shortlisted for the 2009 T S Eliot Prize.   Nominated three times for the Forward Prize for Poetry, her first two full collections Prince Rupert's Drop and The Night Tree (Carcanet/OxfordPoets) were both Poetry Society Recommendations.  Other collections include Christina the Astonishing (with Peter Hay and Lesley Saunders) and Tideway, a long sequence of poems about London's working river (with paintings by Peter Hay) written while  poet-in-residence at the River & Rowing Museum as well as a short collection No Theatre (Smith/Doorstop).
www.janedraycott.org.uk

Edward Docx – Author: The Devil’s Garden
Edward Docx was born in 1972 and lives in London. His previous novels are The Calligrapher, and Self Help, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. His gripping new novel The Devil’s Garden (Picador hardback April 2011) takes us to the heart of the Amazon. Told with searing pace, it is an unflinching story of self-discovery in a landscape where all boundaries are contested - and nothing and no one is quite as they seem.
Ed is a proven natural at entertaining and engaging audiences (with Hay and Edinburgh under his belt) and most definitely one of Picador’s rising literary stars.


Eliza Graham
Eliza Graham lives with her family near Uffington. When she's not writing novels she works as a freelance copy-editor. Her first novel, Playing with the Moon, was published by Macmillan New Writing in June 2007 and shortlisted for the World Book Day Book to Talk About Award. Two further novels, Restitution and the locally-set Jubilee, have followed. In 2011 Pan Macmillan will publish The History Room, Eliza's fourth novel, set in an apparently perfect English boarding school, but with ghosts from the past threatening its serenity.

Eliza's books have been translated into several European languages.


Ros Barber
Ros Barber is the author of three collections of poetry, the latest of which (Material, 2008) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.  Noted for her engaging performances, Ros has appeared on Radio 4’s Poetry Please and Radio 3’s The Verb.  Her most recent public art commission is ‘An Education’, a sequence of poems written in response to the transformation of the former site of St. Mary’s school in Wantage, which have been transformed into poetry trail artworks by Wez & Helen Jacobs of The Bullpen.
www.rosbarber.com