Hello booklovers,

Welcome to the first installment of your bookish Advent Calendar. We are delighted to start our celebration of yuletide books with… Festive Spirits by Kate Atkinson.

Who doesn’t love a short story at Christmas time? Time can be short and a the to-do list can be endless, so a short burst of festive bookish fun is ideal. Festive Spirits by Kate Atkinson features three short stories to delight the reader, including Lucy’s Day, Festive Spirit and Small Mercies. My favourite of the three is Festive Spirit.

We join husband and wife, Sarah and Richard as they endure a tense dinner celebrating Sarah’s December birthday. Kate cleverly uses this setting as a microcosm for the dysfunction deep rooted in their marriage, nodding to the fact that the festive season frequently brings out the worst in people. As with the deftness to be found in her other novels, such as Behind the Scenes of Museum, we find out an awful lot about this couple, their personalities, their history and the nature of their marriage, in a very short space of time.

The story has the air of a cautionary tale, feeling very grounded until the end where a miraculous turn of events come to pass. Of course Christmas is a time of magic and miracles, and long awaited wishes coming true – but in true Kate Atkinson style, this particular, unspoken wish takes a darkly entertaining turn.

I would recommend this to anyone who finds the general air of jollity and merriment a bit much as it offers some sometimes welcome respite from all the good will at this time of year!

Bookish best,

Imogen and the festival team x

 

Hello booklovers,

Advent is upon us once again and it’s time for the Felixstowe Book Festival team to spread some comfort, warmth and festive cheer. What better way to do that than through the medium of books?

We all have our traditions at Christmastime – indeed a few years ago we ran a festive blog series where festival authors and other bookish folk shared their favourite Christmas traditions for the yuletide season. Music, food and random yet much loved decorations came to fore, as did books. You can’t beat the comfort brought by snuggling down with a good book at any time of year, and even more so at Christmas because of the hearty dose of familiarity, melancholy and fondness that they offer.

With that in mind, here at the Felixstowe Book Festival we are treating you to your very own bookish Advent Calendar, with a different bookish treat hiding behind every door. Check our blog for every day of December up until the 24th to see which festive book is revealed. We hope this brings you some cheer and respite from the busyness and bustle of the season.

Bookish best,

The Felixstowe Book Festival Team x

Hello booklovers,

How time flies… it doesn’t seem so long since we were basking in the early summer sunshine and enjoying festival events at Harvest House and the Two Sisters Arts Centre. Now November approaches, the trees have undergone their beautiful transformation from green to gold, and the nights are drawing in. With that autumnal nostalgia for a past summer in mind, we thought we would take a look back at the brilliantly bookish festival weekend of June 2022…

Saturday 25th June

The first day of our festival weekend saw a bumper series of sell out events – Stephen McGann charmed our socks off in the Palm Court with witty stories about the much loved BBC programme Call the Midwife, all available in the beautiful commemorative book, Call the Midwife: A Labour of Love, celebrating the series. Stella Rimington, the first female chief of MI6, held us spellbound with her recounts of her life and her work. Radio 4’s Justin Webb brought tears to the eyes as he shared intimate details of his childhood and youth as written in his remarkable memoir The Gift of a Radio: My Childhood and Other Trainwrecks. And Patrick Gale shed fascinating insight into the life of poet Charles Causley, explored in his latest novel Mother’s Boy. 

Meanwhile at the Two Sisters Arts Centre, the Suffolk and the Sea Day got well underway, with various authors discussing a whole range of fascinating topics, such as the changing shape of the Suffolk coastline, how the sea is a source of artistic inspiration and the beneficial effects of wild swimming.

Sunday 26th June

The final day of our festival weekend brought even more talented guest to our stage. Over at the Two Sisters Arts Centre FBF and the University of Suffolk were delighted to host an Emerging Writers Day, jam packed with interesting writing workshops and rounding off with a prize giving for the 2022 short story competition.

Back over at Harvest House, we were so pleased to be able to showcase A New Suffolk Garland, an anthology featuring the works of Suffolk writers published to celebrate the late Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee and the 2022 festival of Suffolk. We also welcomed the legendary crime writing duo Nicci French – Nicci and Sean gave an entertaining and enlightening talk about their lives, their family and their writing process which proved very enjoyable for all involved. Author and poet Blake Morrison teamed up with festival favourites Martin Newell and the Hosepipe Band, performing The Ballad of Shingle Street and other Suffolk Poems. And to round of the festivities, Carol Drinkwater was finally able to join us in person and rounded off our festival with great aplomb, discussing her writing, her acting roles and her life in Provence.

A special mention should also go to the folk beetling away in the background throughout the festival weekend, especially our brilliant band of volunteers and all the team from our festival bookstall, Stillwater Books. All throughout the weekend our festival volunteers worked extremely hard to ensure the weekend went smoothly – we couldn’t do it without them!

It was such a brilliant festival weekend, I can’t do it justice in a blog post – if you would like to browse our full 2022 to see every detail about the talented guests we brought to you this year, take a look here.

Now we move ever closer to 2023 and rest assured the festival bookworms are busy planning next year’s events. Keep an eye on our website for further news soon, plus lots of treats lined up in our festival blog. While you’re at it, why not head to our homepage and subscribe to our festival newsletter? You will find the subscribe option in the bottom right hand corner. That way you can receive our news directly into your inbox.

Bookish best,

The Felixstowe Book Festival Team x

Hello booklovers,

Today’s the day! Welcome to the 2022 Felixstowe Book Festival. We hope you have enjoyed our Bookish Best blog series, celebrating 10 years of the Felixstowe Book Festival. We’ve been asking some of our 2022 guests some questions about their bookish lives over the past ten years. We’ve had some fascinating insights from Carol Drinkwater, Esther Freud and Alexander Larman, and will be finishing the series off with festival favourites Nicci Gerrard and Sean French, aka crime-writing duo Nicci French. Read on to see their bookish best bits from the past 10 years…

What has been your favourite read of the past 10 years?

G.B. Edwards was born in Guernsey in 1899. He was on the fringes of the London literary world in the 1920s and 1930s but he drifted out of it and lived a mobile existence ending up as an eccentric recluse. When he died in 1976, he left the manuscript of The Book of Ebenezer Le Page, the fictional autobiography of an ordinary Guernsey man, which had failed to find a publisher. Finally, five years after his death, it was published. It sounds extremely unpromising and when you start reading, it feels like the slightly rambling memories of an unliterary man. But gradually the book takes you over, you come to realise how beautifully shaped and written it is. It’s truly one of the most beautiful books written in English of the last fifty years.

What is the best independent bookshop that you have visited in the past 10 years?

We’ve just moved eastwards in London to Clapton. There are many wonderful things about the area – the wetlands, the River Lea, markets, various members of our family – but one of the most wonderful is our local bookshop, Pages of Hackney. Just walking around the shelves you feel the passion of the staff and of the community that they’re part of.

Who is your favourite author who has come to prominence in the last 10 years?

We’d never heard of Svetlana Alexievich when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015. Odder still, she wasn’t a fiction writer but a journalist. But we read her book, The Unwomanly Face of War, in which she interviews women from the Soviet Union who joined the military in the Second World War and we were completely bowled over. It is one of the most vivid, heartbreaking accounts of the reality of war that we’ve ever read. It shows that great literature can come from anywhere.

Plenty of bookish insights to get stuck into here. Nicci and Sean will be joining us on Sunday 26th June at Harvest House – you can find out a bit more here: https://felixstowebookfestival.co.uk/events/nicci-french-the-unheard.

We hope you have a brilliant festival weekend and emerge loaded down with books and bookish inspiration. Have a wonderful time!

Bookish best,

The Felixstowe Book Festival Team x

Hello booklovers,

We hope that Bookish Best is giving you plenty of inspiration for books to read, bookshops to visit and events to attend at FbF 2022. Our next blog guest is Alexander Larman who shares with us his bookish best bits of the past ten years…

What has been your favourite read of the past 10 years?

The best book I’ve read in the past 10 years is an oldie but a goodie, Augustus Carp Esq. You know from the subtitle onwards – ‘being the autobiography of a really good man’ – of the kind of book that you’re in for, and this pitch-perfect satire on Victorian religious hypocrisy really ought to be far better known than it is. An amusing fact is that it was published anonymously, and the author was revealed to be the physician Henry Howarth Basford – honorary physician to George VI. I have no idea what he was like as a doctor, but as a comic novelist he was peerless.

What an inspiring series of bookish recollections. Alex will be joining us as part of our Three Generations of Royalty –  A Royal Event in the Year of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee event alongside Frances Dimond and Jane Ridley. You can find out more about this fascinating event here: https://felixstowebookfestival.co.uk/events/three-generations-of-royalty-a-royal-event-in-the-year-of-the-queens-platinum-jubilee

Bookish best,

The Felixstowe Book Festival Team

Hello booklovers,

Next up in our Bookish Best blog, celebrating 10 years of the Felixstowe Book Festival, we have a lovely contribution from Esther Freud. If you’re curious about what literary delights our festival patron has discovered since the first Felixstowe Book Festival then do read on…

What has been your favourite read of the past 10 years?

When Ruth Ozeki won the Women’s prize for fiction last week, it reminded me how much I loved her 2013 novel A Tale for the Time Being. It tells the story of a mysterious diary written by a troubled school girl in Tokyo which is found by a novelist named Ruth when it washes up on the Pacific northwest coast of Canada.  It is heartbreaking, funny, clever, and gripping as a thriller.  A novel within a novel that exceeds expectation in the breadth of its ambition.

What is the best independent bookshop that you have visited in the past 10 years?

Plenty of bookish inspiration here. Esther has kindly stepped into the breach for our opening event as Tessa Hadley can’t join us due to the train strike. Join Esther on Saturday morning at 10am in the Palm Court at Harvest House for chat, coffee and a special story reading.

Keep your eyes peeled for more Bookish Best instalments from your festival favourites!

Bookish best,

The Felixstowe Book Festival Team

Hello booklovers,

To celebrate our 10th festival we are running a special blog series, Bookish Best.

We are asking some of our 2022 speakers a series of bookish questions to give our festival fans some insight into the literary lives of our festival guests. We are delighted to be kicking off with the lovely Carol Drinkwater.

Wow, plenty of bookish inspiration from Carol here and many thanks to Carol for an excellent contribution. We’re really looking forward to seeing her on the 26th of June at Harvest House and you can find out more information about the event here: https://felixstowebookfestival.co.uk/events/carol-drinkwater-in-conversation-with-rachel-sloane

Keep your eyes peeled for more Bookish Best instalments tomorrow!

Bookish best,

The Felixstowe Book Festival Team x

Hello booklovers,

It’s not long to go until our festival weekend on the 25th and 26th of June. However if you can’t wait that long we are kicking off the literary festivities early with our launch weekend events on the 11th and 12th of June. Read on to find out more…

Martin Newell and the Hosepipe Band, Saturday 11 June 2022, 7-9pm 

Martin Newell and The Hosepipe Band return to the Felixstowe Book Festival with new offerings as well as poems and music that have proved popular with audiences in previous years.

New pieces include The Professor’s Garden, a quartet of poems celebrating the seasons, as well as the affectionate New Elizabethans a poem in which Martin reminds us what ordinary life was like when the Queen first came to the throne.

Ticketing information can be found here: Ticketing information can be found here: https://felixstowebookfestival.co.uk/events/martin-newell-and-the-hosepipe-band-2

Michael Pennington, In My Own Footsteps, Sunday 12 June, 7-8pm (Felixstowe Book Festival in association with Black and White productions)

Michael has been working as an actor and director for the past 57 years. He is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company and co-founded the English Shakespeare Company. He will be performing readings from his memoir which he says will be “generally funny, unexpected and full of heroes of the past – Paul Scofield, Peggy Ashcroft, Ian Holm, as well of my generation”.

Tickets for this event can be booked at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/two-sisters-arts-centre

Hope to see you there!

Bookish best,

The Felixstowe Book Festival Team x

 

Hello booklovers,

A sneaky heads up for you – in conjunction with the Felixstowe Book Festival and Orwell Lady river trips, our fantastic festival patron Terry Waite will be holding an event on the Orwell Lady. The great news is that there are two tickets remaining! If you would like to get your mitts on these remaining tickets, follow the link here: https://orwelllady.co.uk/terry-waite-event/

Hurry, as they won’t be there for long!

Bookish best,

The FbF Team x

Hello book lovers,

Wishing you all a happy new year! I hope that 2022 has got off to a good start. If you’re in need of a little lift, we have good news. In February we will be re-launching our book festival book club – we’re looking forward to hosting it (in person, hurrah!) at the wonderful Cuppa Cafe.

Our first meeting will take place on Wednesday 23rd February. Come along to Cuppa Cafe from 7pm for a 7.30 start. Our first read of 2022 is Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley. This intelligent and tightly written novel centres on the lives of two couples who are lifelong friends navigating the trials and tribulations of late middle age. Vividly drawn characters, relatable events and astute observations of human behaviour make for an absorbing read.

You can get hold of a copy through the Suffolk Libraries catalogue or head to our brilliant local bookshops, Treasure Chest Books and Stillwater Books, if you wish to purchase a copy.

Please note that we have limited places to attend so to book your spot please email fbfbookclub@gmail.com.

We do hope you can join us!
Bookish best,

The Felixstowe Book Festival Team