Shutters up for Arts and Literature Fest early tickets

THE doors to the 2019, Thame Arts and Literature Festival (TAL) burst open early this year to meet the expected deluge of demand as it celebrates its 10th Anniversary.

The online box office lifted its shutters on June 1, 2019 – two months earlier than in previous years – and sold 700 tickets on the first day – offering a fantastic line-up of top authors, artists and performers drawn to the Oxfordshire market town by the success of what has become one of the county’s premier cultural events. This follows a record-breaking 800 online bookings taken on the first day in 2018. The Town Hall box office will open on September 1, 2019 with its own allocation of tickets for the events.

The 10th Anniversary festivities offer a huge range of events catering for all tastes. These include history, literary fiction, poetry and memoir to music, cinema, art, theatre, workshops and children’s activities for the expected 3,500 Festival goers to enjoy between October 17 – 20, 2019. Yvonne Maxwell, Festival Director, who recently received a TOSCA (Thame award for Outstanding Services to the Creative Arts) said: “It hardly seems like yesterday that we set out on this adventure and we can’t believe that this will be our 10th Festival. Each Festival is a unique experience and we love watching it come together. The support of the people in Thame is heart-warming and we love being part of the life of the town.”

Here are just some of the Festival highlights with more events to be announced shortly:

BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz is the guest speaker at a gala 10th Birthday Celebration Night featuring music, live film and surprise guests; charismatic art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon shares his passion for the Dutch master Vermeer; doctor-turned-comedian Adam Kay recounts his hilarious but at times harrowing life as a junior medic in This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor which has sold over a million copies in the UK; Britain’s leading forensic scientist, Angela Gallop, Then The Dogs Don’t Bark, reveals how she helped solve the high profile murder cases of Damilola Taylor, Stephen Lawrence and Roberto Calvi.

Acclaimed historian Alison Weir discusses the much-maligned fourth wife of Henry VIII in Six Tudor Queens: Anne of Klev, Queen of Secrets; poets Michael Rosen and BBC Radio 4’s ‘Poetry Please’ presenter Roger McGough make a welcome return, and multi-award winning novelist Penelope Lively shares her love of gardening and its influence in literature from Life in the Garden.

Steph Booth talks openly about caring for her husband, actor Tony Booth on his dementia journey in Married to Alzheimer’s; journalist and historian Simon Heffer delves into the letters, diaries, and official documents behind Staring at God: Britain in the Great War, while bestselling author Victoria Hislop takes us back to her beloved Greece in her latest novel, Those Who are Loved.

The broadcaster, writer and comedienne, Perrier Award winner Natalie Haynes will be regaling the audience with her take on the classics in Troy Story.
Returning after last year’s triumph, Opera Anywhere hit the high notes with their sublime arias in Glyndebarn II; Nick Barber performs his one-man play ‘A Day in the Life of David Garrick’; Bart Van Es, winner of the 2018 Costa Book of the Year accolade, shares his grandparents’ real-life story of the sheltering of Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Holland, and on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day author and historian Steve Darlow, D-Day Bombers: The Veterans’ Story talks to the Bomber Crew that took part in the campaign.

A fun Panel comprising of the ‘slummy mummy’ blogger, Jo Middleton, with Helen Whitaker, and Clover Stroud chaired by Kerry Potter, will offer two hours of amusing yet poignant insights into parenting. Author and illustrator Yuval Zommer, The Big Book of Birds, has fun with the younger TAL audience; Thame Chamber Choir bring their divine harmonies to St. Mary’s Church, and Festival goers can enjoy the ever-popular Rumsey’s Tea Concert with an afternoon of tea, delicious cake and chamber music. In the week leading up to the Festival people are invited to experience the Art Crawl exhibitions and workshops in venues across the town.

For more information about TAL visit www.talfestival.org.