Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and historian Barbara Taylor who is specifically a historian of ideas explore the concept of kindness, its status among human attributes and the value that has been ascribed to it over the years.The pleasures of kindness have been well known since the dawn of Western thought. Part of the purpose of this book is to reinstate kindness as something necessary both to our personal happiness and our communal well-being. Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor argue that the affectionate life – a life lived in instinctive sympathetic identification with the vulnerabilities and attractions of others – is the one we should all be inclined to live.

Can you roar like a tiger or hiss like a snake? Or would you like to sing along to The Wheels on the Bus? Join Sam Taplin and Felicity Brooks for an action-packed session as they demonstrate Usborne's award-winning sound-chip books: Noisy Animals, Noisy Jungle and First Picture Action Rhymes.

Sponsored by Critchleys

Are we witnessing a new scramble for Africa? The original scramble in the late 19th century saw a race between European powers for territory on the continent, and power and prestige everywhere. Today, China, the rising global power, funds infrastructure projects across Africa. Film director Steven Spielberg withdrew as an artistic advisor to the Beijing Olympics over China's role in Darfur. Chinese businessmen populate karaoke bars from Luanda to Lagos. How are China's actions different from old-fashioned imperialism?

A two-mile circular tour of the Thames and its backwaters in the footsteps of novelists, diarists, poets, and travellers. Citing numerous authors of past and present, the enduring importance of Oxford’s waterways is explained by local historian, author, and publisher, Mark Davies. The route is generally flat, but with some steps.

Complimentary drink at Aziz Pandesia, Folly Bridge (5 minutes’ walk from Christ Church) at the end of the walk.

Can you roar like a tiger or hiss like a snake? Or would you like to sing along to The Wheels on the Bus? Join Sam Taplin and Felicity Brooks for an action-packed session as they demonstrate Usborne's award-winning sound-chip books: Noisy Animals, Noisy Jungle and First Picture Action Rhymes.

Sponsored by Critchleys

Winner of the 2008 Samuel Johnson prize, Kate Summerscale’s gripping true-life historical crime investigation centres around the mysterious murder in 1860 of four-year-old Francis Savile Kent, who had been snatched from his nursemaid’s bedroom at night and was discovered the next morning with his throat cut. The subsequent investigation by Scotland Yard’s ‘Jack’ Whicher gripped the nation and helped launch detective fiction. ‘Summerscale’s account of the murder and Whicher’s unravelling of the clues is, on one level, as suspenseful as the fictions the case spawned. But the book . . . is also a fascinating social history, exploring issues of class, gender and Victorian attitudes to crime’ - Sunday Times. Kate Summerscale talks to Sunday Times Literary Editor Andrew Holgate.

Sponsored by The Macdonald Randolph Hotel

The award-winning poet David Constantine is a Fellow of Queen’s College, Oxford whose writing has a strong moral component. The mood of his poems is both tender and desperate.

Michael Schmidt is Professor of Poetry at the University of Glasgow. Founder and editorial director of Carcanet Press, he has also been editor of Poetry Nation Review for more than 30 years. His own poetry offers a generally attractive and accessible reading experience, albeit a highly literary one, with ‘no grand gestures’. He writes variously in rhyming forms and blank verse about love, landscape, memory and words. His descriptions can be of places, reveries or extended metaphors.

David Constantine and Michael Schmidt come together to read a selection of their published poems.

The Origin of Species is the most famous book in science but its stature tends to obscure the genius of Charles Darwin's other works.
Darwin wrote six million words, in nineteen books and innumerable letters, on topics as different as dogs, barnacles, insect-eating plants, orchids, earthworms, apes and human emotion. Together, they laid the foundations of modern biology. In this fascinating talk based on his highly acclaimed book The Galapagos in the Garden of England, Steve Jones explores the full range of Darwin’s achievement, and brings his work right up to date.

Students from years 7, 8 & 9 will compete in school teams in the final of a fast, fun and thrilling word-game competition, including performance rhymes, poetry, alphabet stories and “call my bluff”. The best teams have been chosen after taking part in workshops at their schools run by Spiel Unlimited. Come and see who will be this year’s champions!

Supported by The Oxford Playhouse and the Oxford Literary Festival Charitable Trust

A walk of under two miles, broadly based on Oxford author Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights and Lyra’s Oxford, but citing many other authors. The route will include the literary-rich Victorian suburb of Jericho and the Oxford Canal(complementing the Inspector Morse Tour), and finish at Oxford Castle. The tour is led by local historian, author, and publisher, Mark Davies, an Oxford ‘gyptian’ himself. The route is generally flat, but with some steps.

Complimentary drink at Café 1071, Oxford Castle, at the end of the walk.

The twelve stories in this brilliant collection straddle the cultures of Nigeria and the West. Orange Prize winning author of Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie creates characters battling with the responsibilities of modern life, a world in which identity is too often compromised. The title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected; though falling in love brings her desires nearly within reach, a death in her homeland forces her to re-examine them. Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow and longing, this collection is a resounding confirmation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's prodigious storytelling powers.

** CANCELLED**
Author of Falling and the Cazalet Chronicles, Elizabeth Jane Howard is one of our most popular writers. The former wife of Kingsley Amis, she has also known some of the most celebrated writers of the 20th century – everyone from Laurie Lee to Arthur Koestler, Cecil Day-Lewis, Cyril Connolly, Ken Tynan and Olivia Manning have come into her life at one time or another. Set in the 1960s against the backdrop of a festival of the arts, her first new novel for nine years offers an absorbing portrait of family rivalry and satisfyingly complex intertwining relationships.

Kelly Grovier has published widely on the English Romantic poets, particularly William Wordsworth and John Keats. Last year Carcanet Press published his own collection of poems, A Lens in the Palm.

Bernard O’Donoghue’s job teaching Mediaeval Literature has resulted in a number of scholarly works, notably his anthology The Courtly Love Tradition. He began writing poetry in 1979, after the death of his mother and the birth of his first child. Such human occasions, the centrality of love and its necessary opposite, death, have remained consistent themes in his poetry.

Kelly Grovier and Bernard O’Donoghue will be reading a selection of their poetry. Chaired by novelist and poet Jem Poster.

On the morning of Sunday November 1 1755, the end of the world came to the city of Lisbon. On a day that had begun with blue skies and gentle warmth, a massive earthquake that was to have a searing impact on the European psyche struck Portugal’s capital. Drawing on a mass of primary sources, Edward Paice paints a vivid picture of a city and society changed forever by one day of terror. Describing the quake and its immediate aftermath, he discusses its political, economic and cultural consequences.

Sponsored by Blackwell

Professor Abdou Filali-Ansary, Director of The Aga Khan University in the UK, will chair a discussion with novelists Louis de Bernière (Birds without Wings), and Zulufu Livaneli (Bliss Mutlunuk). Both these novels re-investigate the past, in relation to the paradoxical diversity of contemporary Turkish identity.

Topics to be explored include the different ways in which "official" history is re-told and remembered, with reference to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, examining why previously harmonious cosmopolitan communities, when confronted with nationalism, religious absolutism and utopianism, degenerate into violence, hatred and warfare.

In association with The Aga Khan University

A rare chance to step back 500 years into the great mediaeval kitchen at Christ Church College to watch Tamasin Day-Lewis and Anne Menzies re-create a noble dining that Cardinal Wolsey would have enjoyed. Wolsey founded the college and his power rivalled Henry VIII's. The food he ate affirmed his status. Culinary discovery and invention characterise the closing years of the late Mediaeval period. Learn about the growing art of confectionary, the new edible pastry with its pies, tarts and ornate custards, the recent discovery called ' snowe', plus  famous mediaeval roasts and their sauces. And then, in the evening, enjoy a mediaeval dinner prepared by Tamasin Day-Lewis.

Sponsored by Cox & Kings

In this comprehensive history of the Oxford Playhouse, Don Chapman traces the story of this great theatre from its earliest roots in a production of Agamemnon in 1880, via the founding of the Oxford University Dramatic Society and the rebuilding of Oxford's New Theatre to the launch of the Playhouse itself and its move to Beaumont Street in 1938. Along the way Don Chapman celebrates a galaxy of actors who have been associated with the theatre, among them Flora Robson, John Gielgud, Maggie Smith, Ronnie Barker, Judi Dench and Helena Bonham-Carter.

Sponsored by Blackwell

Eglantyne Jebb, co-founder of Save the Children, did not live life in the traditional way by becoming a mother. Instead she dedicated her life to children’s welfare and human rights and so permanently changed the way the world acts towards children. She was both a romantic and realist and her short life (she died aged 52) was full of humour and tragedy, passion and pain. The publication of Clare Mulley’s biography of Eglantyne Jebb marks the 20th anniversary of the UN convention on the Rights of the Child.

In Association with Save the Children

What has foreign intervention achieved in Afghanistan? Operation Enduring Freedom was the first front in the “War on Terror” to be opened following the attacks of September 11th, 2001, and sought to remove the Taliban, the repressive regime which had allowed Osama bin Laden to operate in Afghanistan. Seven years later, the fighting continues – has intensified even – and foreign troops still lack an exit strategy. What does Afghanistan's future look like?

Join David Loyn (BBC Developing World Correspondent, author of Butcher & Bolt: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan), James Fergusson (journalist, and author of Kandahar Cockney and A Million Bullets) and Clare Lockhart (former adviser to UN and Afghan government, and co-author of Fixing Failed States). Chaired by Professor Jean Seaton (Director of the Orwell Prize, author of Carnage and the Media)

Sponsored by the Whisky Shop, Oxford.

New Internationalist have published a collection of twenty three short stories from fourteen countries, each of which speaks with the clarity and intensity of the human experience. The swift transition from story to story, from continent to continent, from child’s perspective to adult’s; together, these evoke the complex but balanced texture of the world we live in. The diversity of subject, style and perspective results in vivid and poignant stories that haunt the reader.  The collection also reflects what can be done by writers thousands of miles apart in the borderless world of the internet, where many of them first met.  Come and hear four of these writers discussing their stories and the anthology. The authors are donating their royalties to Médecins Sans Frontières.

Supported by New Internationalist

Poet Simon Armitage goes on the trail of one of the jewels in the crown of British poetry - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - following in the footsteps of the poem's hero, Gawain, through some of Britain's most beautiful and mystical landscapes to discover more about the poet, his world and the stories that inspired the poem.

Tamasin Day-Lewis, one of our finest cookery writers, and food writer Anne Menzies, are re-creating a noble dinner that Cardinal Wolsey might have enjoyed at Christ Church, some 500 years ago. Come and enjoy a dinner Cardinal Wolsey would have consumed. He would have eaten only the very best. Colour, workmanship and the increasingly important spice called sugar would have affirmed his power. A Cardinal was served messes which would have included a refined pottage, manchet bread, spiced butters, roast meat or fish accompanied by its sauce, herb salad, pie, an ornate tart, a custard and a growing number of sweetened dishes.  Hippocras, the spiced red wine or ale would have been served, but water avoided at all costs!

Only 40 places are available, so please book as early as possible.

Sponsored by Cox & Kings

Winner of the International Impac Award, shortlisted for both the Booker and Whitbread prizes, translated into 36 languages, Andrew Miller offers us in his new novel a tale of growing up and growing free of the self-delusions that make doing the right thing so difficult – especially in a world where everyone is struggling to save themselves. It is also the story of Tokyo: a vast and almost impossible place, its history plagued by fires and earthquakes, and in 1941, a city that teeters on the brink of its greatest catastrophe.

Which is the greatest novel in the English language? Is it Jane Austen’s Emma, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, or James Joyce’s Ulysses – or would you contend that it is something else entirely? During this entertaining debate, celebrated critics and writers will argue the case for each of those titles, before locking horns with one another and the audience. The panel will include John Carey, Kathryn Hughes, PD James and John Walsh. Chaired by David Grylls. Come along to compare impressions, to cheer, disagree and join in.

In association with OUCDE and Kellogg College

Already renowned for his work on Auschwitz, acclaimed documentary-film maker Laurence Rees here turns his attention to some less familiar issues of the second world war, throwing light upon its darker nooks and crannies, and in particular the often ugly relationship between Stalin and the West. Drawing on material only available since the opening of archives in the East, Rees re-examines the key decisions made by Stalin, Churchill and explores and the dramatic effect those decisions had for those on the ground.

Sponsored by Blackwell

The conviction last December of Sean Mercer, who in 2007, at the age of just 16, shot dead 11-year-old Rhys Evans in Liverpool, has reopened the debate about teenage gang violence in Britain. Do concerns about violent youth crime reflect a breakdown of respect and discipline, or are we in the grip of a moral panic? Are liberal critics blind to the harsh realities of crime and disorder, or does demonising young people make things worse? Have we lost the confidence to tell young people what’s right and wrong?  Join Frank Furedi, author of Politics of Fear, Peter Hitchens, journalist and author of The Abolition of Britain and A Brief History of Crime, Julian Walker, Head of Policy at Barnardo's, and Alex Wheatle, author of the novel The Dirty South, to discuss the issues.

In association with The Institute of Ideas

Ivan Tolstoy (b. 1958), a writer and historian, grew up in St. Petersburg in a family rich with literary tradition. His paternal grandfather, Alexei Tolstoy, was a prominent writer, author of Peter the Great; his maternal grandfather was Mikhail Lozinsky, a translator who worked in nine languages and produced the now-classic Russian rendition of Dante's Divine Comedy. Ivan's grandmother, Natalia Krandievskaia, was a well-known poet, and two of his sisters – Tatiana and Natalia – are acclaimed contemporary prose writers. Thus, literature was his natural path to take – though Ivan's forté is nonfiction. His studies primarily concern the twentieth century, with a focus on several topics: Vladimir Nabokov, the history of the Russian emigration, and the Cold War. Ivan's latest book, Pasternak's Laundered Novel: Doctor Zhivago between the KGB and CIA combines a number of his research interests.

In association with Pushkin House

John Kay, world-leading economist and professor at the London School of Economics, with 25 years of experience of financial institutions, has put together a guide to the complexities of the modern financial system. The Long and the Short of It, describes the sophisticated innovations of the modern financial system. It also explains how twice in the last decade – in the new economy bubble and the credit crunch and current financial crises – the follies of finance have threatened the stability of the world economy. Since most people’s portfolio will be in stocks and shares, John Kay describes why some companies succeed and others fail, and how to distinguish fact and fiction in what companies tell you. You will learn a practical investment strategy and how to implement it – and how to put you portfolio in the only hands you can confidently trust – your own.

As his 75th birthday approaches, playwright and screenwriter Ronald Harwood is riding an extraordinary wave of success. Born Ronald Horwitz, of Jewish parents, he arrived here from South Africa at 17, with 7/6 in his pocket. He joined Donald Wolfit’s Royal Shakespeare Company, where he formed a lifelong friendship with Harold Pinter, and his experiences there are immortalized in The Dresser, which established him as one of this country’s leading playwrights. He is also one of our foremost screenplay writers, and, since winning an Oscar for The Pianist in 2003, has written the screenplays for Oliver Twist, Love in the Time of Cholera, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (also nominated for an Oscar, and awarded a BAFTA). In May, his plays Collaboration and Taking Sides come on at the Duchess Theatre in London. But while enjoying the glamour of the theatre, and of Hollywood, Harwood remains at heart questing and serious, preoccupied by the Holocaust and by questions of belief.

In Association with Royal Society of Literature