Maurice Bowra was, according to one’s point of view, either the most distinguished or the most notorious Oxford don of the early twentieth century.

Classicist, poet, wit, raconteur extraordinary and Warden of Wadham College for more than 30 years, he met nearly everyone of consequence in the worlds of literature and politics and had stories to tell about them all.

By force of personality and intellectual range, he influenced the thinking of almost everyone with whom he came into contact.
This, the first ever biography of Bowra, covers every aspect of his life.

The buildings of Wales embody its history and are the equal of any in the British Isles. Simon Jenkins, Chairman of the National Trust, and one of Britain’s most prominent journalists, has travelled (it seems) every mile of Wales, to celebrate the best of them. He conveys his enthusiasm for Welsh buildings in his latest book Wales: Churches, Houses, Castles – it’s an enthusiasm that’s so infectious that it cannot fail to inspire his readers.

Sponsored by Purcell Miller Tritton

What motivates people to choose jobs that could see them put directly into danger, or could kill them? This question has always fascinated television presenter Kate Adie, who has found herself in many tight spots during her years as a war correspondent. Drawing on conversations with everyone from stuntpeople to prostitutes and landmine clearers, Into Danger is both revealing and fascinating. All Adie’s subjects have chosen their professions. All are strikingly forceful people who know precisely why they do their jobs and have an inner conviction that motivates them, despite the possibility of death.

Supported by Ian and Carol Sellars

Desmond Guinness founded the Irish Georgian Society in 1958 and was responsible for saving much of Georgian Dublin, and many of Ireland’s greatest historic houses from destruction in.  The son of Lord Moyne and Diana Mitford, Mr Guinness has written widely on Irish and American Architecture – and on the decorative arts of both countries. Here he talks about the conservation of Irish houses and castles.

Sponsored by Purcell Miller Tritton

When Lulu goes to the zoo… she is sad for all the giraffes and the penguins too. In fact, she is sad for all the animals, so Lulu decides to release them from their cages and take them back to her house to live. Andy Ellis brings his story to life with its great read-aloud rhyming text and irresistible illustrations, and he asks his audience which animal they would like to bring home to live at their house

Sponsored by Critchleys

Matty is a very orderly bear who lives with his not-so-orderly sister, Milly. But one day when a strong wind turns everything upside down, Matty finds himself in a bit of a mess... Miriam Moss reads from her book in a gentle story session for the under 5s, encouraging audience participation.

Sponsored by Critchleys

When Lulu goes to the zoo… she is sad for all the giraffes and the penguins too. In fact, she is sad for all the animals, so Lulu decides to release them from their cages and take them back to her house to live. Andy Ellis brings his story to life with its great read-aloud rhyming text and irresistible illustrations, and he asks his audience which animal they would like to bring home to live at their house.

Sponsored by Critchleys

Do some people possess extraordinary – even paranormal – mental abilities, such as his ability to read another’s mind, or move an object solely by the power of thought? This session will both amaze and educate you! Ian Rowland is a professional magician and one of the world’s leading experts on how professional psychics, spiritualists and mentalists are able to amaze their audiences. His widely acclaimed book on the psychic art of “cold reading” has sold over twenty thousand copies. “A superb book, relentlessly intelligent and fiercely methodical! Its pages systematically unravel every deceptive strategy of thinking and rhetoric in 'psychic' character reading" - Teller (of Penn & Teller)

Major questions are being raised about every level of our educational system. Should traditional subjects in primary schools be replaced by ‘new areas of learning’? What is the future of sats following their abolition for 14 year olds? Are we dumbing down GCSEs and A levels? Is the government target of 50% of younger people entering higher education realistic? Is the current system failing our children and how can we best educate the next generation? These and other issues will be discussed by Baroness Mary Warnock, philosopher of morality and education, Guy Claxton, Co-Director of Centre for Real-World Learning and author of What’s the Point of School?, and Malcolm Gillies, Vice-Chancellor of City University, London.

Supported by Ian and Carol Sellars

Sponsored by Thames & Hudson

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.

Jenny Uglow is a superb explorer of 18th-century British history. In her fascinating group biography, she concentrates on a group of like-minded men in the 1760s, all members of a Birmingham club called the Lunar Society, who together and individually, through their inventions and innovations, changed irrevocably the world in which they lived. a group of amateur experimenters met and became friends. Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Josiah Wedgwood, Erasmus Darwin and Joseph Priestly were all members of this society, and in her outstanding book Uglow reveals the friendships, political passions, love affairs and thirst for knowledge that drove these inspirational men.

Supported by Wedgwood

Marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, actor David Timson considers the fiction and fact that led to the creation of the world’s greatest fictional detective: Sherlock Holmes. Timson, who has read The Complete Sherlock Holmes Stories for Naxos AudioBooks (60CDs), will illustrate his talk with readings from Edgar Allan Poe, the grandfather of crime fiction, and the forgotten 19th-century French writer Emile Gaboriau, creator of the ‘roman policier’; and, of course, from the Holmes canon. He will consider also how Holmes benefited from Doyle’s scientific understanding of developing forensic methods used by Scotland Yard in the 1890s. Entertaining and informative!

Sponsored by The Macdonald Randolph Hotel

Winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award, and the bestselling author of The Snow Geese, William Fiennes is one of greatest stylists of his generation. In his immensely powerful and mesmerising memoir, he writes both about his idyllic childhood in an almost fantastical moated house and the threat posed to that childhood by the crippling illness of his adored older brother. The result is not just an elegy to a lost world, but also a sensory tribute to home, to the workings of memory and imagination, and, above all, a transcendent lovesong for a brother.

In conversation with chief critic of the Sunday Times, John Carey

In this fascinating talk poet, writer and cider expert James Crowden reveals England’s – and Oxford’s - proud links with the history of cider. Did you know that English cider makers of the mid-17th century pioneered the methode champenoise forty years before Dom Perignon is credited with the invention of champagne? Or that one of the pioneers of fermented bottled cider was Lord John Scudamore, a Magdalen College man who went on to become Charles I’s ambassador in France? Shortlisted for the prestigious Andre Simon food and drink awards, Crowden sets out to uncover many of the mysteries surrounding this most underrated British drink.The talk will be accompanied by a tasting of ciders from Burrow Hill (Somerset), Tom Oliver (Herefordshire) and Andrew Lea (Oxfordshire).

Chaired by Hugh Prysor-Jones.

Adam Nicolson, the son of writer Nigel Nicolson and grandson of Vita Sackville-West and Sir Harold Nicolson takes us on a personal journey through the history of one of England’s great houses, Sissinghurst. Now part of the National Trust, it is one of its most visited properties. Adam Nicolson reveals the history of his family home and the gardens designed by his grandparents. He tells us how his family have continued to live in the house and what it is like adapting to living in a national treasure. Adam Nicolson talks to Simon Jenkins, columnist, writer and Chair of The National Trust.

Sponsored by Purcell Miller Tritton

In this unique literary event, Richard Blair – George Orwell's son – will be speaking in public for the very first time about life with his father. Adopted by George and his wife Eileen in 1945 (Eileen dying later that year), Richard was brought up by his father, first in London and then on the Scottish isle of Jura. Richard will be talking to writer D. J. Taylor, Chair of the Orwell Trust and author of Orwell: The Life, which won the Whitbread Biography Award in 2003. A literary first not to be missed!

We read the letters of writers to glean more information about their lives: their attitudes and opinions; their prejudices and blind spots; their habits and their secrets. We hope to learn how they spent their days. Writer and critic Claire Harman will discuss letters as both a literary and private form of expression with Terence Dooley, editor of Penelope Fitzgerald’s recently published collection of letters, So I Have Thought of You. The event will be chaired by Sally Bayley of Jesus College.

Sponsored by The Arts Club

Each year The Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Lord Patten of Barnes CH, will invite a figure of international eminence in the field of literature or public affairs, to give The Chancellor’s Lecture in the magnificent setting of Sir Christopher Wren’s Sheldonian Theatre.

This year, the first Chancellor’s Lecture will be given by the great Peruvian writer, politician, journalist and essayist, Mario Vargas Llosa. Born in 1936, Vargas Llosa rose to fame in the 1960s. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels and political thrillers, several of which, including Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, have been adapted for film. Vargas Llosa ran for the Peruvian Presidency in 1990. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of his generation.

Tiffany Atkinson was winner of the Ottakar’s and Faber National Poetry Competition and the Cardiff Academi Internatonal Poetry Competition. Her poems are published widely in journals and anthologies and her first collection, Kink and Particle, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and winner of the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Award.

Damian Walford Davies is a lecturer in the English Department of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he specialises in English Romanticism, literature and politics in the age of the French Revolution, nineteenth and twentieth–century poetry, and the literatures of Wales. In 2002/03 he won the Ellis Griffith and L.W. Davies Awards for his scholarly edition of the prose writings of Waldo Williams.

They will come together to read a selection of their poems. Chaired by novelist and poet Jem Poster.

Is literature as we know it really moving from printed page to networked screen – or is this just hype? Our panel will examine the impact of the internet (the ‘read/write web’), and other new media on the book. It will debate whether fiction is becoming interactive, collaborative and non-linear, and how new technologies such as e-readers and print-on-demand machines are changing the way we read, write and consume literature. Panellists include Sunday Times' critic Brian Appleyard, Chris Meade, former director of the Book Trust, now director of If:Book, a ‘think and do tank’ exploring the impact of new media on reading and writing, and writer Kate Pullinger, whose novels include A Little Stranger and www.inanimatealice.com, a multimedia graphic novel in episodes. Chaired by Lucy Atkins.

Sponsored by The Arts Club

Arena contributes to the BBC's Poetry Season with a profile of T.S. Eliot which, with the unprecedented co-operation of the Eliot Estate, tells the story of one of the 20th century’s most celebrated and elusive writers for the first time.

BBC 4

Jenny Uglow, the author of biographies of William Hogarth and Thomas Bewick, explores the fascinating relationships between British artists and writers. Starting with Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and moving on to Milton, Hogarth, Fielding, Wordsworth and Bewick, she explores the subtleties of the relationship between words and text in some of our most famous works of literature, and how one can influence the other.

Sponsored by Belgravia Gallery

Jeffrey Archer, whose bestselling novels include Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, Kane and Abel and The Eleventh Commandment, has sold over 250 million books throughout the world. In his latest novel, Paths of Glory, he draws on a cast of unforgettable characters – many of them key players in British history. Published a decade after George Mallory’s body was discovered on Everest, it tells the heartbreaking account of Mallory’s attempt to make the first ascent of the world’s highest mountain.

Amidst this epic tale of honour, ambition and pride, lies a moving love story between Mallory and his wife Ruth, the one woman who could compete with his love for ‘Chomolungma’, Goddess Mother of the Earth. Jeffrey Archer talks to Sandy Irvine’s great niece, Julie Summers.

Psychologist Susan Blackmore’s talks combine the latest scientific theories about mind, self and consciousness, with the knowledge gained from a lifetime’s practice of Zen. In her book Ten Zen Questions, she brings the two together to offer a revolutionary way of trying to understand who we are. The result is an inspiring exploration into how intellectual enquiry and meditation can tackle the questions behind some of today’s greatest scientific mysteries.

Sponsored by Blackwell

Born into a Scottish brewing dynasty in 1927, John Calder ran a family timber business while setting up a publishing house in 1949. He went on to establish an imprint that published some of the greatest avant-garde writers of the 20th Century. Calder’s authors achieved 19 Nobel Literature Prizes (including Samuel Beckett and Claude Simon) and 3 for peace.

In the UK Calder published all of Samuel Beckett’s novels, poetry, criticism and some of his plays; as well as Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer; William Burrugh’s The Naked Lunch and Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn. All in all a controversial and turbulent career.

Ross Raisin’s first novel, God’s Own Country, was published to great acclaim in hardback last year and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys prize. Set in Ross’s native Yorkshire, the book is a brilliantly realised first-person account of an unsettled loner. Mary Mount is an Editorial Director at Penguin Books and Ross’s editor. Come and hear Mary talk about her life as an editor, and then listen to her interview Ross about how he came to write his book.

Penguin have 30 copies of God’s Own Country to give away to the first three reading groups who email them at their readers’ group website, www.penguin.co.uk/readers. Just email readers@penguin.co.uk, giving the name of your reading group and the address you would like the books sent to.

SUPPORTED BY PENGUIN