When poet and biographer Grevel Lindop took up salsa dancing in rainy Manchester, he thought he was just keeping a New Year’s resolution to get some exercise. However before long this adrenaline-pumping, Afro-Latin-American dance style soon turned from mere exercise into a passion that took him through the streets, clubs, bars and dancehalls of Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Puerto Rico the Dominican Republic and Miami. The story of his adventures and misadventures on this amazing journey make a spellbinding read.

Sponsored by Cox & Kings

A compelling look at the longs shadows cast by the Bastille, the guillotine and Napoleon over the 19th and early 20th centuries. In his masterly reassessment of France’s stormy post-revolutionary history, Robert Gildea, Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, introduces us to a country that many of us may have difficulty recognising, one where in many regions French was often the minority language, and where until well into the 19th century some of the larger cities were effectively independent states. “Sober, concise and masterly” – Sunday Times.

Sponsored by Blackwell

Fiona Sampson and Jane Draycott come together to read their poems

Skilled and experienced storyteller Rand Russell returns to the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival to perform rhymes, stories and mysteries. Don’t miss his unique, high-energy performances, guaranteed to take you to places where no storybook has gone before!

Sponsored by Critchleys

‘It is said that failed politicians make the best diarists. In which case I am in with a chance.’ So says Labour MP and Chris Mullin, whose candid, irreverent and acerbic account of life inside the Parliamentary goldfish bowl shows us government from the bottom up, in all its chaotic, farcical glory. In his 22 years as an MP, Mullin has not been shy of criticizing his own party, and he carries that spirit through to these diaries, started in 1994, which read like Alan Clark crossed with Yes Minister.

Supported by Ian and Carol Sellars

Domestic interiors have changed hugely since 1700. The former Director of Education at the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, Steven Parissien is perfectly placed to discuss those changes. Ranging over both Western Europe and North America, and dealing not just with the grand houses of the aristocracy, but the homes too of the merchants and middle classes, he charts the nature of those changes, and in particular the impact of industrialisation on the way we live indoors.

Sponsored by Purcell Miller Tritton

Written by the highly acclaimed author of Rubicon and Persian Fire, Millennium is a stunning panoramic account of the two centuries on either side of the apocalyptic year 1000. This was the age of Canute, William the Conqueror and Pope Gregory VII, of Vikings, monks and serfs, of the earliest castles and the invention of knighthood, and the primal conflict between church and state. The story of how the distinctive culture of Europe was forged out of the convulsions of these extraordinary times is as fascinating and momentous as any in history.

Sponsored by Blackwell

Skilled and experienced storyteller Rand Russell returns to the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival to perform rhymes, stories and mysteries. Don’t miss his unique, high-energy performances, guaranteed to take you to places where no storybook has gone before!

Sponsored by Critchleys

William Bynum briefly explores the history of Western medicine, examining the key turning points, discoveries and controversies in its rich history, from classical times to the present.

Britain achieved unparalleled global pre-eminence through one critical advantage - her naval power. While other nations looked to armies for their security, Britain looked to the sea and for over three hundred years the Royal Navy dominated the oceans. Andrew Lambert, described as ‘one of the most eminent naval historians of our age’, celebrates the rare talents of the men who shaped the most successful fighting force in world history. From the Armada to the Napoleonic Wars to the Second World War, he follows the careers of eleven men who created, refined, and reconfigured the art of the admiral.

Sponsored by Blackwell

Acclaimed historians John Guy, author of A Daughter’s Love: Thomas and Margaret More, and Leanda de Lisle, author of The Sisters Who Would be Queen, join forces to discuss their latest works. The story of Sir Thomas More’s defiance of Henry VIII is one of the most familiar in English history, but by concentrating on More’s family, particularly his adored daughter Margaret, John Guy humanises him in a way that not even Paul Scofield’s movie
performance can match. Leanda de Lisle’s history gives us the dramatic untold story of the three tragic Grey sisters, all heirs to the Tudor throne, all victims to their royal blood.

Sponsored by Blackwell

Ann Leslie began her career in the Sixties as ‘The Voice of Youth’
columnist for the Daily Express. She later specialised in showbusiness
and the arts, interviewing leading stars of the day – ranging from David
Niven, Steve McQueen and Muhammad Ali to Roman Polanski, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller.

Joining the Daily Mail, she became a foreign correspondent, and has
worked in around 70 countries thus far. She has been present at most of the 20th century’s major events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall,
the release of Nelson Mandela, the wars in Yugoslavia and the collapse
of the Soviet Union. She’s a frequent broadcaster, and in the
Reuters/Press Gazette Newspaper Hall of Fame is named as one of the most influential journalists of the last 40 years. In 2007 she was made a
Dame ‘for services to journalism’, and recently published her
autobiography, which received such plaudits as: ‘a masterpiece’
(A.N.Wilson), ‘vivid and absorbing’ (the Guardian) and, from
Gavin Esler (Newsnight), 'Ann Leslie is quite simply one of the
most fearless, talented and witty journalists in Britain today’.

Carol Drinkwater has already charted the ups and downs of life on her Provencal olive farm’s in her much-loved ‘Olive’ memoirs. But with the farm now facing severe challenges - attack by a virulent pest, the premature ripening of the trees' fruits - Carol sets out on a colourful and evocative Mediterranean-wide journey to learn more about the history and development of the olive tree and different ways of cultivation. The journey for a single woman is often hazardous, but the stories she has brought back are memorable.

Sponsored by Cox & Kings

This debate, marking the 60th anniversary of George Orwell's 1984, asks how the novel can inform the present debate about civil liberties. In an age of terrorist threats, government databases and social networking, it is increasingly difficult to avoid references to Orwell's classic satire on the totalitarian state and the surveillance society. “There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.'” Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty since 2003 joins speakers to be confirmed.

Gin, with its fragrant and colourful history, has made a long journey to become Britain’s favourite spirit aperitif.  Take a break from the Festival’s literary treats and join John Harris, Steward of Christ Church, who leads this tasting of five different gins, all of which may surprise you with their difference, diversity and restorative qualities!

Sponsored by Plymouth Gin and the Gin & Vodka Association

In his most dazzling and brilliant novel since An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears tells the story of John Stone, financier and armaments manufacture, a man so wealthy that in the years before World War one he was able to manipulate markets, industries and indeed whole countries and continents.
 A panoramic novel with a riveting mystery at its heart, Stone’s Fall is quest to discover how and why John Stone dies, falling out of a window at his London home

Sponsored the The Macdonald Randolph Hotel

In his first major work for over a decade, Richard Holmes, prize-winning biographer of Coleridge and Shelley, explores the scientific ferment that swept across Britain at the end of 18th century. Taking us from Joseph Banks to Humpry Davy, Holmes proposes a radical vision of science before Darwin, exploring the earliest ideas of deep time and deep space, the creative rivalry with the French scientific establishment, and the startling impact of discovery on great writers and poets such as Mary Shelley, Coleridge, Byron and Keats. With his trademark sense of the human drama, he shows how great ideas and experiments are born out of lonely passion, how scientific discoveries (and errors) are made, how intense relationships are forged and broken by research, and how religious faith and scientific truth collide. Richard Holmes talks to Sunday Times Chief Critic, John Carey.

Sponsored by Blackwell

Oxford’s landscape, architecture and buildings, its academic heritage, status as an international publishing centre, and the enduring influence of its artists, writers and thinkers have all contributed to it being a ‘World-Class’ City. But does it meet the expectations of well-traveled visitors when they arrive at the railway station or when they see burger vans in front of great historic buildings? Do all communities engage with Oxford and see it as their own community. What makes a ‘World Class’ City, and will Oxford deserve such an accolade in the future? Clive Aslet, Editor of Country Life and author of The English House, Debbie Dance, Director of the Oxford Preservation Trust, and Justin Cartwright, Booker shortlisted writer and author of The Secret Garden: Oxford Revisited, discuss whether the myth outstrips the reality.

Sponsored by Purcell Miller Tritton

Director of the Royal African Society, Richard Dowden has been Africa Editor of both The Independent and The Economist. Over a period of 35 years, he has been present at each of the continent’s major crises, and has also witnessed the warmth, wisdom and joy of the people and the diversity of their habits, attitudes and purposes.