Welcome to the 2023
Wimborne Literary Festival; which we like to refer to as Wilf.
This eagerly awaited festival will once again be bringing a varied programme of authors and speakers to our beautiful town. I hope you will find that the fest is a relaxed affair. You don’t need to choose who you can and can’t see and hear; because each event stands alone – with time to chat and ‘meet the author’ - PLUS the opportunity to enjoy a visit to the town’s unique shops and a spot of lunch in any of ‘Foodie Wimborne’s’ famous indoor and outdoor eateries.
Wilf has been established since 2009 and would not be possible without the enthusiasm and help of the venues, their staff, the amazing festival volunteers, the speakers, authors, poets and bookbinders and more.
We also acknowledge and thank our friends at Radio Wimborne 94.6 fm which since the stations launch has played a unique role in the festivals success - and not forgetting a big thank you to our sponsors and festival goers.
Malcolm Angel Gulliver’s Bookshop
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Saturday 13th May 11:00am
Wimborne Community Centre, 41-44 King St, Wimborne BH21 1EA
The Sad Ghost Club Lize Meddings
‘We wanted to create a space where anyone who is feeling sad or alone could come and feel ... well, not so alone. Welcome ... to the Sad Ghost Club!’
Tickets £8
A heart-warming series about friendship, compassion and finding your kindred spirits. When one sad ghost, alone at a crowded party, spies another sad ghost across the room, what happens next changes everything. Because that night, they leave the party and start The Sad Ghost Cluba secret society for the anxious and alone, a club for people who think they don’t belong.
Follow the Sad Ghost Club as they navigate the joys and complexities of opening up their community - and their hearts - to new members.
Stunningly illustrated, this is Volume 3 in the beloved graphic novel series perfect for fans of Heartstopper and for anyone who’s ever felt invisible. Join the community of half a million ghosties on Instagram, @theofficialsadghostclub
About the Author
Lize Meddings is an illustrator and comic artist residing in Bristol, in the UK. Since creating The Sad Ghost Club Comics in 2014 she has continued to work on the project, creating comics, artwork and products for the club.
The Sad Ghost Club started after Lize graduated from her Illustration Degree, making comics was her one goal and a comic about a ghost/sheet/person seemed to resonate with her and the internet. She carried on making the comics, and eventually turned them into zines which started the store which led to pins, tees, prints and more! Since it’s beginning it’s always focused on exploring thoughts and feelings, and what it means to be someone going through a hard time. Exploring the mental health theme has created a wonderful community around The Sad Ghost Club online and in real life.
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Saturday 13th May 2:00pm
Wimborne Community Centre, 41-44 King St, Wimborne BH21 1EA
Grasping the Nettle
Tales from a Modern Country Gardener
Tamsin Westhorpe
One woman’s guide to making a living with muddy fingernails, steel toe-capped boots and a can-do gardening attitude. Have you ever watched Gardener’s World and fantasised about getting your hands dirty like Monty Don? Or perhaps you don’t even give a passing glance to the office plants person dusting the dieffenbachias… Whatever side of the garden fence you’re on, prepare to be charmed by these tales of life spent outdoors told by someone who’s not afraid to stand out like a sunflower in a row of cabbages.
Tickets £8
Tamsin Westhorpe’s memoir of memorable mishaps whilst making a living with mud permanently under her fingernails will win over any reader. A cast of colourful characters pepper the pages as she tells all about her hapless horticulture exploits. What do you say on live TV when you’re asked the best place to put a garden gnome? Is nudist gardening a good idea? And why do the roses surrounding beautifully manicured English lawn bowling greens grow so vigorously…
About the Author
Tamsin Westhorpe is a hands-on gardener who has had a varied and successful lifelong career in the horticultural industry. She has worked as a parks greenskeeper, an interior landscaper, a lecturer and as the editor of The English Garden magazine, and as a judge at RHS Chelsea. She now looks after Stockton Bury in Herefordshire, her uncle’s four-acre open garden. Her aim is to demystify gardening and she hopes that reflecting on her career will encourage others to jump into the wheelbarrow and choose horticulture as a life partner.
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“Charming, good-humoured and inspiring”- ALAN TITCHMARSH
The Diocese of Salisbury, St John’s and the Wimborne Minster are delighted to be taking part in the Wimborne Literary Festival 2023. Join us in the Wimborne Minster Church for ‘People of the Bible’ themed Messy Church
Saturday 13th May between 10:30am & 12noon
The opportunity to make a range of crafts relating to people from the bible , enjoy refreshments and explore the Minster church. Our Children’s Area will also be available. There is no charge for this event - but donations welcome. For more information email the Minsters Families Worker, Claire Lehmann on claire@wimborneminster.org.uk.
Wimborne Minster’s Famous Chained Library
Open during the 2023 Wimborne Literary Festival, Mondays to Saturdays 10:30 to 12:30 and 14:00 to 16:00 from 13th to 21st May.
The first donation came from Revd William Stone, who had seen many religious books like his being burnt by the authorities, and wanted to ensure that part of his collection would be kept safe in Wimborne. These theological books (Church ‘Fathers and Commentaries’) were in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and so must have been used mainly by the clergy; they were not chained. When another local donor, Roger Gillingham, gave another 90 books in 1695, he insisted that the books be chained up, but also that the Library should be opened, free, for the people of the town, providing they were ‘shopkeepers or the better class of person’.
The Library’s collection includes early books on gardening, medicine, law, etiquette, and building, as well as Walton’s great Polyglott Bible of 1657 (in nine languages). The display case in the library shows some of the most interesting and entertaining works.
Access is via a left-handed (defensive) spiral staircase. There is no disabled access, but you can watch a filmed tour of the Library in Trinity Chapel.
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Saturday 13th May 4:00pm
Wimborne Community Centre, 41-44 King St, Wimborne BH21 1EA
At the Captain’s Table
Sail away with the delightful new novel from Gervase Phinn, bestselling author of The School at the Top of the Dale
Gervaise Phinn
A summer cruise should be just the ticket for a few weeks of luxury and relaxation - but for the passengers and crew of the Empress of the Ocean, the sights of the Mediterranean are nothing compared to the excitement on board...
Tickets £8
For bickering couple Albert and Maureen, the trip might prove a muchneeded escape - or the final straw. Elegant Frances de la Mare is determined to hobnob with the right kind of people - but her penthouse suite proves lonelier than she ever imagined. Meanwhile, precocious twelve-year-old Oliver discovers that guidebooks don’t teach you everything, sparks fly when the port lecturer finds himself upstaged by a popular author, dancers Bruce and Babs can’t keep in step, and cruise expert Neville just wants someone to speak to.
But as unlikely friendships are forged, feuds bubble in the laundry room, and everyone jostles for a seat at the Captain’s table, they might find all their plans going overboard....
Warm, funny and uplifting, this is the perfect escapist read for fans of Gervase Phinn’s Yorkshire novels, as well as readers of Celia Imrie, Alan Titchmarsh and Maeve Haran.
About the Author
Dr Gervase Phinn is a teacher, freelance lecturer, author, poet, educational consultant and visiting professor of education. For fourteen years he taught in a range of schools, then acted as General Adviser for Language Development in Rotherham before moving on to North Yorkshire, where he spent ten years as a school inspector - time that has provided much source material for his books. He has four grown up children and four grandchildren and lives near Doncaster. Visit Gervase’s website, www.gervase-phinn.com.
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Wimborne Literary Festival 2023
Sunday 14th May 11:00am - 3:00pm
Allendale House, Hanham Road, Wimborne, BH21 1AS
Wessex Guild of Bookbinders
This year we will be having an exhibition of bindings, demonstrations and the ever popular, ask an “expert” and, also by popular demand, “The Make a Scruffy!”
The Scruffy sessions will begin on the hour and half past the hour from 11.00 until 15.00. Suitable for all abilities, but there will be knives and needles in use. Come and have a go at bookbinding and take home a Scruffy book, what could be more fun?
Sunday 14th May 11:00am
Tickets £8
Wimborne Community Centre, 41-44 King St, Wimborne BH21 1EA
ROLLS ROYCE and the SILVER LADY A talk by Kevin Patience
The amazing true story behind how Rolls Royce adopted the Silver Lady or Spirit of Ecstasy mascot for its motor car radiator emblem in 1911. A tragic love story between Lord Montague of Beaulieu and Eleanor Thornton his secretary who lost her life when the S.S. Persia was torpedoed in 1915: and had been the model for the mascot designed by Charles Sykes.
A Power Point presentation by the author and historian, Kevin Patience, whose own experience and research of vintage Rolls Royce motorcars developed this fascinating insight into a little known aspect of the marques history.
Admission Free
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Sunday 14th May 2:00pm
Wimborne Community Centre, 41-44 King St, Wimborne BH21 1EA
Beastly A New History of Animals and Us Keggie Carew
The Costa-winning author of Dadland invites us to reconnect with our wild world and see how we can still change our impact on the environment
Tickets £8
In a Polish forest a young woman befriends a boar. An Englishman sets up home with two beavers in Saskatchewan. A zoologist watches a fish make a conscious decision. Darwin finds the evidence for evolution in the backyards of pigeon fanciers. The entire population of Croatia anxiously awaits the arrival of a single stork. Animals have shaped our lives, our land, our civilisation, and they will shape our future. Yet as our impact on the world and the animals we share it with increases, there has never been a greater urgency to understand this foundational relationship.
Beastly is the 40,000-year story of animals and humans as it has never been captured before, seen eye-to-eye and claw-to-hand through those humans who have stepped into the myriad worlds of our animal relatives. Our relationship with animals has always been paradoxical, but the greatest paradox may yet be this: diversity of life can heal ecosystems. Animals - if given the chance - could save us.
“A brilliant and insightful selection of revealing stories about our complicated relationship with other animals, told with Carew’s uniquely smart and stylish verve.
A hugely enjoyable, thought-provoking book”- GAIA VINCE
About the Author
Keggie Carew lives with her husband Jonathan in Wiltshire where they have a small nature reserve. Before writing, her career was in contemporary art. Keggie is the author of Dadland, which won the 2016 COSTA biography award, and Quicksand Tales.
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Sunday 14th May 4:00pm
Wimborne Community Centre, 41-44 King St, Wimborne BH21 1EA
Alfred’s Dynasty
How an Anglo Saxon King and his family defeated the Vikings and created England
W.B.Bartlet
In 878, Alfred king of Wessex was on the verge of oblivion. Trapped on a small island in the Somerset levels, it seemed as if he and his kingdom were about to be destroyed. Yet within months he had defeated the Viking invaders and started to reverse the tide of conquest.
Tickets £8
While Alfred was driven by the prospect of a land that did not yet exist called England, he did not fully create it. Two of his children, Edward – king of Wessex after him – and his remarkable daughter Aethelflaed, the lady of the Mercians expanded his kingdom into Mercia in the Midlands. His grandson Aethelstan confirmed the conquest of the north at one of the great battles of the so-called Dark Ages of Brunanburh. The triumph of Alfred’s dynasty was cemented by the short but magnificent reign of Edgar ‘the Peacable’, a man who could claim to be not just king of England but emperor of the whole of Britain.
The ultimate collapse of Anglo-Saxon England first of all in the face of the campaigns of Cnut of Denmark in 1015/6, and later the Norman Conquest of 1066, have unjustly obscured their achievements. This book tells their story and reasserts their right to be regarded as one of the greatest royal dynasties that England or Britain have ever seen.
About the Author
W. B. Bartlett has worked across the globe in almost twenty countries and has spent time in over fifty. He is the author of many history books for Amberley including King Cnut and The Viking Conquest of England 1016 and Vikings.
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Monday 15th May 2:00pm - 4:00pm Tickets £8
Allendale House, Hanham Rd, Wimborne, BH21 1AS,
Writing Workshop with Sarah Steele
Time to Write: Using the past, present and future as inspirations for our writing
Sarah has worked for many years as a creative writing tutor for the Open University and freelance. She is experienced at mentoring writers, giving readings and running workshops for all sorts of writers from complete beginners to published authors and poets, she started and leads Wimborne writing group. Using the pen name, Sarah Barr, her poems and short stories have won prizes and been widely published. Her poetry collection January was published in 2020. Visit: http://sarah-barr or @sarahsteele
Tuesday 16th May 11:00am
BOOKING ESSENTIAL Tickets £8
Meet in front of Allendale House, Hanham Rd, Wimborne, BH21 1AS
WIMBORNE GUIDED WALK with Malcolm Angel
Join me for a guided walk around the ancient streets of beautiful Wimborne Minster – a once Royal Peculiar town; burial place of kings and queens and home to more saints than you can shake a stick at. Myths and legends abound here and history simply drips from every brick and stone.
Duration approx. 90mins.
Please wear sensible shoes as we may be crossing grass.
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Tuesday 16th May 3:00pm
Allendale House, Hanham Rd, Wimborne, BH21 1AS,
Seining Along Chesil
Sarah Acton
Join writer Sarah Acton at a live in-conversation about the traditions of Dorset seining communities along Chesil beach, remembering working life on the Fleet lagoon – the bank of pebbles and its people. With readings from Sarah’s new book to which many seiners and their families also contributed, plus photos and Q&A.
About the Author
Sarah Acton is a poet, oral history, and community theatre writer. Sarah writes with a focus on connection to nature, seasons, and place.
Tickets £8
The living history in this book is alive, just out of reach as the voices linger, reaching us on underwater sea-bright paths. This book of recordings, voices and remembering tells the collective story of seine-net fishing off the Dorset coast, a culture and community that thrived for hundreds of years as the seasonal runs of mackerel swam along Chesil Beach between May and October. This is fishing the traditional way, seine nets thrown in shallow water from open wooden boats run by tightly-knit crews. Although fish and seining have been in decline over the last fifty years, Seining Along Chesil gives us a vivid glimpse of how lerrets, bumper catches and the camaraderie of intergenerational crews made life rich, busy and exciting. It is also the story of how villages and communities were not only bound in communal, seasonal activity, but formed their own language and identity through their relationship to the fish and the sea. These stories pass on a living tradition through time – of fishermen and families in pursuit of adventure, pitted against the elements, money and food, completely connected to their place and people through working, loving and understanding the sea.
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Wednesday 17th May 6:30pm for 7:00pm
Meet inside the porch, Wimborne Minster Church
More Tales from the Minster…
MINSTER TALES
A Fundraising Evening for the Minster Church
Tickets £10
There are limited places for this popular annual event. So, hurry and secure your ticket for a historical evening of enthralling tales. Accompanied children under 16 will be free. Ample car parking nearby after 6:00pm
The audience will be entertained by fascinating tales revealing stories not generally known!
Ticket price includes refreshments.
Thursday 18th May 2:00pm
Allendale House, Hanham Rd, Wimborne, BH21 1AS
Truthophobia
How the Boomers Broke Journalism
The Story of the Death of Impartial and Objective News Graham Majin
Why is journalism broken and who broke it?
The Baby Boomers changed everything: music, fashion, hairstyles - even journalism and the way we understand truth.
Tickets £8
This remarkable book tells the story of journalism’s transformation from the high-minded impartiality of Victorian Liberal Journalism, to the ethicallycommitted, tribal journalism of the Boomers.
Former BBC news producer Graham Majin’s freewheeling, non-conformist approach presses the intellectual reset button and asks whether we have inherited the wrong type of journalism for the tough challenges of the 2020s. It is a must-read book for anyone who wants to understand how we got here and what happens next.
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Friday 19th May 2:00pm
Allendale House, Hanham Rd, Wimborne, BH21 1AS
The Tidal Year - Freya Bromley
Take a plunge into this tender exploration of grief, rage, love, loss and sisterhood in the modern age.
Freya is still searching. For four years, she’s been looking for a way to fill the empty space her brother’s death left behind. Ready for another distraction, Freya decides to swim every tidal pool in Britain in a year with her friend Miri. The adventure takes them from a pool hidden in the cliffs of fishing-village Polperro to the quarry lagoon of Abereiddi via Trinkie Wick where locals meet each year to give the pool wall a fresh lick of paint.
As Freya travels further from London, she finds herself closer to memories of her brother. With every swim, and every stranger they meet in the water, the challenge becomes more than just a way to explore the coast, but a journey of self-discovery.
The Tidal Year is a true story about the healing power of wild swimming and the space it creates for reflection, rewilding, and hope. An exploration of grief in the modern age, it’s also a tale of loss, love, female rage and sisterhood.
Tickets £8
“Funny, sad and honest, but ultimately also hopeful, The Tidal Year is a wonderful and welcome addition to the growing canon of books exploring the restorative power of wild swimming.”
“Reads like a lusciously languid dream sequence… It’s not just about how water can redeem us but how words can too. A powerful debut.”
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- SOPHIE PIERCE
- CHRISTOPHER BEANLAND
“Funny and moving, brimming with bracingly refreshing uncertainty and a salty refusal of resolution, it is a book to float away in.”
- POLLY ATKIN
‘A heart-rending depiction of a young woman growing through grief and the healing, restorative power of nature.’
- NICK BRADLEY
Friday 19th May 4:00pm
Allendale House, Hanham Rd, Wimborne, BH21 1AS
Real Dorset Jon Woolcott
Real Dorset is a discursive, humorous, idiosyncratic and personal look at Dorset. The county is famous for spectacular coastlines, historic towns, its eco-foodie reputation, for Hardy and Fowles. Yet there’s much more behind the touristfriendly façade – subversion, rebellion and revolt, wealth and poverty, ghost stories, rich folklore, film and music.
Criss-crossing the county, Woolcott makes connections, uncovers the hidden and the forgotten. A huge and lost Neolithic earthwork contrasts with Victorian pleasure gardens and nightlife in Bournemouth. The legacy of the black GIs, the Cerne Abbas Giant, the model village of Milton Abbas, vie for attention with the importance of Dorset for writers and artists including William Barnes, T.E. Lawrence and Sylvia Townsend Warner, John Piper and Elisabeth Frink.
Tombstoning at Durdle Door, exploring the beguiling strangeness of Portland, climbing the famous Gold Hill, delving into holloways: Real Dorset covers all aspects of life past and present in this richly historical and much-visited edge of south west England. Locals and tourists alike may think they know Dorset: Jon Woolcott’s book proves that there is plenty more to learn about it.
Tickets £8
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Wimborne Literary Festival 2023
Saturday 20th May 11:00am
Wimborne Community Centre, 41-44 King St, Wimborne BH21 1EA
Nature’s Wonders Moments that mark the seasons Jane V Adams
Tickets £8
Britain’s nature year, from the first flower to the last leaf. With a mix of evocative writing, beautiful photographs and facts that are too good to keep to yourself, this book explores 50 magical moments that define our seasons. It’s an inspiring guide to connecting with the nature around you and seeing how it changes through the year. There’s butterflies, blossom and bluebells. There’s foxgloves, flying ants and fungi. There’s snow, seedheads and shadows. You’ll discover how many miles an hour spring moves, how spiders can heal us and how woodpeckers help to protect sensitive technology.
The inspiration behind the book is partly the National Trust’s hugely successful ‘Blossom Watch’ campaign, launched in March 2021. Each year we are encouraged to notice and share when we first see tree blossom, emulating the Japanese tradition of ‘Hanami’.
About the Author
Jane V. Adams is fascinated by wildlife and wild places. She wrote an award-winning online wildlife diary from 2007 to 2015, and since then has been featured in BBC Countryfile Magazine and BBC Wildlife Magazine. In 2016, her work was included in An anthology for the changing seasons, edited by Melissa Harrison. In 2022 she was shortlisted for Bradt Guides New Travel Writer of the Year. A passionate amateur naturalist, she is particularly focused on bumblebees and solitary bees, badgers and old trees.
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Saturday 20th May 2:00pm
Wimborne Community Centre, 41-44 King St, Wimborne BH21 1EA
Garden Birds and Insects Dominic Couzens
Tickets £8
One of the world’s leading bird experts Dominic Couzens is an award-winning nature writer with 40 books and hundreds of published articles to his name. His best-known books include The Secret Lives of Garden Birds, Britain’s Mammals (Wild Guides), songs of Love and War and Save Our Species, while he contributes to magazines and newspapers, such as Bird Watching, Nature’s Home, BBC Countryfile and The Guardian.
About the Author
Dominic believes passionately in communicating greater understanding about the natural world and feels very fortunate that his writing career enables him to share an understanding of birds and other wildlife.
He is also passionate about communicating about threats to nature, and about what we can do to help our planet.
You can read Dominic’s articles every month in Bird Watching Magazine.
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Saturday 20th May 4:00pm
Wimborne Community Centre, 41-44 King St, Wimborne BH21 1EA
The Observant Walker Wild Food, Nature and Hidden Treasures on the Pathways of Britain John Wright
How to make a walk ten times more interesting than is usual
Tickets £8
When we go for a walk, whether in the countryside or city, we pass through landscapes full of natural beauty and curiosities both visible and invisible - but though we might admire the view, or wonder idly about the name of a flower, we rarely have the knowledge to fully engage with what we see. When we do, our sense of place is expanded, our understanding deepened and we can discover richness in even the most everyday stroll.
John Wright has been leading forays around Britain for decades. As an expert forager, he shows people how to identify the edible species that abound - but he also reveals the natural history, stories and science behind our surroundings. Here, he takes us with him on eight walks: from verdant forests to wild coastlines, via city pavements, fields and rolling hills, he illuminates what can be found on a walk across any British terrain, and how you might observe and truly understand them, for yourself.
Warm, wise and endlessly informative, with helpful illustrations and suggested routes, this book will help you to see the world around you with new eyes: no walk will be the same again.
‘Blissfully funny, staggeringly informative, a joyful companion’ - CAROLINE QUENTIN
About the Author
John Wright is a naturalist and one of Great Britain’s leading experts on fungi. His most recent books include A Spotter’s Guide to the Countryside and The Forager’s Calendar. He lives in Dorset, where he regularly leads forays into nature and goes on long walks across all terrains.
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Thursday 25th May 7:00pm
The Allendale, Hanham Rd, Wimborne, BH21 1AS
SAS Great Escapes 2
Tickets £8
Six Untold Epic Escapes Made by World War Two Heroes Damien Lewis
EXCLUSIVE! Launch event on the 25th May
Against insurmountable odds, SAS men crossed deserts, evaded revenge and escaped through enemy lands.
Lieutenant Bill Fraser and the six SAS men he led were listed as Missing in Action (MIA) after their failure to return from a raid. Nine weeks later they emerged from a deathdefying sojourn across the Sahara Desert, after evading and confounding the enemy.
The eccentric and gifted commander Lord George Jellicoe and the group of five SAS men he led carried out a raid on the German aerodrome at Heraklion, destroying an incredible seventy warplanes. Only one manJellicoe, managed to get away.
Some two-hundred SAS raiders were dispatched across the Sahara to raid the enemy port fortress of Benghazi, in what they feared would be a ‘suicide mission’. It very nearly turned out that way, and the survivors faced a 1000mile journey back across the desert to safety.
SAS founder David Stirling attempted what was one of the most ambitious missions of the war - to drive across war-torn North Africa and link up with advancing American forces.
The legendary Captain John Tonkin, who had soldiered with the SAS since its earliest times, led an escape where only six of the 40-strong SAS party he led managed to escape, after German forces surrounded their forest base.
SAS man Herbert Castelow was one of the few to escape - perched on the local village mayor’s bike when, in the aftermath of D-Day, a dozen parachutists dropped into France, charged to sabotage a German airbase. But the drop-zone was staked out by the enemy and a savage firefight ensued.
About the Author
Hot-press!
Guy Ritchie’s new movie, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, is based on Damien Lewis’ best-selling book.
Damien Lewis is a number one bestselling author whose books have been translated into over forty languages worldwide. For decades he worked as a war and conflict reporter for the world’s major broadcasters, reporting from across Africa, South America, the Middle and Far East and winning numerous awards.
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