WELCOME Book Festival Director’s

Our guest authors are often surprised by the beauty of our town, the calibre of their fellow speakers and the world-class quality of our music and operas. Perhaps it’s time to share our more than four-decade long secret, stand on the twin domes of our Matcham Opera House and shout ‘you’ll find the finest cultural offerings here this July!’

Ihave always wanted to welcome a significant State-of-the Nation playwright to the BIF stage and when I found myself reading Sir David Hare’s wonderful collection of essays, I dared to dream. Equally, I have always wanted to programme a game-changing contemporary artist. And when I stood on the Peterloo Memorial in Manchester relatively recently, I dared to dream that we might, just might, host its designer, Turner Prize-winning artist, Jeremy Deller.

Catherine Ashton, former diplomat and the EU’s first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, and Lord Finkelstein OBE columnist, political commentator and author of a heartbreaking family memoir of Jewish experience across the 20th Century.

Extraordinary families abound this year. Two welcome returners to the Buxton stage are social commentator Polly Toynbee, with a memoir of her extraordinary family that looks at class and meritocracy. Colin Grant, last with us at the height of the Windrush Scandal, shares the stories of his aspirational Jamaican family in Britain and looks at the legacy of his Uncle Castus’s favourite refrain ‘I’m black so you don’t have to be.’ winning journalism has been fundamental to our knowledge of social issues across the US and UK. Alistair Campbell’s new book

One of the linking themes across the BIF books programme this year is lived experience. Jeremy Bowen has been the BBC’s much admired Middle East correspondent since 2005 (and based in Jerusalem for a decade before that). Edward Stourton enjoys similar longevity with the BBC and his is an equally familiar and respected voice. Gary Younge joined The Guardian in 1993, finally becoming editor-at-large. His awardwinning journalism has been fundamental to our knowledge of social issues across the US and UK. Alistair Campbell’s new book is entitled But What Can I Do? Why Politics Has Gone So Wrong, and How You Can Help Fix It. is a book that personifies the BIF tagline ‘opinion forming’.

Two sitting MPs will be with us to discuss two very different books, Conservative MP Jesse Norman will talk about Winding Stair, his novel of the Elizabethan and Jacobean court. Labour MP Nick Thomas-Symonds will discuss his acclaimed biography of Harold Wilson. The House of Lords is represented by Baroness the world to become one of the UK’s foremost Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm has become the touchstone for the re-wilding movement and an inspiration

Joining our roll of amazing women is Sara Wheeler, travelling via Antarctica and across the world to become one of the UK’s foremost explorers. Isabella Tree’s seminal book Wilding: The Return of Nature to has become the touchstone for the re-wilding movement and an inspiration to many nature conservation projects small and large. Dame Kate Bingham was Chair of the Government’s Vaccine Taskforce during the COVID pandemic. Her leadership was praised by scientists and the international media for setting up the trials, manufacturing and distribution of vaccines. A debt to which the Arts in the UK, and BIF especially, is very

UK, and BIF especially, is very grateful.

Victoria Dawson Book Festival Director