26 | November 21, 2013 | cambridge-news.co.uk | Cambridge News
The critical list: more hot tickets Books
Winter Word You can’t beat a good book, with a fire (or the heating whacked up) and a cup of tea, now winter has hit. Cambridge Wordfest has gone a step further by adding real live
Jonathan Coe
Jessica Fellowes
authors and talkers to the wintry, literary mix. With the News as media partner (oh, we’re a right cultural bunch), for one day only the city will be inundated by a
collection of brilliant writers. The day in question is Sunday, December 1, and these, in ELLA WALKER’s book, are the big hitters you really shouldn’t miss.
Behind the scenes at
Downton Abbey
Expo 58
The ADC, 1pm, £9-£11 “Expo 58 is primarily a comic novel, but as usual there is also a melancholy dimension to the book,” Jonathan Coe – author of The Rotters’ Club and What A Carve Up! – explains on his website. He will be discussing this, his latest novel, which is set around the Brussels World’s Fair of 1958, and is sprinkled with his trademark concerns: political tension, pop culture and satire, of course. Former Trinity College student Coe was attracted to the fair because it “represented a moment of incredible optimism”, in a world where technology rather than war was hopefully set to dictate the future. It tells the tale of Thomas Foley, a rather dashing civil servant who inadvertently gets tangled in a web of espionage, and possibly a bit of romance. “In the end I have written a rather elegaic story,” Coe adds. “Shot through with the sense of regret that seems inevitable when we look back on the hopes and dreams of an earlier era – whether these dreams involve the peaceful co-existence of nations, or the possibility of love between individuals.” Go and be inspired.
Jessica Fellowes and Liz Trubridge The ADC, 4pm, £9-£11
Barry Norman
See You in the Morning
The ADC, 11.30am, £9-£11 Prepare to get a bit weepy. Broadcaster, film critic and national TV treasure Barry Norman has published his memoirs, See You in the Morning, and they are devastating in the loveliest of ways. Based on his wife and their 53 years of marriage – from the tricky first two years to the pretty wonderful decades that followed and her death in 2011 – it’s said to be witty, heartfelt and painfully moving. In a recent interview
with the Daily Mail, Norman said of his wife’s death: “In fiction, people give anguished cries of ‘No! Oh, no! Oh, please God, no!’ I never used to believe it before but now I know it’s true. That’s exactly what people do. “And it doesn’t get any better. I was hoping it might, but it doesn’t. There haven’t been any stages of grief. It’s been pretty much the same from day one.” Hear him talk about their life, the funny, difficult and ridiculous moments, and what it’s like to live with the loss of it. Tissues at the ready.
S
TILL preoccupied by the goings on upstairs and down at Downton, even though Season 4 has just ended? Well, programme creator Julian Fellows is sadly not free, but his niece Jessica, journalist and author of The World of Downton Abbey and The Chronicles of Downton Abbey, is. As is Liz Trubridge, the show’s executive producer. The pair will be discussing the ins and outs of staging such a programme and what it’s like tackling the (very many) critics, particularly during this last season which, having steadily moseyed along quite dully, suddenly exploded with a harrowing rape
storyline prompting Ofcom to get involved. Then there are the costumes, the house, the history and how much longer it will all rumble on for. Basically, you’ll get to dip into the juicy backstory of the show and behind-the-scenes shenanigans. And if they don’t talk about the simply brilliant Maggie Smith for a good portion of the session – the main, legitimate reason for tuning in every Sunday night; her one-liners are just wondrous – we’ll be gutted. Geoff Colman, broadcaster, writer and head of acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama will be chairing the chat.
Cambridge News | cambridge-news.co.uk | November 21, 2013 | 27
Visit our books section at cambridge-news.co.uk/whatson
fest
More bookings . . . Sarah Dunant: Blood and Beauty
Lionel Shriver Big Brother
The ADC, 5.30pm, £9-£11 Whether you braved the chilling film portrayal of Lionel Shriver’s breakout novel, We Need To Talk About Kevin, featuring the impossibly intimidating Tilda Swinton or not, you’ll know that haunting book jacket anywhere. Shriver, a journalist and novelist who won the Orange Prize with said breakout novel, in which a mother tries to come to terms with her son who has committed a high school massacre, is returning to Wordfest to talk about her latest novel, Big Brother. Cut with wit and Shriver’s sharp, punchy voice, the book tackles the escalating health epidemic making huge portions of Western Society sluggish, ill and unsightly: obesity. (Maybe skip that burger on the way over to the ADC . . .) Drawing on her own complicated experiences of eating (or not eating, depending on your view of her tactics for maintaining a ‘happy’ weight), and her brother, who died from health issues related to his 30st frame, Big Brother is, put simply, all about fat: the emotional and physical wobbles it entails. Find out more with Wordfest festival director Cathy Moore, who will be on hand to ask the questions, but you should get to chip in with your own, too.
For the full line-up and ticket details visit www. cambridgewordfest.co.uk. And find out more on Twitter @cam_wordfest.
David Walsh Seven Deadly Sins
The Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College, 8.30pm, £8-£10 When it was revealed just how much of a drug cheat Lance Armstrong really was, the cracks and fissures made by his admission split and fractured the sports world. One man was quite prepared for it, having spent 13 years tracking and tracing doping during Armstrong’s career. That man is Sunday Times chief sportswriter
David Walsh. He’s visiting Cambridge to give a talk on his bestselling book Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong which is being made into a film directed by Stephen Frears, starring Chris O’Dowd as Walsh and Ben Foster as Armstrong. The personal account of what it was like trying to uncover the truth, to be vindicated when Armstrong admitted what he’d done, resulting in a shattered legacy and the cycling community left floundering without its (false) hero, is utterly gripping. Walsh is set to be a fascinating guy to quiz.
The Winstanley Lecture Theatre, Trinity College, 11.30am, £8-£10 Critic, broadcaster and one of the founders of the Orange Prize, novelist Sarah Dunant will be discussing her latest book, Blood and Beauty. Set during the Italian Renaissance, it focuses on the infamous Borgia dynasty, a family wreathed in lusty and criminal activities. The talk will be chaired by Mary Laven, senior lecturer in early modern history at Cambridge University.
Sarah Dunant
Douglas Hurd and Edward Young: Disraeli
The ADC, 10am, £9-£11 The ADC, 2.30pm, £10-£12.50 From Jewish school dropout and trashy novelist to devoted Arguably the world’s greatest servant and the Queen’s living explorer, Fiennes began favourite prime minister, his career on the Greenland Icecap 40 years ago; now he’s Disraeli was considered one of the most gifted MPs of the world’s most experienced the 19th century, and his polar adventurer (complete reputation hasn’t with frostbitten fingers), All quite waned has run a marathon tickets available yet. Former on every continent from the ADC box diplomat and (as you do), office. Call (01223) home secretary conquered Everest, 300085 or visit www. Douglas Hurd and is currently adctheatre.com. will be chatting masterminding the to Edward Young, first ever winter trek Yale University across Antarctica. He’ll be scholar and speechwriter for chatting about his adventures David Cameron, about the and what he’s planning next. paradox that was Disraeli.
Ranulph Fiennes: Cold
Margaret Drabble
The ADC, 7pm, £10-£12 Dame Margaret Drabble is pretty much a British institution, particularly in terms of feminist writers. Fifty years on from the publication of her first book, Drabble will be talking about her latest novel, The Pure Gold Baby. Expect notes on her life, career, dreams and ideals. The talk will be chaired by Dame Gillian Beer, British literary critic, writer, academic and festival patron.
Damian Barr: Maggie and Me
The ADC, 8.30pm, £8-£10 Maggie and Me is journalist and playwright Damien Barr’s touching and darkly witty memoir about surviving and thriving in Thatcher’s Britain. He’ll be speaking to festival patron Rowan Pelling, about growing up gay in a straight world and coming out the other side, in spite of, and maybe because of, the Iron Lady.