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.