3 minute read
Literature
Rory MacLean
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These last years have brought dramatic changes to our lives: Brexit, Covid lockdowns, soaring energy costs, climate change and the largest, most brutal war in Europe since 1945. While our horizons have drawn in, travel writers have continued to reach out, rediscovering and reinterpreting the world for a new age. On the 14th-16th April 2023 weekend, ten of the UK’s finest travel writers will come to Sherborne to transport readers, listeners, armchair and intrepid travellers alike towards the four corners of the globe.
The Sherborne Travel Writing Festival will be the first travel literature festival to be held in the UK in recent years. At its heart is the idea – and the timely theme – of reaching for the horizon. To propel the journey, a stellar lineup of top writers will take to the stage at the Powell Theatre. The acclaimed master wordsmith Colin Thubron CBE will recount his thousand-mile Amur river odyssey, undertaken by horse, train and boat at the tender age of 81. The Amur – the tenth longest river in the world – is the most densely fortified border on earth and almost unknown to us. Next, the effusive and entertaining John Gimlette will entice us away from the Russia-Chinese border to the fantastical landscapes, beguiling creatures and isolated tribes of tropical Madagascar, an island so vast that if it was stretched out across Europe would reach from London to Algiers. Anthony Sattin’s inspired Nomads, named a book of the year by both The Times and the The Spectator, delves into our deepest mythology, unrecorded antiquity and natural environment to tell the untold
Image: John Gimlette
history of the wanderers who shaped our world. In her new book Glowing Still, the bold and audacious Sara Wheeler traces the female travel writer’s journey, embracing with a full heart the words of her heroine war correspondent Martha Gellhorn: ‘I do not wish to be good. I wish to be hell on wheels, or dead.’
Add into the mix the teen idol historian and Arabist Justin Marozzi whose Islamic Empires travels across the centuries to discover the 15 great cities that define a civilisation. In the Summer Isles, the awardwinning Philip Marsden will cast off from shore to sail us up the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland in a wooden sloop. And forget not Sherborne’s own three intrepid travel authors including explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell CBE and the adventurer Sophy Roberts who promises to tell all about her incredible writing life, from heeding Doctor Dolittle’s advice to The Lost Pianos of Siberia and hearing Bach on the Mongolian steppe.
Finally, as horizons are not only external, the BBC correspondent Fergal Keane will talk about his thirty years covering conflict across the world from Rwanda, Sudan, South Africa and Somalia to Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine. His powerful and intensely personal book, The Madness looks at his irresistible compulsion to be where the night is darkest. Then on a journey into a different unknown, and towards the artist’s inner creative self, the Berlin-based Californian poet Demi Anter and I - the other local travel writer – will unveil the secrets of David Bowie’s prolific Berlin sojourn, focusing both on the reinvented city and on his unassailable devotion to continual imaginative growth: never be complacent, never play to the gallery, always reach for the furthest horizon.
Special events and surprises will further enhance the weekend including Tea with the Authors, catered by Comins Fine Tea Importers of Sturminster Newton and Bath. Also involved are Kashfi’s Children which gifts bilingual books to educate young people, aiming to foster tolerance, positive change and hope.
I am thrilled and honoured to have been asked to curate the festival which is held under the auspices of the Sherborne Literary Society. In the coming weeks early bird and all-inclusive weekend tickets will be made available through the Society and the soon-to-be launched festival website. Pre-sales will prioritise Sherborne and area residents as some events are expected to sell out before word is spread beyond Dorset and Somerset.
Please mark the dates in your diary, watch for early announcements and make plans to join us for an unforgettable April weekend of spellbinding stories and bold adventures at the Sherborne Travel Writing Festival; reaching for new horizons, helping to reopen the world and reminding us of the richness of travel during this one and only life.
sherborneliterarysociety.com rorymaclean.com
___________________________________________ Friday 14th - Sunday 16th April Sherborne Travel Writing Festival Powell Theatre, Abbey Road
