Bridport Literary Festival: Day 2
Event Details
In 2024 The Bridport Literary Festival celebrates its 20th year. The Festival was spawned from the Bridport Prize, established in 1973 and one of the first significant international literary awards for short story writing and poetry. In 2004 a group of literary loving locals – including the then director of the Bridport Arts Centre, the director of the Eype Centre for the Arts and the director of BridLit – got together to ‘brew’ the idea of a celebration of literary voices. Under Tanya Bruce-Lockhart’s direction, the Festival has grown and expanded over the years and events take place at venues throughout the town and West Bay, attracting audiences from across the County and beyond.
The Festival became a registered charity in 2011 and is dependent upon the generosity of Sponsors and Donors and the Friends of the Bridport Literary Festival to sustain a high standard of programme of events while trying to keep ticket prices affordable. Once a prosperous centre of the rope and net making industry, Bridport has now reinvented itself to become a centre of excellence for Culture and the Arts.
This year Dorset County of Culture’s pilot initiative has designated Bridport as Bridport Town of Culture with a programme of events running from July to December. BridLit is very much a part of this initiative and welcomes to the festival all those who read books and love literature.
Day Two: Monday 04 November
Event 6 | Ian Acheson | Screwed
10.30am at The Bull Hotel, 34 East Street, Bridport DT6 3LF
Tickets: £12.00 from Bridport Tourist Information Centre 01308 424901 or online Ian Acheson
Ian Acheson has served for twenty years as both an officer and Prison Governor. In 2015, the then Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove, asked him to lead an independent review of prison extremism which laid bare a corporate culture of ineptitude, secrecy and arrogance that threatened national security. Nothing has changedScrewed is the inside story of the collapse of His Majesty’s Prison Service told from the front line. This hard hitting account looks at the politics and the operational decisions that have driven our prison to rock bottom, where extreme violence, indolence and victimisation are normalised. Acheson also outlines how a new corporate culture and mission can achieve a much needed revolution in the way the service is run.
Event 7 | Roland Philipps | Broken Angel
12noon at The Bull Hotel, 34 East Street, Bridport DT6 3LF
Tickets: £12.00 from Bridport Tourist Information Centre 01308 424901 or online Roland Philips
Pioneering, human rights campaigner, patriot, traitor, romantic and martyr, Roger Casement was one of the twentieth century’s most complex figures. In 1904, he became internationally celebrated for unearthing the violence of the Belgian Congo and soon after won even greater renown for his humanitarian work in the Amazon jungle.
However, his internal fault lines ran deep. Casement was vulnerable to his own unexamined emotions. Roland Philipps reveals all.
Event 8 | Andrew O’Hagan | Caledonian Road
2pm at The Bull Hotel, 34 East Street, Bridport DT6 3LF
Tickets: £12.00 THIS EVENT HAS SOLD OUT
Andrew O’Hagan is undoubtedly one of the most exciting and serious chroniclers of our times. Born in Glasgow he has been nominated for the Booker Prize three times and his novels have won him worldwide critical acclaim. Caledonian Road is a sweeping Dickensian portrait of modern Britain in which nobody is let off the hook. Over the course of an incendiary year, a web of crimes, secrets and scandals reveals that privilege is not exempt from shattering exposure. This state of the nation novel exposes an unseemly clash of classes.
Event 9 | Jo Willett | Sarah Siddons
4pm at The Bull Hotel, 34 East Street, Bridport DT6 3LF
Tickets: £12.00 from Bridport Tourist Information Centre 01308 424901 or online Jo Willett
Sarah Siddons grew up as a member of a family troupe of travelling actors, always poor and often hungry. She rose from abject poverty to superstardom before she was 30 and became one of the country’s most celebrated and revered tragic actresses, electrifying audiences with her performances.
Jo Willett has written this first biography of the legendary actress who was not only adored and celebrated by everyone but who also had to manage her reputation in an eighteenth-century world of gossip and satire.
Event 10 | Derek Gow | Hunt For The Shadow Wolf
6pm at The Bull Hotel, 34 East Street, Bridport DT6 3LF
Tickets: £12.00 from Bridport Tourist Information Centre 01308 424901 or online Derek Gow
With bitingly funny and tender stories, Hunt for the Shadow Wolf is his quest to reveal the true nature of this magnificent creature and, as a maverick re-wilder, his hope that we will see the return of the wolf in Britain.
Bridport 24 Town of Culture | Angie Porter | She Speaks – Open Mic Poetry Event
7pm at Waterstones, 21 East Street, Bridport DT6 3JX
FREE event
To celebrate events throughout the town, BridLit invites you to join this monthly Waterstones event taking place during Festival week. She Speaks in Bridport is Angie’s Bridport Women’s Only Poetry Group, which invites women of all ages to read a poem or piece of writing of their own, or to just join in and listen.
More information about the festival can be found at http://www.bridlit.com
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