Bridport Literary Festival: Day 5

William Blake has inspired 200 years of art, poetry and protest. Weaving between the historical, cultural and personal, award-winning author Philip Hoare reveals a web of creative minds and artistic iconoclasts fired with the wild and revolutionary genius of Blake. Reaching out of his past and into our future, Blake draws together the natural world and metaphysical realms, merging the human and the animal and the spiritual, firing up 20th century artists, filmmakers, poets, writers and musicians with his radical promise of absolute freedom – Derek Jarman and Paul Nash to name but two. This stirring, deeply-felt book brings us back to Blake and shows that art still has the power to create positive change.

Drawing on unparalleled access to letters, notebooks, published works, and conversations from decades of friendship, Ian Collins tells the full story of Ronald Blythe. Intimate, meditative and often laced with a wry humour, Blythe’s writing invited readers to share his enchanting perspective on the world. Yet the ‘real’ Ronald Blythe left school at 14, and educated himself in libraries, churches and walks in the East Anglian landscape. He experienced early poverty, wartime trauma, and his sexuality was kept private except from those closest to him. Collins’ book is a sensitive, revelatory portrait which celebrates a fascinating, complex man and casts new light on one of our greatest writers.

Event 30 | Malik Al Nasir & Miranda Kaufmann | Searching for My Slave Roots & Heiresses

3.30pm at The Bridport Arts Centre, 9 South Street, Bridport DT6 3NR

Tickets: £14.00 from Bridport Tourist Information Centre 01308 424901 or online via the Bridport Arts Centre website Malik Al Nasir & Miranda Kaufmann

Paul Lashmar, himself a historian with a recently published book on slavery, chairs a discussion with a formidable panel of experts in their field. In Searching for my Slave Roots, Malik Al Nasir unravels the legacies of slavery, plantation economics and the wealth of a slaveholding dynasty that he himself descended from – both enslaved people and prominent slaveholders – and the nuanced ways that historic trauma plays down through generations. Miranda Kaufmann reveals the sugar plantations of the Caribbean generated vast wealth, not only for men, but women also. Heiresses exposes how, for almost two centuries, generations of women became enslavers and plantation owners in their own right and brought huge fortunes back to Britain.

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Event 31 | Robert Macfarlane | Is The River Alive

5.30pm at The Electric Palace, 35 South Street, Bridport DT6 3NY

Tickets: £16.00 THIS EVENT HAS SOLD OUT

Around the world, rivers are dying from pollution, drought and damming, but a powerful movement is underway to recognise the lives and rights of rivers. At the heart of this book is a single, transformative idea: that rivers are not mere matter for human use, but living beings who should be recognised as such in both imagination and law. On a global journey which crosses boundaries of time and space, from Ecuador, India and Quebec, to the chalk stream a mile from his house, Is A River Alive? is Macfarlane’s most personal and most political book to date. It teems with fascinating ideas, unforgettable characters and stories.

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Event 32 | Emma Simpson & Vassos Alexander | Breaking Waves & Swimmingly

7pm at The Bridport Arts Centre, 9 South Street, Bridport DT6 3NR

Tickets: £14.00 from Bridport Tourist Information Centre 01308 424901 or online via the Bridport Arts Centre website Emma Simpson & Vassos Alexander

In discovering the joy of wild swimming, both Emma Simpson and Vassos Alexander also discover the tremendous sense of community and inspirational stories at its heart. Breaking Waves is an uplifting memoir about healing wounds, reclaiming a voice and discovering sisterhood. In Swimmingly Vassos finds magic in every stroke, whilst at the same time discussing issues of water quality and the need to experience our bodies of water safely.

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Event 33 | The George Millar Literary Dinner |  Victoria Taylor

7pm at the Tithe Barn, Symondsbury,  Bridport DT6 6HG

Tickets: £90.00 THIS EVENT HAS SOLD OUT

We are delighted to welcome Victoria Taylor, historian and broadcaster, to talk about her fascinating new book Eagle Days: Life and Death for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, a revelatory study that reexamines the German air force’s role during the RAF’s ‘Finest Hour’. Drawing on extensive new research, including never-before-translated letters, diaries and combat reports, Taylor offers a powerful and deeply human portrait of the men who fought for Hitler’s Luftwaffe in the summer of 1940. Through their words and experiences, she transforms our understanding of the Battle of Britain, revealing the military, political and cultural forces that shaped both their courage and their collapse. Eagle Days is a striking and original account of the air war that changed the course of modern history