Bridport Literary Festival | Tuesday 10 November

Julie Montagu, Countess of Sandwich, invites you inside Mapperton, one of England’s finest manor houses. Julie offers a rare insight into the 900-yearold Dorset estate she and her husband, Luke, have been restoring, rewilding and breathing new life into since 2016.

Drawing on her book Secrets of an English Country House: A Year at Mapperton, she will share the hidden stories behind its historic doors. A captivating conversation celebrating the enduring spirit of a much loved country house.

Coffee and cake included. This event includes the opportunity to tour the house (at either 10.15am or 12.15pm).

The late David Hockney remains one of Britain’s most recognisable artists. His career spanned decades of constant reinvention, taking him from post-war Bradford and Swinging London to Los Angeles, Paris, Normandy and the Yorkshire Wolds.

In David Hockney: An Artist for Life, writer and broadcaster Paul Morley explores how these locations shaped the painter’s vision. Morley traces Hockney’s key friendships and artistic influences showing how he repeatedly renewed his creative practice while remaining unmistakably himself.

The result is a celebration of a restless, resourceful and deeply optimistic figure whose life and work mirrored broader changes in society and altered how a nation

sees itself and understands the world.

Renowned clinical psychologist and author of the Vienna Blood novels Frank Tallis addresses the art of growing old.

Chaired by philosopher Julian Baggini, this event explores how to maintain psychological health and purpose despite the daunting realities of later life, loss, physical decline and accumulated regrets.

Making use of decades of psychotherapeutic practice as well as insights from Stoicism, Jungian psychology and neuroscience, Tallis argues that living well requires reconciling all aspects of our past and present self. He’ll be talking about how we can embrace our mortality, make peace with time’s inevitable passage and cultivate true happiness in our later years. “Transformative and deeply insightfulˮ, Guardian

1.30pm at The Bull Hotel, 34 East Street, Bridport DT6 3LF

Tickets: £12.00 from Bridport Tourist Information Centre 01308 424901 – THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT

Research shows that the average person is keeping thirteen secrets at any one time, five of which they’ve never shared with a soul.

The Book of Revelations, by the bestselling social historian Juliet Nicolson, is specifically about the secrets women hold. Told through a blend of first person stories, family history and memoir, Nicolson’s compelling account moves from the “silent generationˮ of the 1950s to the influencers of the 2020s.

What does the changing nature of the secrets women keep tell us about our world and what makes any of us hide or reveal ourselves? In conversation with the novelist and television producer Daisy Goodwin. “Utterly engrossing and timelyˮ, India Knight.

Event 32 | Sarah Churchill & Jon Lee Anderson | America’s Stories

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

Tickets: £14.00 from Bridport Tourist Information Centre 01308 424901 or online Electric Palace

The United States is defined by the tales it tells about itself, a land of freedom, opportunity, self-sufficiency and equality. But, as America marks its 250th year, these foundational myths have never looked more fragile.

Bridport-based New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson and Sarah Churchwell, professor of American Literature and Public Understanding at the University of London, discuss how these narratives have found expression through history, and whether they remain fit for purpose.

Jon Lee Anderson’s latest publication is To Lose a War. Sarah Churchwell’s books include studies of Gone with the Wind and The Great Gatsby.