Poetry to pop at Warwick Words - The Stratford Observer

Poetry to pop at Warwick Words

Stratford Editorial 24th Sep, 2014 Updated: 28th Oct, 2016   0

POETRY to pop feature at Warwick Words Autumn Festival.

The celebration of the written word runs from October 1 to 5, and includes performances from some of the country’s leading writers, poets, and journalists.

Special guests include poet Wendy Cope reading a selection of her verse, while pop singer Tracey Thorn, best known as one half of Everything But The Girl, will be sharing her memoir Bedsit Queen which charts the highs and lows of a 30 year career in the music business.

Also on the bill, Hannah Ellis, Dylan Thomas’s grand-daughter and biographer, will be in conversation with Festival Director Neela Mann about Thomas’s lasting legacy.




Broadcaster Andy Kershaw will be recounting his adventures in a life spent on the front lines of rock and roll, and on the front lines of some of the world’s most extreme and dangerous countries.

History – national and local, fact and fiction – also features.


Suzannah Dunn will be discussing her new novel The May Bride, which reveals a previously unexplored perspective to Henry VIII’s third wife Jane Seymour; Alison Weir will be talking about her latest book The Marriage Game, centred on the relationship between the young Elizabeth I and Lord Robert Dudley; Jessie Childs, author of God’s Traitors-Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England, will be exploring the Catholic predicament in Elizabethan England; and Charles Spencer will be discussing his new historical work Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I.

Jo Baker will be sharing the story of life below stairs in her highly acclaimed and best-selling novel Longbourn, a re-imagining of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of the servants; TV historian Kate Williams will be talking about her novel The Storms of War, the story of a family as they are buffeted and changed by the First World War; and Ruth Rodgers will be giving an insight into her experience of working as a puppeteer on the National Theatre’s First World War drama War Horse, and recounting back stage stories from the hit West End show.

The Festival line-up also includes war historians Alan Reed and Roger Moorhouse; senior OED editor Fiona McPherson who will be exploring the linguistic legacy of the First World War; Philip Durkin who will be looking at the historical influences on English vocabulary; a poetry workshop with Derbyshire Poet Laureate Matt Black to celebrate National Poetry Day, and a Warwickshire Poetry Voices performance.

Local writers will have the chance to perform their work at Warwick Words Writers’ Group Words and Tunes at the Wild Boar Open Mic, and the group will also be presenting their own work at their ever-popular Showcase event.

Other events include Tea Time Talks in association with the University of Warwick; an authentic recreation of a 19th century courtroom drama based on real cases in Warwick’s archives; a walk and talk which will uncover the stories played out in the town’s narrow streets and old building, together with events for children.

Warwick Words Festival Service, with music and a literary-themed sermon, will be led by The Rev Vaughan Roberts at St Mary’s Church on Sunday October 5.

Visit www.warwickwords.co.uk for tickets and full programme details.

Poet Wendy Cope. (s)

Pop singer turned author Tracey Thorn. (s)

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