North Cornwall Book Festival: Recent Episodes
North Cornwall Book Festival
This is our growing sound archive from where you can stream or download free podcasts of festival events. Handy for those of you who couldn’t make it, or who had such a great time you want to live it all over again!
Legendary Costa-winning YA author, Frances Hardinge, in conversation with bibliotherapist (and huge fan) Ella Berthoud at the 2022 North Cornwall Book Festival.
In the final talk of the 2022 North Cornwall BooK Festival broadcaster, Petroc Trelawny talks to airline pilot and polymath, Mark Vanhoenacker about his luminous memoir of boyhood and the allure of his favourite cities around the world, Imagine a City.
Beth Underdown reads from her latest mystery, The Key in the Lock as part of the Cream of Cornish event at the 2022 North Cornwall Book Festival. She’s introduced by novelist, Patrick Gale.
Ellen Hawley reads from her (then) latest novel, Other People Manage,bas part of the Cream of Cornish event at the 2022 North Cornwall Book Festival. She’s introduced by novelist, Patrick Gale.
Charlie Carroll reads from his debut novel, The Lip, as part of the Cream of Cornish event at the 2022 North Cornwall Book Festival. He’s introduced by novelist, Patrick Gale.
Professor Onyeka Nubia enthrals a packed marquee at the 2022 North Cornwall Book Festival with a talk about Britain’s black Elizabethans, based on his book England’s Other Countrymen.
One of the country’s funniest and most wildly inventive novelists, Jasper Fforde, holds a packed marquee in the palm of his hand at the 2022 North Cornwall Book Festival, where he gave a whistle stop tour of his phenomenal career.
Half-sister novelists, Esther Freud and Susie Boyt talk to novelist, Patrick Gale about their novels I Couldn’t Love You More and Loved and Missed at the 2022 North Cornwall Book Festival. Astonishingly it was the first time they’d shared a stage.
Inua Ellams performs some of his poems to a rapt night-time marquee at one of the most atmospheric events of 2023’s festival.
A&E doctor, children’s novelist and now Labour councillor, Roopa Farooki talks to Patrick Gale about her gut-wrenching memoir about working in A&E as the Covid epidemic hit, Everything Is True.
Legendary editor and one of the founders of Virago talks to novelist and memoirist Tiffany Murray about her memoir, A Bite of the Apple.
Kit de Waal, author of the runaway bestseller, My Name is Leon, talks to legendary publisher Lennie Goodings about her funny-ouch memoir of her Jehovah’s Witness girlhood, Without Warning and Only Sometimes.
Million copy bestseller and founder of the Women’s Prize, Kate Mosse in conversation with novelist/memoirist Kate Mosse about An Extra Pair of Hands - her memoir about caring for elderly relatives - and gives a glimpse of Warrior Queens and Quiet Revolutionaries, her book of potted feminist inspirations.
A keen “day sailor” since boyhood, Philip Marsden had long been entranced by the mystical lure of the Summer Isles since long distant visits to an inspirational aunt who made a life and mysteriously died on one of them. His latest book, The Summer Isles tells how, with beguilingly insane bravado, he buys a clinker-built yacht and sails from his home in South Cornwall up the west coast to revisit them. Marsden, being a polymath as well as sailor, his occasionally hair-raising adventures along the way are spiced with the histories and myths of the fascinating places he visits. This was the closing event of North Cornwall Book Festival 2021.
Stepping in at the last minute, Patrick Gale talks to Cathy Rentzenbrink about his novel based on the youth of Cornish poet Charles Causley, Mother's Boy. Recorded at North Cornwall Book Festival 2021.
Legendary garden writer Anna Pavord’s latest book, Landskipping, is a fascinating history of a peculiarly British fascination with landscape shot through with autobiographical glimpses that place Anna within that historical. What is it about landscape, she asks, that we find beautiful? How does landscape comfort us, fill us with awe or simply mesmerise us?
Anna was in conversation with obsessive gardener Patrick Gale at North Cornwall Book Festival 2021.
Colombo-born George Alagiah is familiar to millions as a BBC journalist and newscaster and, more recently, as a figurehead for cancer patients and campaigner for improved cancer screening. He is the author of two memoirs charting his family story and the process of becoming an Englishman: A Passage to Africa and A Home from Home: from Immigrant Boy to English Man but has now turned novelist with his well-received thriller of murky dealings in post-apartheid South Africa, The Burning Land.
George was in conversation with a fellow star of the BBC, Petroc Trelawny, at North Cornwall Book Festival 2021.
Peppered with anecdotes, On the Brink is a rich and personal insight into the life and times of the Fox family, whose success in Cornwall and beyond spanned across three centuries. Colourful stories from the author's own experience of working within the family's shipping business, along with historical reference, portray an intricate account of the contribution the Foxes made to the history of Falmouth. Charles read this extract from On the Brink as part of the Cream of Cornish event at North Cornwall Book Festival 2021.
This is the incredible story of a Second World War shoot-out between black and white American soldiers in a quiet Cornish town that ended up putting the ‘special relationship’ itself on trial. The subsequent court martial into what tabloids labelled a ‘wild west’ mutiny became front page news in Great Britain and the USA. Three thousand miles across the Atlantic, it mirrored and bolstered a fast-accelerating civil rights movement. At home it caused Churchill himself ‘grave anxiety’ while refracting an extraordinary truth about the real state of Anglo-American relations. For three long days the story raged before the turbulent war-torn world moved on and forgot forever amid ever-escalating D-Day preparations. This account of a shocking drama the authorities tried to hush up has been painstakingly pieced back together for the first time thanks to new archival research. When slotted into its unique context, extracted from wartime cabinet documents, secret government surveys, opinion polls, diaries, letters and newspapers as well as testimony from those who remember it, the story offers a rare and stunning window into a little-known dark side of the ‘American Invasion.’ By breathing new life into a vanished trial, it reveals a rare and surprising insight into the wider story of how Britain reacted to soldiers of the Jim Crow army when they came to stay. Kate read this extract as part of the Cream of Cornwall event at North Cornwall Book Festival 2021.
This session presents two very exciting debut novels from writers who have each been fearless in rattling family skeletons or using elements of autobiography to come up with something fresh and startling. Eleanor Anstruther’s A Perfect Explanation was inspired by her discovery that her grandmother, the granddaughter of the 8th Duke of Argyll, sold her father to her aunt for £500 to raise him as her own. Paul Mendez worked as an actor before settling into a writing career. His Rainbow Milk draws, in its portrayal of a boy’s search for his true, Jamaican father, on his own troubled early life as an “unfellowshipped” gay son of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Black Country. Eleanor and Paul were in conversation with Colin Midson, director of Bookshaped and artistic director of the Falmouth Book Festival.
We apologise for the slight audio issues in this recording caused by technical problems at the live event.
Joff Winterhart was one of the first graphic novelists to find their work shortlisted for the Costa Novel prize. That was his debut, Days of the Bagnold Summer, a funny, beguiling portrayal of the profound failure in communication between a down-at-heel single mother and her painfully introverted, would-be rock god son. Singled out for high praise from Zadie Smith, his second novel, Driving Short Distances, portrays the hesitant, deeply repressed friendship that springs up between a slightly hopeless young chap and the mysterious man who hires him to drive him from unit to unit on industrial estates. It’s a horribly well observed study of masculinity, our need for father figures and all those inexplicable small businesses on the edge of town…
Joff talked about these, his fascinating working methods and his novel-in-progress with novelist Patrick Gale at North Cornwall Book Festival 2021.
One of England’s foremost novelists, Amanda Craig joins the artistic director of the upcoming Falmouth Book Festival, Colin Midson to talk about her latest work. The Golden Rule was not only picked as a book of the year 2020 in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times, the Daily Mail and The Observer but was also longlisted for the Woman’s Prize. A follow-up to Craig’s hugely popular The Lie of the Land, it’s a proper Cornish, female inversion of the plot of Strangers on a Train.
Two lively meditations on our relationship with the sea and shoreline which are also memoirs. As part of her postgraduate cultural anthropology masters, Lamorna Ash elected to return to her mother’s Cornish roots to embed herself in Newlyn’s fishing community. There she experienced first-hand the brutal lessons of life at sea and came to appreciate both the challenges facing an industry in peril and the privileges she had taken for granted. The result, Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town has struck a chord with a forcibly isolated public and been Radio 4’s Book of the Week. Cornwall-based Lisa Woollett’s Rag and Bone celebrates the environmentally friendly pleasures of picking over what the waters throw up, from mudlarking on the Thames to beachcombing in the far west, while charting her family’s association with recycling what others throw out. The BBC’s Petroc Trelawny interviewed Lamorna and Lisa at North Cornwall Book Festival 2021.
Louise Doughty is the author of five radio plays and nine novels, including the phenomenon that was Apple Tree Yard. Its television adaptation was viewed by seven million per episode and one anticipates the same is in store for her latest. Platform Seven is every bit as gripping. It starts as a whodunnit confined to the reaches of Peterborough Station and what the ghost of a recent suicide can see and hear, but then expands to become a thriller about coercive control, gaslighting and a touching meditation on mortality. Was it a suicide after all, or a kind of murder? Hear Louise in conversation with her old friend Patrick Gale at North Cornwall Book Festival 2021.
The seventh North Cornwall Book Festival concluded with this conversation between Windham-Campbell Prize-winning writer Tessa Hadley and Patrick Gale, recorded in St Endellion Church. The two discuss Tessa's newest novel, Late in the Day, the art of writing and the human psyche. A literary moment not to be missed.
Oct 13 2019
Damien Lewis, the Sunday Times number one bestselling author and filmmaker, gives his North Cornwall audience a fascinating talk about SAS Italian Job, his latest book on crazily risky SAS operations in WW2.
Oct 13 2019
Sophie Ratcliffe, academic, writer and literary critic, talks to Cathy Rentzenbrink about her unique and moving memoir, Lost Properties of Love. "It's sort of Brief Encounter, but with more sex, and Lego... and fish fingers."
Deborah Moggach, the author behind such hugely popular novels as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Ex-Wives and Tulip Fever, is interviewed here by writer Cathy Rentzenbink. Download to hear them chat about Deborah's latest book The Carer, as well as families, marriages and writing.
An unmissable conversation with Barbara Hosking and Petroc Trelawny. Hear how Barbara's extraordinary life has shaped the political landscape, the realities of being an ambitious young woman in the 1950s, how she came to terms with her sexuality and much more as they discuss her autobiography Exceeding My Brief: Memoirs of a Disobedient Civil Servant.
Oct 13 2019
Patrick Gale interviews singer, songwriter and writer Tracey Thorn about adolescence and suburbia, as depicted in her memoir Another Planet. 12 Oct 2019.
Raynor Winn, bestselling writer of The Salt Path, discusses what it means to have a home, and the extraordinary journey of her life so far, with Lisa Cooper. Oct 12th 2019.
Bestselling writer John Boyne discusses his latest book for adults, A Ladder to the Sky, with broadcaster Petroc Trelawney. Oct 12th 2019.
The audio quality of this recording is higher after the first few minutes.
Financial Times and Guardian journalist Adharanand Finn has combined his twin passions for travel writing and extreme running in his newest book, The Rise of the Ultra Runners. Here he talks to journalist and keen runner, Freddie Kimpton.
The wonderful novelist and screenwriter David Nicholls talks to Patrick Gale about his latest book, Sweet Sorrow.
Legendary children's writer Michael Morpurgo holds the rapt attention of his audience in St Endellion Church. Hear him talk about the the refugee crisis, his relationship with Cornwall, and his latest book Boy Giant, in one of the most special events of the 2019 festival.
Cornish writer Natasha Carthew has written all her books outside, either in the fields and woodland that surround her home or in the cabin that she built from scrap wood. She has published poetry and young adult novels, including Only the Ocean. In this podcast she talks about her first book for adults, All Rivers Run Free. Part of our Cream of Cornish event.
S K Tremayne is one of the two pseudonyms of journalist, Sean Thomas, who also writes archaeological and religious thrillers under the name of Tom Knox. Here he reads from his chilling new book The Assistant. Part of our Cream of Cornish event.
Mary J Oliver is known in West Cornwall as an artist and innovative art teacher. Hear her read from her debut publication, Jim Neat, a fictionalised memoir containing poetry, prose and photographs. Part of our Cream of Cornish event.
Distinguished literary theologian Paul Fiddes reads from his Murdochian whodunnit, A Unicorn Dies. Part of our Cream of Cornish event.
"Why do you write about the awful things that happen in the world?" In this incredibly insightful question and answer session with local secondary school students, John Boyne talks about what it means to be a writer in 2019. Listen until the end to hear a brand new poem.
Hip hop or Shakespeare?
Matt Windle, the Poet with Punch, catches local teens and their teachers off guard with quotes from hip hop artists and the works of Shakespeare, in this clip from his poetry workshop.
"He's in the national belly flopping competition!" Popular children's author Liz Kessler brainstorms with local school pupils as part of a creative writing workshop.
Martin Brown: Drawing Is For Everyone! At North Cornwall Book Festival by North Cornwall Book Festival
Nature writer and sometime hermit, Neil Ansell in conversation with historian, Lisa Cooper about his book about a search for extremity, The Last Wilderness.
Legendary Irish novelist, Anne Enright in conversation with Patrick Gale about the mothers in her novels and the mother in her life, among many other things...
Laurence Rose talks about his book The Long Spring in which he traces the arrival of Spring from North Africa to North Norway, watching his beloved birds as he goes.
Jill Murphy, author of countless children’s books, not least the Worst Witch ones, shares her journey to becoming one of the world’s best loved author/illustrators via her ingenious childhood experiments.
Natalie Haynes gives one of her breathless, unique stand-up routines where she riffs on themes from the beliefs and literature of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.
Horatio Clare talks about and reads from his book Icebreaker, about his journey into the frozen north of Finland.
Wyl Menmuir and Fiona Mozley, both Booker-nominated for their dark first novels, The Many and Elmet, in conversation about landscape, Gothic and more.
Philip Hoare talks about his book risingtidefallingstar, a prose poem to our enduring fascination with the deep and its creatures. Recorded on Saturday 6th October 2018.
Patrick Gale and Nina Stibbe discuss their 1970s-set novels, Take Nothing With You and Paradise Lodge, and their mothers, their adolescences and and and... Recorded on Saturday 6th October 2018.
Martin Brown entertains a St Endellion Church packed out with local children with his demonstrations of how he comes up with his ingenious illustrations for the likes of Horrible Histories and Lesser Spotted Animals. Recorded on Saturday 6th October 2018.
Joanna Trollope is interviewed by Cathy Rentzenbrink about her novel An Unsuitable Match. Recorded on Saturday 6th October 2018.
Aida Edemariam is interviewed by Cathy Rentzenbrink about her extraordinary family memoir, The Wife’s Tale. Recorded on Saturday 6th October 2018.
Stephen Price Brown reads from 'The Riddle of the Waves' by North Cornwall Book Festival
Comedian, classicist and author Natalie Haynes stuns the young people of Cornwall with her retelling of the Oedipus myth, and reveals the connection between modern TV soaps and greek tragedy. Recorded in St Endellion church on October 5th 2018.
John Dougherty, author of the 'Stinkbomb & Ketchup Face' series, talks about the importance of being allowed to play. Recorded on Thursday 4th October 2018.
John Dougherty sings the Stinkbomb & Ketchup Face song, live at the North Cornwall Book Festival 2018.
'Max and the Millions' writer Ross Montgomery works with children in Cornwall on their imaginative storytelling. Recorded on Thursday 4th October 2018.
Laura Wood, author of the 'Poppy Pym' series, helps children develop their own mystery stories. Recorded on Thursday 4th October 2018.
Children's author Vivian French talks to local primary school pupils about her writing process. Recorded in St Endellion church on Thursday 4th October 2018.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown discusses her book 'Exotic England: The Making of a Curious Nation', Britain's multicultural history and her experience being a Muslim in the country today.
Lynn Knight talks about her book 'The Button Box: Lifting the Lid on Women's Lives', and shares family stories with the audience at the North Cornwall Book Festival. Oct 8th 2017.
Bestselling writer Sarah Winman discusses her new novel 'Tin Man' with Jim Naughtie. Oct 8th 2017.
Dame Hermione Lee talks to Patrick Gale about Edith Wharton, Penelope Fitzgerald and the writing of biographies.
Costa prizewinner Maggie O'Farrell talks to Patrick Gale about 'I Am, I Am, I Am', her memoir of near-death experiences.
Children's writer Christopher William Hill creates uproar and gets upstaged by a bee. Oct 7th 2017.
Broadcaster and writer James Naughtie discusses the allure of secret worlds and his latest spy thriller, 'Paris Spring'. Oct 7th 2017.
Bestselling author Matt Haig talks to Eleanor Updale about his latest book, 'How To Stop Time'. Oct 7th 2017.
"I'd like you to imagine that you're in the Amazon rainforest..." Pascale Petit reads in St Endellion Church. Oct 7th 2017.
Rose Hilton discusses her extraordinary life and art with an old friend, actor Dudley Sutton.
Petrus Ursem reads from his young adult thriller, 'The Fortune of the Seventh Stone'. 7th Oct 2017.
Cornish author Rob Turner reads from 'Inward', the first book in his post-apocalyptic saga 'Perception'. Oct 7th 2017.
Emily Barr gives pupils in her workshop tips on writing three dimensional characters. Oct 5th 2017.
Poet/boxer Matt Windle explains part of his creative process to teens at the North Cornwall Book Festival. Oct 5th 2017.
"You can make a story from anything!" In the first workshop of the 2017 North Cornwall Book Festival, children's author Eleanor Updale shows pupils her Boring Bag and collaborates on an extraordinary story.
The title track from 3 Daft Monkeys smoking new album. Catch them at @NCornBookFest on Oct 6. http://bit.ly/2fCkYDO
Gavin Knight's first book was an immersive exploration of the Uk's roughest gang culture. In 'The Swordfish' and 'The Star' he does the same for the tight knit communities of Cadgwith and West Penwith, offering the unedited stories of fishermen, artistsm rogues and heroes of either sex and their struggles to keep afloat in every sense. His readings will be lent authentically salty accompaniment by shanties from the Cornish group, Stamp and Go.
Andrew Miller, a previous Costa winnter, discusses his astonishing, risky latest, 'The Crossing', which is a contemporary story told with the same dark wit and unflinching honesty as those earlier novels. Portraying a wonderfully difficult, seld-willed woman, coping with marriage, motherhood, tragedy and a heroic long distance solo yacht voyage, it asks uncomfortable questions of what society and indeed readers of novels, require of their women. Andrew will be in conversation with his friend, novelist Rupert Thomson
Charlotte Hobson's debut novel, 'The Vanishing Futurist', which propels an idealistic Englishwoman into the heart of the Russian Revolution.
Film editor Katharine Norbury's bestselling debut, 'The Fish Ladder, is one of those books that is hard to categorise. Part memoir, nature study, meditation on family and part travelogue, it tells how she seeks consolation on the death of a child by following the Humber to its source but pursues a parallel metaphorical quest for the woman who gave her up at birth. Katharine will be in conversation with Jackie Kay, whose birth mother also gave her up for adoption
Long a cult in France, the grown-up graphic novel (as opposed to the childish comic) continues to gather a following in the UK. Witty proponent of the form, Simon Grennan has dared to retell Trollope's overlooked early novel, 'John Caldigate', in graphic form. Beautiful and haunting to look at, 'Dispossession' embeds the reader in a uniquely wrought experience of the mid-nineteenth century.
Tom Vowler reads from his second novel, 'That Dark Remembered Day', which is partly a study in psychological suspense, partly a lyrical meditation on fatherhood, war and the natural world.
Vanessa Matthews' highly praised first novel, 'The Doctor's Daughter' has been a prominent psychiatrist's daughter in 1927 unlocking secrets from the past that threaten to destroy her future. Here she reads from it as part of the festival's Cream of Cornish session.
As part of our Cream of Cornish session, Robert Wilton reads from the latest in his historical thriller series imagining the Comptrollerate General, a precursor to M16, during the 20th century's murky dawn.
It's a great honour and treat for the festival to welcome Scotland's poet laureate, or makar. Jackie's work is tender, funny and haunting by turns, informed by the fascinating dual Scottish/ Nigerian parentage explored in her memoir 'Red Dust Road' and captivating when performed live. Imagine a fabulous hybrid of Aretha Franklin, Miss Jean Brodie and Anne Sexton and you'll know why this is unmissable
Rupert Thomson has long been a cult favourite among other novelists. 'Katherine Carlyle' is a vintage work with which to discover him. Swift and destabilising as any thriller, it portrays a young woman consumed with rage at her parents for having left her embryo on ice for eight years before her "second" birth, a heroine hell bent on revenge or self-destruction, or possibly both. Rupert will be talking with Andrew Miller
Poet, artist and writer on spiritual practice, Ian Adams performs poetry from his latest collection: 'Unfurling', described as "poems of life, love and faith"
Actor-turned-writer Rachel Joyce seduced the nation with her debut novel, 'The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry'. Already a hugely experience writer for radio, the discipline of radio writing informs her collection of short stories, 'A Snow Garden and Other Stories'. Hear her in conversation with novelist Patrick Gale.
Katina Naomi's latest poetry collection is 'What the Crocodile Taught Me'. Here she reads from her work as part of the festival's Cream of Cornish session.
Martin Banks has written the history of the 1966 Cornish sea tragedy, 'The Mysterious Loss of the Darlwyne'. Here he reads from it as part of the festival's Cream of Cornish session.
Anneliese Mackintosh reads from her prizewinning, decidedly adult story collection, 'Any Other Mouth' as part of the festival's Cream of Cornish session.
Rob Barratt is a comic poet and singer author of 'Distressed' and 'Men From Mars in Bumping Cars'. Here he reads some of his work as part of the festival's Cream of Cornish session.
Two tracks from this phenomenally talented line-up headed by Senegalese star, Amadou Diagne. You can catch them at St Endellion Church on Oct 21 as part of North Cornwall Book Festival. Tickets just £10 (free to accompanied under-16s) from www.ncornbookfest.org.
Two tracks from this phenomenally talented line-up headed by Senegalese star, Amadou Diagne. You can catch them at St Endellion Church on Oct 21 as part of North Cornwall Book Festival. Tickets just £10 (free to accompanied under-16s) from www.ncornbookfest.org.
Here's a sample of the latest work from the legendary Wild Willy Barrett and the French Connection. They're giving a gig for us at St Endellion Church on Saturday October 22nd at 7.30. Tickets £10. Free to accompanied under 16s! You can book at our website. www.ncornbookfest.org.