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The FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival takes place between March 17 and March 25 2018
Director’s welcome
Welcome to the 22nd Oxford Literary Festival, which this year promises to be one of our best.
We have a treat for fiction-lovers with no fewer than four Booker Prize-winning authors on the Friday – Ben Okri, Ian McEwan, Anne Enright and Penelope Lively.
We are grateful for the wonderful support of the University of Oxford, in particular from the Chancellor Lord Patten and the Vice Chancellor Professor Louise Richardson, as well as from so many heads of colleges, and university departments.
The Chancellor’s Lecture sees the novelist Sebastian Barry in conversation with Lord Patten, while Anne Enright gives the Vice Chancellor’s Lecture.
The Festival Fellowship goes this year to the writer Anthony Horowitz who appears on both the young people and adult programmes to talk about his writing and his life.
We continue with our themed days and events. Italian Day includes talks on living and eating the Italian way, the Medici and even the rare Marsican
brown bear.
Our American weekend has talks by graphic novelist Nadja Spiegelman and by astrophysicist Dr Jillian Scudder, and a dinner to welcome our friends from the States. We are very grateful to Emily Rose and Jim Marrow for their support for the American programme.
The Irish literature and culture theme includes leading Irish novelists, the Irish critic Declan Kiberd and the well known poet Michael Longley.
New this year are the Oxford Debates, sponsored by lawyers Royd Withy King – our response to a fastchanging and often confusing world. Subjects covered in this series include Brexit, the nature of evil, the post-truth era, immigration and good citizenship.
BBC Four returns to the festival with preview screenings, including a new documentary on TS Elliott and films on the cult of Bacchus and on American art. Their colleagues from BBC World Service will again stage a live outside broadcast from the festival featuring many of our speakers.
The festival would not take place without the support of our many long-standing sponsors and new partners. And we would like to thank them all.
Our headline sponsor FT Weekend have once more organised a day of events at the Bodleian on the second Saturday headlined by the former governor of the Bank of England, Lord King.
We are particularly grateful for the continued support of HSBC our foundation sponsor and for
the generosity of individual benefactors including Ian and Carol Sellars, Jane and Roderick Gibbs, Lady Hatch and George Warren.
Many thanks to our festival team for their marvellous work and to our volunteer stewards who make everything go smoothly on the day. And finally, a big thank you to our speakers and interviewers who bring their ideas, scholarship and creativity to the festival and enrich all our lives in the great tradition of Oxford.
Sally Dunsmore
Festival Director
is the Chelf / Consultant at the event.