Literary Festival

By Stewart Collins

You should see my study at this time of year. All I can say is that it’s going to be a good time for my friendly local carpenter very shortly as I’m simply going to have to squeeze in some more bookshelves. Lots of them. I’ve completely run out of space thanks to the number of books cascading through the door in anticipation of the coming Literary Festival. My postman also knows what time of year it is I suspect.

By my reckoning we’re due to be welcoming 42 authors to [next month’s] Literary Festival. I can’t pretend that I’ll have read all 42 of their most recent books by that time, but I will certainly have read a majority, and seeing as most of these are new and therefore currently in hardback, they take up a lot of space. And this year’s is the 15th Petworth Literary Festival… so 15 piles of books…

Am I ever disappointed by the books? Am I ever disappointed by the events linked to them? Practically never. I guess one becomes a little more canny with the passing years as to what will make both a great event and a great read, but frankly an hour in the presence of pretty much anyone appearing at the festival is an hour well spent. Often unforgettably so.

Are there particular highlights to look forward to this year? At the last count approximately 42….