Marlborough LitFest is delighted to announce some of our key authors for this year: Patrick Gale, Max Hastings and children’s author, Jacqueline Wilson, who will join the 2022 Golding Speaker, Ali Smith, during the festival weekend from 29 September – 2 October 2022.
The prolific novelist, Patrick Gale, will be appearing in Marlborough on Sunday 2 October to talk about his latest novel, Mother’s Boy. Known for books such as The Whole Day Through, Notes From An Exhibition and the Costa-nominated, A Place Called Winter, Gale’s 17th novel, Mother’s Boy, marks a return to the historical genre for the author and is based around the boyhood and youth of the Cornish poet, Charles Causley, and the life of the mother who raised him singlehandedly. The Observer calls Gale: ‘A writer with heart, soul, and a dark and naughty wit, one whose company you relish and trust’. Gale is thoroughly immersed in the arts: he is artistic director of the North Cornwall Book Festival, patron of Penzance LitFest and a founder director of the arts charity Endelienta.
Bestselling iconic children’s author, Jacqueline Wilson, will be appearing at Marlborough LitFest on Friday 30 September to share her writing tips and talk about Project Fairy which is published on 15 September. One of the most successful and beloved British children’s authors, Wilson wrote her first novel at just nine years old, had her first short story published at 17, and has now written over 100 books and sold more than 40 million copies. The award-winning writer is perhaps best known as the creator of her Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather characters and is a former Children’s Laureate. In 2008 she was appointed a Dame. The Guardian calls her: ‘the fairy goth-mother of children’s fiction credited with daring to introduce such non-cheery subjects as depression and divorce into her children’s bedrooms.’
Max Hastings will be making a welcome return to Marlborough LitFest on Sunday 2 October to talk about his latest book, The Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962, which is published on 29 September 2022. The former journalist and bestselling historian’s latest book re-evaluates the 13-day stand-off between America and the Soviet Union in October 1962, telling the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots and British disarmers. Hastings offers an international context on this historical military and political showdown, using a blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents and diaries and White House tape recordings. Published to coincide with the 60-year anniversary, this subject matter now becomes terrifyingly relevant with the current war in Ukraine and threats from Russia to deploy its nuclear arsenal.