Cambridge Literary Festival highlights for winter 2024: From Mackenzie Crook to Michael Rosen
Cambridge Literary Festival has announced its winter 2024 line-up, which has a host of best-selling novelists, household names from the worlds of stage, film and TV, as well as incisive Cambridge academics, art lovers, environmental campaigners and political heavyweights.
The festival continues to offer talks with authors of the best contemporary books and thinkers, leading the cultural conversation with more than 35 speakers due to appear across the weekend.
Literary fans will be keen to snap up tickets for David Nicholls, author of You Are Here and smash hit One Day. There is also a chance to hear stories from film star Rupert Everett and Detectorists actor and writer Mackenzie Crook. Plus, there will be incisive health and nutrition advice from Tim Spector and humour from political activists Led By Donkeys.
Festival director Cathy Moore said: “I love the excitement and anticipation of welcoming speakers and audiences to our beautiful city to enjoy our annual winter gathering of world class writers, thinkers, and speakers. This year is particularly starry with many well-known actors and presenters of stage and screen as well as literary greats and thought leaders.
“This has been a challenging year for literary festivals. I am cheered and grateful for the tireless concern, loyalty and support of the festival community – staff, volunteers, audiences and supporters. This year we turned 21 and, with their continued support, we will survive and thrive for many years to come.”
Festival highlights for winter 2024
Fiction
One of the UK’s most-loved novelists David Nicholls, author of the global sensation One Day, will join the festival with his latest bestseller, You Are Here, in conversation with podcaster Hattie Crisell. Ali Smith returns with Gliff, her first book following the Seasonal sequence: a Kafkaesque novel nodding to dystopian fiction and a new concept of the idea of a classic.
Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst will present Our Evenings, a story exploring race, class, theatre and sexuality. Jonathan Freedland discusses the poignant back story that led him to write King Winter’s Birthday, a picture book for children. The book is inspired by an unpublished story by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, author of The Passenger, while he was interned on the Isle of Man during the Second World War.
Sarah Clegg will introduce The Dead of Winter and take the audience on a journey through Europe in midwinter to explore the darker side of the festive season and to uncover the folk tales and arcane traditions that still haunt Europe’s winter months.
Stage and screen
Award-winning actor, writer and creator of Detectorists , Mackenzie Crook shares If Nick Drake Came to My House, a love letter to his musical hero. Actor and author Rupert Everett joins the line-up to discuss his engrossing collection of autobiographical stories, The American No, tales which draw inspiration from the world of film and TV and ideas he created over the course of his career.
British actor Harriet Walter, whose credits range from the Royal Shakespeare Company to the Star Wars series and Succession, presents her book She Speaks! What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said. As one of the UK’s most esteemed Shakespearean actors, Walter gets between the lines of the plays to let us hear what she imagines these at times overlooked women were really thinking.
Memoir
Fashion designer Zandra Rhodes presents her insightful memoir, Iconic. Renowned for colourful designs, Zandra has dressed everyone from rock stars to royalty, and has spent her life rallying against what was expected of her, both as a designer and a woman. She will discuss her personal triumphs and tragedies, as well as the fears and sacrifices that come with being an era-defining designer.
Politics and current affairs
Political activists Led By Donkeys return to Cambridge with their new book, Led By Donkeys: Adventures in Art, Activism and Accountability, discussing the ways in which their activism captured the public mood through Covid-19 scandals, the war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis and more.
Elsewhere, lawyer, Parliamentarian and leading British human rights defender Shami Chakrabarti talks to Marina Wheeler about her guide to the law and logic underpinning human rights.
Cambridge series
The Cambridge Series platforms world-leading University of Cambridge academics. With her book Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood, English fellow Helen Charman makes a radical and illuminating case for what liberated mothering could be. For science and technology lovers, or those trying to get their head around the impact of AI on our lives, the DeepMind professor of machine learning and senior AI fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, Neil Lawrence, will interrogate what AI means for our identity.
Poetry
National treasure, acclaimed poet and author of We’re Going On a Bear Hunt Michael Rosen discusses the rollercoaster of his life in writing, exploring his time as Children’s Laureate, the pandemic, and his latest book, Rosen’s Almanac, a journey through Britain and its fantastically weird words.
Plus, following a run of sold-out shows across the UK, bestselling poet Hollie McNish returns with a new book, Lobster: and other things I'm learning to love.
Food
Foodies will have a chance to learn about the gut revolution with bestselling author of The Diet Myth, Tim Spector. Tim will share from his Food for Life Cookbook, built on the ground-breaking science of eating well by focusing on nutrition and the microbe. Plus, TV presenter Kate Humble will present her latest sustainable cookery book: Home Made: Recipes from the Countryside.
These conversations will be held in the Cambridge Union debating chamber and Old Divinity School at St John's College.
Priority booking opens at 10am on Thursday, 29 August. General sale begins at 10am on Thursday, 5 September. Visit cambridgeliteraryfestival.com
