Fowey Town Hall
Rupert Tower – Between Two Worlds: Inside Daphne du Maurier’s House on the Strand
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomDaphne du Maurier’s grandson, Jungian analyst, Rupert Tower, will explore Daphne du Maurier’s novel in the context of her inner life preoccupations, including dreaming in time, identity, and loss, together with her continued fascination with the past, ancestry, and power of place. He will also examine her narrative from the psychological perspective of Jungian analytical...
Bryony Gordon – Mad Woman
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomTelegraph journalist, pioneering author, podcaster and activist Bryony Gordon has long been open about her mental health, lifting the lid on a subject that was taboo for many years. Mad Woman is her phenomenal follow-up – a decade later – to the brilliant number-one bestseller Mad Girl. Join her as she talks to BBC Radio...
Jessica Hepburn – Save me from the Waves: an adventure from sea to summit
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomWe welcome author and adventure activist Jessica Hepburn to Fowey to talk about her third book, Save Me from the Waves. This remarkable and alternative adventure story, charts Jessica becoming the first and only woman (currently) to have completed the ‘Sea, Street, Summit Challenge’, which is to swim the English Channel, run the London Marathon and...
Dr Helen Doe – One Crew: 200 Years of Saving Lives at Sea
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomIn the 200 years since it was founded, the RNLI has saved more than 144,000 lives and is one of the most respected organisations in the UK and Ireland. It began with a meeting in London in 1824 to act upon a proposal by Sir William Hillary. It is his vision that still drives the...
Movie Night – Don’t Look Now
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomNicolas Roeg's classic thriller, based on a short story by Daphne du Maurier, follows a married couple as they attempt to recover from the death of their young daughter. John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) and his wife Laura (Julie Christie) are staying in Venice in an attempt to find relief after the drowning of their daughter Christine...
Sarah Harkness – Literature for the People
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomFrom an impoverished childhood in the Scottish Highlands to Victorian London, this is the inspiring story of Daniel and Alexander Macmillan, who created a publishing empire. Daniel and Alexander Macmillan, sons of Scottish crofters, arrived in London in the 1830s at a crucial moment of social change and went on to set up a publishing...
Meet the Team – A Friends of the Festival Event
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomJoin the team that organises the Festival, for a drink and cocktail Cornish pasty. The work we do throughout the year makes it all worthwhile when we meet our audience. If you would like to attend this event and receive the benefits that come with a Friend of the Festival membership, please visit the ‘Become...
Madeleine Olivia – Make it Vegan: Simple Plant-Based Recipes for Everyone
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomJoin Hayle based YouTuber, Madeleine Olivia, to celebrate the release of her debut cookbook, Make It Vegan. Madeleine, a self-taught home cook, has spent the last eight years sharing her life online, charting her journey to live a sustainable and eco-conscious lifestyle through her wildly popular YouTube videos. Make It Vegan aims to make vegan food accessible...
Tiffany Murray – My Family and Other Rock Stars
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomIn conversation with bestselling author Patrick Gale, Tiffany Murray will talk about her recently published memoir My Family and Other Rock Stars. It is about food, family and what happens when Freddie Mercury comes to stay! Her novels Diamond Star Halo, Happy Accidents and Sugar Hall, have variously been shortlisted for the Wodehouse Bollinger Prize and received the Roger Deakin Award...
Richard Trethewey Trio
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomRichard Trethewey is a singer, fiddle and cittern player, delivering his distinct take on Cornish music. Passionate about unearthing near-forgotten gems of Cornish history, Richard breathes life into what might otherwise be overlooked. Expect material from his new album Two Halves as well as films made to accompany these songs, including the single Frenchman's Creek...
Helen Hanson – ‘Do’ Look Now: Viewpoints on the Adaptable Daphne du Maurier
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomDaphne du Maurier’s brilliant control of suspense, and her vivid creation of character viewpoint are qualities which have enduring appeal to readers, and have made her stories eminently adaptable beyond the page to visual storytelling in film and television. Taking Don’t Look Now and its 1973 film adaptation as a case study, this talk will...
Annie Price – ‘The past is still close to us’: An exploration of the Daphne du Maurier archives at the University of Exeter Special Collections
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomThe University of Exeter looks after more than 50 boxes of archival materials relating to Daphne du Maurier, including several recent acquisitions. In this illustrative presentation, archivist Annie Price will introduce the archives, and discuss the fascinating insight they can provide into the novelist’s writing process, daily life, and love for Cornwall. Annie is an...
David Gibbins – A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomDrawing on decades of experience excavating shipwrecks around the world, renowned maritime archaeologist, David Gibbins, reveals the riches beneath the waves and shows us how the treasures found there can be a porthole to the past, to tell a new story about the world and its underwater secrets. From a Bronze Age ship built during the...
Alan Johnson – Death on the Thames
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomFollowing his series of successful memoirs – This Boy, In My Life, The Long and Winding Road and Please, Mr Postman, former Labour MP Alan Johnson joins us to discuss his latest novel in the bestselling Mangan thriller series, Death on the Thames. His career in Parliament began after a period as General Secretary of the Communication Workers...
Galen Bartholomew – The SS Suevic and the night the RNLI saved 611 lives
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomJoin family historian Galen Bartholomew, for a remarkable account of shipwreck and survival. The SS Suevic, one of five White Star Line ‘Jubilee Class’ liners, ran aground in a storm off the Lizard Point, Cornwall, in March 1907. In appalling weather conditions, the RNLI rescued 456 people. This remains the largest number of people rescued...
Nicola Upson – Shot with Crimson
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomJoin crime novelist Nicola Upson for the latest instalment in the Josephine Tey mystery series, Shot with Crimson. September 1939, and the worries of war follow Josephine Tey to Hollywood, where a different sort of battle is raging on the set of Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Then, a shocking act of violence reawakens the shadows of the past, with consequences...
Dr Helen Doe – From the Battle of Britain to the Great Escape
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomThe first full reappraisal of one of Britain’s great fighter aces, this bestselling book examines the truth behind Stanford Tuck’s 1956 biography to reveal the real person rather than a mythical hero. In January 1942, Bob Tuck was the top-scoring British fighter ace, with an official score of 29 enemy aircraft destroyed. With film-star looks,...
Lesley-Ann Jones – Fly Away Paul
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomIn this definitive account of Paul McCartney's time in Wings, published on the 50th anniversary of the bestselling album, Band on the Run, music biographer, Lesley-Ann Jones, tells the extraordinary story of how Paul survived the Beatles and found his Wings. No comprehensive biography of the time he spent with Wings has ever been published....
Amanda Prowse – Swimming to Lundy
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomWe are delighted to welcome international bestselling author, radio and TV personality Amanda Prowse to the Festival. She has written thirty novels, two non-fiction titles and seven novellas, which have been published in dozens of languages around the world. Amanda is the most prolific writer of bestselling contemporary fiction in the UK today. Her books,...
Jennie Godfrey – The List of Suspicious Things
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomThe List of Suspicious Things is set to be one of the most talked about debut books of 2024, and after publication, swiftly became a Sunday Times top ten bestseller. This is a multi-layered, bittersweet coming of age story of friendship and love. From her dad’s realisation that he knew the Yorkshire Ripper, to a passion...
Dr Serena Trowbridge – Stories of the Stones
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomBritain’s landscape contains many stone circles, especially in Cornwall, Wales and Scotland. Their original purpose remains mysterious despite extensive archaeological investigation, and perhaps it is their obscurity which makes them so fascinating. Over the centuries they have inspired many legends, most famously of girls turned to stone for dancing on a holy day, or stones...
Harriet Evans and Veronica Henry – The Stargazers and The Secret Beach
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomBetween them, Harriet Evans and Veronica Henry have written over forty bestselling novels. They both started their writing careers as editors - Harriet in publishing and Veronica in television. They met when Harriet was working at Penguin, and she gave Veronica her first book deal. Today, they discuss their working processes, what makes a bestseller and,...
Georgina Moore and Becky Hunter in Conversation
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomJoin us as we welcome bestselling author, Georgina Moore, to the festival to celebrate the paperback publication of her captivating debut novel, The Garnett Girls. This highly reviewed book became a Sunday Times bestseller, with Georgina being voted one of the Observer’s Top 10 debut novelists for 2023. In addition to her writing, Georgina has...
Dr Serena Trowbridge – Villainesses, Femmes Fatales, Matriarchs and Muses: Du Maurier’s Heroines
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomDu Maurier’s novels are filled with strong women, difficult women, interesting and dangerous women. None of her heroines are boring, but they are all very different, as though the author is experimenting with a variety of approaches to womanhood. It’s well-known that du Maurier herself was often uncomfortable with the expected social roles of wife...
Kate Strasdin – The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomThe hidden fabric of a Victorian woman's life, told through her unique scrapbook. In 1838, Anne Sykes was given a diary on her wedding day. Using it to collect snippets of fabric, she created a record of her life and times. Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of fashion historian Kate...
David Parker – For Those in Peril
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United Kingdom‘And that’s when things got a bit rough because I knew I was the one who was going to have to go into that hold to rescue the two men trapped’. These are the words of RAF winchman Eric Smith, who won the George Medal for his bravery at sea. Eric's is just one of...
Susan Smillie – The Half Bird
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomThe Half Bird is a beautifully written piece of narrative nonfiction. Join Susan as she talks about her incredible story of one woman's solo journey, from Land's End to the shores of Greece, exploring the unexpected joy of solitude, self-discovery, and resilience. When she set sail from the southwest coast of England on her beloved...
Adam Sisman – The Secret Life of John Le Carré
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomJoin John le Carré's biographer, Adam Sisman, as he reveals the tale of an extraordinary secret life of the great novelist, which he was unable to publish while le Carré was alive. The Secret Life of John le Carré is the story of what was left out, and offers reflections on the difficult relationship between...
Iain Dale and Friends – Kings and Queens: 1200 years of British and English Monarchs
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomThe British monarchy is one of the oldest in the world – dating back so far that its very origins are the subject of debate: was William the Conqueror the first king of England, or Alfred the Great? In a series that began with The Prime Ministers and The Presidents, award-winning broadcaster and presenter Iain...
Wyl Menmuir – The Heart of The Woods
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomThroughout history, trees have determined the tools we use, the boats we build, the stories we tell about the world and ourselves, the songs we sing, and some of our most important rituals. As such, our lives are intertwined with those of the trees and woodlands around us. In this journey deep into the woods,...
Christie Watson – Moral Injuries
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomJoin bestselling author Christie Watson as she discusses her highly anticipated new thriller, Moral Injuries. This gripping page-turner follows the lives of three female medics whose unbreakable bond is tested to its limits. Expect an event of intrigue and suspense as Watson delves into the moral ambiguity that arises when lives hang in the balance....
Vernon Bogdanor – The Strange Survival of Liberal Britain: Politics and Power before the First World War
Fowey Town Hall Market Street, Fowey, Cornwall, United KingdomBritain’s best-known constitutional historian, Professor Vernon Bogdanor, says the 20 turbulent years before the outbreak of the First World War, heralded a new agenda that still dominates today. The years saw a transition from aristocratic rule to mass politics. Vernon claims that we are still grappling with the same complex and difficult issues that the Edwardians...
