Once again the Arts & Book Festival will take place in the recently refurbished 4-star Wordsworth Hotel in the centre of Grasmere, a short walk from Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum.
This year the Festival will focus on the lives of Romantic figures, with Daisy Hay talking about the Young Romantics and Paul O’Keeffe discussing Benjamin Robert Haydon. The Lake District will be explored in talks by Matthew Hyde on the architecture of the lakes, and David Brown retracing Turner’s 1809 tour. Saturday evening features Richard Holloway looking at some of the poems that have helped him find answers to the big questions, and Roy Hattersley on the perils of tackling political biography.
The Festival will conclude with contemporary voices. Martin Edwards will read from and talk about a gripping thriller in which a manuscript by Thomas de Quincey plays a part, and the always popular Jackie Kay will discuss her remarkable memoir Red Dust Road (and read some poems too).

There will also be an extensive range of workshops, readings, and small group sessions, and a special performance of a show that Poet in Residence Helen Mort recently took to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Programme

Friday, 21 January 2011
4.35pm Michael McGregor
Introductions and welcome
4.45pm Daisy Hay
The Young Romantics
Daisy Hay discusses her first book, which shatters the myth of the Romantic poet as a solitary, introspective genius, telling the story of the communal existence of an astonishingly youthful circle: Leigh Hunt, Percy Shelley, his wife Mary and her step-sister Claire Clairmont, and Hunt’s sister-in-law Elizabeth Kent. She will recount their travels, their successes and their tragedies.
6.00pm Paul O’Keefe
Benjamin Robert Haydon: A Genius for Failure
Paul O’Keefe’s latest biography throws fascinating light on the tragic life of Benjamin Robert Haydon. As an artist, Haydon never achieved greatness, but he was a close friend of many important Romantic writers, including Wordsworth, and a central figure in the artistic life of the early 19th century.
9.15pm Helen Mort & Simon Perkins
A Pint for the Ghost
Fresh from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Wordsworth Trust Poet in Residence Helen Mort and actor Simon Perkins invite you to a lonely pub after hours where strange characters come to introduce themselves, spectres brought to life through poems and short stories.

Saturday, 22 January 2011
9.30am Matthew Hyde
Pevsner’s Architectural Guide to Cumbria
Matthew Hyde will be talking about his fully-revised edition of Pevsner’s renowned guide to the buildings and architecture of Cumbria. At its heart is the Lake District, where the well-loved vernacular architecture is overlaid by centuries of buildings, Georgian to modern, that respond in diverse ways to the magnificent landscape.
11.00am David Brown
Turner in Cumbria, 1809: New Light on an Unfamiliar Tour
Using research into sketchbooks and drawings and an expedition in Turner’s footsteps 200 years later, this talk reconstructs Turner’s tour in the North-West in late summer 1809, to paint Cockermouth Castle for the Earl of Egremont and Lowther Castle for the Earl of Lonsdale. These commissions lead Turner into parts of West Cumbria that were less familiar than the classic Lakeland sites, but full of interest for him.
1.45pm Onwards
Demonstrations, workshops & small group sessions in the Wordsworth Museum
Hugh Bryden
Artists’ Book for Writers
Hugh Bryden award-winning printmaker and artists’ book maker will lead participants in making simple accordion and folded books, and stitched pamphlets, and will be showing examples from 20 years of collaborations with poets.
Tom Pow
Dying Villages
Poet Tom Pow was awarded a Creative Scotland award to develop his project on the dying villages of Europe. In an intimate setting Tom will open his battered suitcase of remembrances to read poems, tell stories and show photographs and collaborative artworks that capture the spirit of the villages he visited.
Tom will run two 55 minute sessions. Numbers restricted, booking essential.
Iain Bain
Thomas Bewick Woodblocks and Printing
Iain Bain, former head of publishing at the Tate Gallery, will hold an open workshop and printing demonstration. Iain is an acknowledged expert on the works of Thomas Bewick and his many publications include The Watercolours and Drawings of Thomas Bewick and his Workshop Apprentices.
Christopher Bacon
Copperplate Printing
Christopher Bacon, renowned expert on printing and the history of printing, will discuss and demonstrate the art of copperplate printing.
Helen Mort
Getting Started in Poetry
Helen Mort, the Wordsworth Trust’s Poet in Residence, will look at what makes a poem work and help participants get started on a poem of their own.
Anne Bacon
Conservation of fine art
Anne Bacon, a Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation, will look at the conservation of paintings, using examples from the Wordsworth Trust collection. Participants are invited to bring paintings along for an opinion.
Derek Bradford and Owen Bradford
Conserving books and early photographs
Derek Bradford and Owen Bradford, both conservators in private practice, will give a workshop and surgery on books, photographs and related conservation matters. Participants are invited to bring books and photographs along for an opinion.
Pamela Woof
A Walk with the Wordsworths
Pamela Woof, President of the Wordsworth Trust and editor of Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals, will lead an hour long walk in the footsteps of the Wordsworths.
Leave from Dove Cottage 2.00pm
4.30pm The Poems of William Wordsworth
Wordsworth Trust staff will read some of their favourite Wordsworth poems.
5.00pm Richard Holloway
How Poetry Helps Us Cope
When Paul Gaugin’s daughter Aline died he created an enormous painting that was a cry of anguish at the riddle of existence, and on the top left hand corner he slashed: What are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? These questions come with our humanity and we have poured out oceans of ink in answering them. Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh and Chair of the Scottish Arts Council, and passionate advocate of literature, will show how poetry has helped him wrestle with these questions.
9.00pm Roy Hattersley
The Perils of Political Biography
Roy Hattersley entered Parliament in 1964 and served in Harold Wilson’s government and Jim Callaghan’s Cabinet. In 1983 he became deputy leader of the Labour Party. As well as contributing to many national newspapers he has written nineteen books, most recently David Lloyd George: The Great Outsider. In 2003 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He will be talking, in his own inimitable fashion, about the pitfalls for the political biographer.

Sunday, 23 January 2011
9.30am Martin Edwards
The Serpent Pool
Award-winning crime writer Martin Edwards will read from and talk about his fourth Lake District mystery, where an investigation into an apparent suicide takes place against the background of a festival celebrating the life and work of the writer Thomas De Quincey.
11.00am Jackie Kay
Red Dust Road
The ever-popular Jackie Kay will read from her memoir about her ultimately successful search for her birth parents. We may also hear a few poems from her brand new collection Fiere along the way. Jackie’s preview of her memoir in the intimate setting of Dove Cottage at our recent Women’s Poetry Festival had people falling off their chairs with laughter. A great finish to the weekend!