Lynne's monthly column - July 2006

Ways With Words

I usually have to follow Literary Festivals from a distance. Hay-on-Wye, Cheltenham all seem to fall at the wrong time of year for me to get organised with time off work and making travel plans. However there is one festival that makes it very easy for me and it’s about to happen.

July is Ways With Words at Dartington, near Totnes in Devon and just a short drive from me across high Dartmoor, surely one of the most beautiful roads in the country?
I have been going to Ways With Words for years now, usually just a day here and there throughout the 10 days the festival runs but last year I decided to do something different and booked to stay for 4 days and award myself a sort of Literary Retreat. I have lived off those memories through the winter and so this little sojourn has become an annual gift to me.

Dartington Hall lends itself to a literary festival like no other place on earth. The setting is quite breathtaking. As you approach the imposing arched gatehouse for the first time, nothing can quite prepare you for what you see as you walk through. It really is like walking, Narnia wardrobe style, out of one world and into another. The Festival is sponsored by a national newspaper and you can pick up a free copy each day but to be honest I don’t want to be reminded of the real world while I’m in this paradise.

A spacious, lawned quadrangle surrounded by low, wisteria and rose clad courtyard buildings and the Great Medieval Hall ahead of you. Wander around the back of the Hall itself and you see spread out before you acres of magnificent gardens and woodland all at your disposal. It’s difficult to describe the enormous grassed and terraced medieval tilting yard with the woodland soaring up above it and the vast herbaceous borders all at their best in early July just in time for the Festival. There is just so much space the place never feels crowded, you can settle yourself down for a quiet read or a doze in between events whenever you feel like it. There’s another bonus which I’m loath to mention but will, the sun always shines on Ways With Words.

The programme arrives in early May and that’s when the excitement begins. Usually a mixture of well-known and lesser known speakers and days themed around subjects like History, Women’s Lives, Fiction, Countryside and so much more. I am never disappointed and always come away with some new routes for my reading through the winter months ahead and armfuls of books courtesy of the bookshop set up on site, and of course the lure of the author signing a copy of a book I’ve just heard them talking about.

There were some highlights for me last year that remain etched in my memory. Michael Buerk talking to Claire Bertschinger, the Red Cross nurse he had filmed during the famine in Ethiopia back in the 1980’s; that interview was seen by Bob Geldof and Band Aid happened. Tim Collins spoke about ‘that speech’ to the troops on the eve of the Iraqi conflict. Julia Blackburn gave an emotionally charged talk on her biography of the jazz singer Billie Holiday, and an electric and spine tingling moment when she read from her book to a recording of Billie singing in the background. I heard Fay Weldon, Lyndall Gordon,Hilary Mantel, Flora Fraser, Alexander Waugh (hysterically funny, makes me smile now to think about it…”you’re all falling asleep, OK I’m going to talk about sex for 5 minutes) and so many others spoke passionately about their writing.

One of the pleasures of Dartington is the intimate atmosphere, writers wander around as transfixed by the surroundings as you are and it’s always possible to stop and chat to them. No one is noticeably whisked off by minders or deemed unapproachable, so over the years I’ve had some lovely conversations with many of them (well lovely for me, they were probably thinking “who on earth is this woman?”)
Ben Okri, Margaret Drabble, Penelope Lively, Salley Vickers, the late Bernice Rubens, Sarah Dunant and memorably the late Clare Boylan, all seeming to enjoy the informal contact with their readers (or perhaps grinning and bearing it but it didn’t show).

The prize winning speaker for me last year was Roy Hattersley, retired politician and President of the Ways With Words Festival. We often passed the time of day as we strolled past each other in the gardens, he had Buster with him and Buster was having a great time. Roy spoke to a Great Hall literally packed to the rafters about his book, The Edwardians, and I was spellbound. No notes and yet his delivery was eloquent and diverse, he would take us off on a tangent and bring us right back to where he’d left off before taking us off somewhere else. I would have been fumbling and saying “now where were we” every third line, not Roy. There’s the great politician for you, totally in command of his material. I will go and listen to him talk about anything, quite frankly he could even make Refuse Collection in all its Diverse Forms sound interesting. This year he is talking on William Shakespeare and The Idea of England and I can’t wait.

I’ve also booked for Susan Hill and Helen Slavin talking about Helen’s debut novel, The Extra Large Medium, Sarah Waters on The Nightwatch, Sarah Dunant on In the Company of the Courtesan, Julie Myerson, Jill Dawson, Debbie Taylor, Carmen Callil on their latest books, Kathryn Hughes on Mrs Beeton, Jane Glover on Mozart’s Women, Pamela Norris on Passionate Women and more.

Take my advice, if you love books hi thee to a literary festival near you soon, you won’t regret it, and if you can’t, don’t worry, I’ll be reporting back from this one here next month.

Lynne Hatwell
July 2006