Cambridge Literary Festival – Winter Programme

Cambridge Literary Festival has put together a stellar line-up for the city’s much loved winter programme that brings award winning novelists, politicians, biographers, campaigners and historians to the heart of the city for a one day literary extravaganza.

Highlights this year include: festival patron Ali Smith, Bailey’s Women’s Prize and Goldsmith’s Prize for Fiction winner Eimear McBride, Irish master story-tellers John Boyne and Donal Ryan and New York Times bestselling author Caroline Moorehead. Also talking is Orwell and Ondaatje Prize-winning Alan Johnson, award winning writer Barbara Taylor, ‘Britain’s greatest and most ferocious interviewer’ Lynn Barber and Clare Balding.

Concluding the Festival’s ‘Legacy of War commemorations’ for 2014, Shirley Williams & Mark Bostridge will reflect on Testament of Youth, the classic memoir of the First World War written by her mother Vera Brittain.

Political debate will again hit the stand at this year’s festival when the Union Debating chamber will be host to a discussion between Owen Jones and Shami Chakrabarti about the future of the establishment, democracy and liberty. Campaigning remains high on the agenda with two young social media maestro’s; Feminist Laura Bates will talk about her phenomenal ‘Everyday Sexism’ project, while Jack Munroe will share her recipe for surviving recession as a single parent and talk about her bestselling book A Girl Called Jack. Biographer John Campbell discusses ex-politician and public figure Roy Jenkins, while Rachel Holmes explores the revolutionary life and times of Eleanor Marx in her much garlanded biography.