Online Booking
For most events, you can book your tickets online through… Swindon Tickets
Go to the event of your choice and click the link.
Note. If there is no link, you can book by phoning the number beside the event. In fact, you can book for all events by telephone.
Clare Balding
Mon May 6
Ben Okri
Tue May 14
Judy Finnigan
Thu May 9
A C Grayling
Thu May 9
P D James
Wed May 8
Festival Finale
Sat May 18
Kate Humble
Wed May 8
Satish Kumar
Thu May 16
Esther Rantzen
Tue May 7
Nick Ross
Wed May 15
Stella Rimington
Tue May 7
Children’s Day
Sun May 12
Welcome to the twentieth
Swindon Festival of Literature!
Even though we are now twenty, a properly grown up festival, our founding passion remains rooted, in love of the word, good reading, exploratory talk, finding out about things, making connections, and the notion that life is for learning, and, where possible, pleasure.
We like sharing new ideas, hearing old stories, listening to good readings, discovering new writing, pursuing pleasure, meeting people, and getting together in Swindon to enjoy things well-thought, well-written, and well-said.
If you like the idea of Literature celebrated this way, please read on.
You will discover how it is at the Swindon Festival of Literature. Writers meet readers and readers meet writers. We talk, we listen, we think, and we drink, a little. As a result, enjoyable, interesting, challenging, unpredictable, funny, and even memorable things happen.
In its attempt to lure you along, this year’s Festival programme includes novelists, poets, philosophers, scientists, storytellers, broadcasters, historians, biographers, adventurers, comedians, musicians, artists, and even activists.
For a full fortnight, there will be events daily, at midday, teatime, and in the evening, carefully spaced and placed to enable you to attend as many as your own timetable and stamina will allow.
For a full at-a-glance list of authors, events, times, and dates, see List of Events 2013.
And then, mark your own diary, so that from 6th to 18th May you know where to be, if you want to be meeting, greeting, and listening to writers, thinkers, entertainers, and fellow Festival followers.
Please read on, and come along.
Matt Holland
Festival Director/Organiser
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