Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow will be in discussion with BAFTA Award-winning director Peter Kosminsky about the TV adaptation of Wolf Hall as part of this autumn’s Marlborough Festival of Literature.
The pair will be discussing the TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s novels, named after the Tudor manor home of the Seymour family, near Burbage, where King Henry VIII first wooed his third wife Jane.
Highlights of the programme – which has yet to be officially launched but was teased on social media this week – include Salley Vickers, who will be headlining the first night of the festival as this year’s Golding Speaker.
Each year the LitFest hosts an annual Golding Speaker to highlight Marlborough’s long connection with the Nobel Laureate and Booker Prize winner, William Golding, at an event sponsored by the William Golding estate. Past Golding Speakers have included Louis de Bernières, Fay Weldon and Harold Jacobson.
Salley is bestselling author of books including Miss Garnett’s Angel, Mr Golightly’s Holiday, The Other Side of You and The Cleaner of Chartres. She was winner of the 2007 IMPAC Dublin award and judge of the Man Booker Prize in 2002.
Festival chairman, Jan Williamson, said: “We are thrilled that Salley Vickers will be appearing as this year’s Golding Speaker. Salley is best known for her first novel Miss Garnet’s Angel. She’s a novelist full of the unexpected, whose characters wrestle with life’s problems.”
Elsewhere in the programme is Zimbabwe-born Alexander McCall Smith, author of the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, which sold over 20 million copies; Scottish novelist and journalist Andrew O’Hagan, twice nominated for the Man Booker Prize; poet, and novelist and playwright Adam Thorpe, whose 2014 book, On Silbury Hill concentrates on his relationship with the neolithic Wiltshire mound during his time spent in Marlborough.
Guardian journalists John Lanchester – author of Whoops!: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No-One Can Pay, about the global financial crisis – and John Crace – author of Never Promised You a Rose Garden: A Short Guide to Modern Politics, the Coalition and the General Election – will also be in attendance.
Sci-fi author Jasper Fforde – whose Thursday Next novels are set in a parallel Swindon in the 1980s – historian Sean McGlyn, who will be talking about Magna Carta; naturalist, Springwatch producer Stephen Moss – who will be leading a walk around the Savernake Forest – historical non-fiction author Matthew Dennison, who will be speaking on the Life of Vita Sackville West; acclaimed translator Rosamund Bartlett, who will talk about her new translation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina; China writer Alexander Monro on The History of Paper; and Calcutta-born novelist Neel Mukherjee – author of the Man Booker Prize shortlisted The Lives of Others – are also on the bill.
“We’re very excited about this year’s programme,” said Jan. “There’s lots to interest everyone including history, biography, humour, poetry, politics, fantasy and prize-winning fiction. We’ve got some wonderful new writers as well as better known ones. We hope you’ll come and meet them later in the year.”
Marlborough LitFest takes place over the weekend of October 2 to 4. For details, log on to www.marlboroughlitfest.org