Welcome to our programme

Book Arts Workshop II

Christina Borsi, the artist behind the beautiful Cocoon Scribble hand-bound books, joins us for an intimate book arts workshop. Using sumptuous fabrics and luxury papers create your own range of unique journals. Perfect to treasure or gift.

Bruce Crowther

How To Have a Fairtrade Christmas

The Fairtrade mark is 15 years old this year. Find out how to indulge yourself this festive season with guilt-free shopping that helps producers both local and global. The founder of Britain’s first Fairtrade town in Garstang, Lancashire, advises on how to make your pound go further. Chaired by Kitty Corrigan of Country Living Magazine.

Jann Parry talks to Revel Guest

Different Drummer: The Life of Kenneth Macmillan

The great choreographer’s ballets are in constant demand by world-famous companies, particularly Romeo and Juliet, Manon and Mayerling. But he was tormented by an acute sense of being an outsider, at odds with the institutions in which he worked and their conventional expectations of what ballet should be.

Tom Holland

Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom

The historian offers a stunning, panoramic account of the two centuries on either side of the apocalyptic year 1000. This was the age of Canute, William the Conqueror and Pope Gregory VII, of Vikings, monks and serfs, of the earliest castles and the invention of knighthood, and of the primal conflict between church and state.

Dan Cruickshank

The Secret History of Georgian London: How the Wages of Sin Shaped the Capital

Georgian London evokes images of elegant buildings and fine art, but it was also a city where prostitution was rife, houses of ill repute widespread, and many tens of thousands of people dependent in some way or other on the wages of sin. The sex industry was, in fact, a very powerful force indeed, and in The Secret History of Georgian London Dan Cruickshank compellingly shows how it came to affect almost every aspect of life and culture in the capital.

John Mitchinson & John Lloyd

The QI Book of the Dead

The creators of the hit BBC1 show present The QI Book of the Dead, which is mostly about life. From Epicurus and Genghis Khan to Frida Kahlo and Richard Feynman, a chance to celebrate the wisdom of the dead, to learn from their mistakes, and to marvel at their bad taste in clothes.

Chavo

The Last Night Party

Dance the festival away to the magical Balkan–Klezmer–Romany band. Their sound has an electrifying energy generated by fast Gypsy violin, high-speed mandolins, and a machine-like rhythm section of guitar, bass and accordion. They are ambassadors of good old knees-up dance music. With killer Romany cocktails.