Ali Sparkes Saturday 14th March, 2pm Great Hall, Oundle School Tickets £5
How does a girl who was rubbish at reading end up an award winning Author? Awardwinning children’s author Ali Sparkes, whose book, Frozen In Time, won the Blue Peter Award in 2010, explains her weird and wonky path to authordom. Come along and fi nd out. You will need to help out with sound effects... and not mind being hypnotised! Ali is a prolifi c author with many books published for several age groups including The Shapeshifter series, Out of this World, Unleashed, Dark Summer, Frozen in Time, Wishful Thinking, Destination Earth, the Monster Makers series, and SWITCH series. Professor Jules Pretty, The Edge of Extinction: Travels with Enduring People in Vanishing Lands Saturday 14th March, 7.30-8.30pm St Peter’s Church, Oundle, PE8 4AL Tickets £7 (£5) The natural world is rapidly diminishing. Traditions and cultures are dying out. Extinction has denied many human groups and languages a future and it now threatens the ways of life of the affl uent. In his powerful new book, Jules Pretty takes us on a personal journey to show us why we should look again at those who still live close to nature, the land and sea. The lessons these disappearing communities have to teach us may well be ones that we later come to rely on.
Travelling from New Zealand to the USA via countries that include China, Finland, the UK and Canada, Jules Pretty crosses deserts, mountains, steppes, marshes and farmland in order to discover life and change in twelve different environments and cultures across the globe. Immersing himself in the lives of the communities he meets, he discovers people proud of their relationships with the land and sea and only willing to join the modern world on their own terms.
Jules Pretty is Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex. Jules is a Fellow of the Society of Biology and the Royal Society of Arts, former Deputy-Chair of the government’s Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE), and has served on advisory committees for a number of government departments and the Royal Society. He received an OBE from the UK government in 2006 for services to sustainable agriculture.
R M Cartmel Wine and Crime: The Richebourg Affair Friday 27th March, 7.30pm The Queen Victoria Hall, Oundle Tickets £10
R M Cartmel talks about his new crime novel and discusses the wines of Burgundy with Philip Amps from Amps Fine Wines of Oundle. After a long and successful career as a GP in Peterborough, R M Cartmel decided to dedicate himself to his other passion of writing. The Richebourg Affair is the fi rst part of a trilogy and is Cartmel’s debut novel. It combines two of his lifelong loves: writing and traveling throughout France’s exquisite Burgundy region. Commandant Charlemagne Truchaud of the Paris police is used to dealing with villainy and violence in the French capital. But when he is summoned home to Burgundy on the death of his brother, Truchaud faces the hard realization that crime isn’t limited to the big city. There is something sinister simmering under the serene surface of the quaint and quiet village of Nuits-Saint Georges. Beneath this magnifi cent setting lurks an unseemly underbelly of theft, fraud, deceit… and cold-blooded murder. Come and hear about this tantalizing tale that unfolds in the vineyards of Burgundy, sample some wines and savour the conversation, you’ll fi nd that The Richebourg Affair is as marvellous as the wine!
Stephen Bates The Poisoner – The Life and Crimes of Victorian England’s Most Notorious Doctor Friday 24th April, 7.45-8.45pm St Peter’s Church, Oundle, PE8 4AL Tickets £7 (£5)
In 1856, a baying crowd of over 30,000 people gathered outside Stafford prison to watch the execution of a village doctor from Staffordshire, Dr William Palmer. The fi rst thoroughly documented account of one of the most notorious, but now largely-forgotten, modern serial killers and prolifi c medical murderers in British history. The Poisoner takes a fresh look at Palmer’s life and disputed crimes, ultimately asking ‘just how evil was this man?’
With original research, including previously undiscovered letters, confi dential legal documents from the case, and new forensic examination of the victims, Stephen Bates presents not only an astonishing and controversial revision of Palmer’s entire story, but takes the reader into the very psyche of a killer. The Poisoner is more than a true crime story and a biography; it is a great Gothic Victorian melodrama. Stephen Bates is a journalist whose career includes the BBC, Daily Telegraph, and Daily Mail. He worked at The Guardian for 22 years, reporting from more than 40 countries. He is the author of God's Own Country: Religion and Politics in the USA and A Church at War: Anglicans and Homosexuality.
Tickets to all the above event are available from the Oundle Box Offi ce, 4 New Street, Oundle. Open hours: 10am to 1pm, Monday to Friday. Tel 01832 274734, online at www.oundlefestival.org.uk
Any queries call Helen on 07743 988 181 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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