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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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