Lowdham Book Festival

I have been to the Lowdham Book Festival (where I spoke last year) today. The final Saturday is a good day to choose as all the events are free.

The festival takes over the village, with events in the village hall and two marquees behind, the Women's Insitute and the Indpendent Primitive Methodist Chapel.

I listened to three talks and came away with two books.

The first talk was by John Lucas, who was discussing his memoir of the 1950s Next Year Will be Better. He argued (rightly, I think) that it was a far more colourful decade than we have been taught to believe.

Then I listened to Jasper Fforde discussing his novels. And finally I heard the cartoonist Brick discussing, his loosely autobiographical graphic novel Depresso. It tells the story of a breakdown and was recently reviewed on Forbidden Planet.

The two books I bought were The Keys of Heaven, David Sutcliffe's biography of the 19th century Christian Socialist the Revd Charles Marson, and The Newgate Jig, a terrific crime novel set in the world of Victorian popular theatre by Ann Featherstone.