Busy programme for the third Arundel Literary Festival

A busy programme has been confirmed for the third Arundel Literary Festival.

Transcript

00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely this

00:06morning to speak to Mike Carey. Now Mike, you've got the third Arundel Literary Festival

00:11coming up at the Victoria Institute, running from March the 6th to March the 8th. It's

00:16something that's established itself pretty quickly, hasn't it? And you found out quite

00:21quickly there was an appetite for this, didn't you, in the first year?

00:25Absolutely, yes. Arundel is a very art-oriented town, so it didn't come as a huge surprise,

00:31but it's nice for that to be confirmed and affirmed. Yes, we've developed from a single

00:38day in our first year to a three-day festival, which runs from 11 in the morning till 6 at

00:45night, with five different speakers coming from all sorts of different aspects of the

00:50literary world. And then three evening concerts, events, I should say, one of which is a film,

00:58National Theatre Live streaming film, one of which is a mixed arts, poetry, art and

01:03music celebration. And the third is a music and somebody is reading the Ballad of Reading

01:10Jail, actually, which is a 35-minute solo exposition. So it should be interesting.

01:17It sounds great. And the lovely thing is you're in the Victoria Institute, obviously,

01:21but the point is that you are building on the original intentions of that building,

01:25the reason why it was built by doing this, aren't you, in a sense?

01:29Yes, indeed. Yes, it was set up as a charity to further the education of the people of

01:37Arundel and its visitors. So we're trying to do that.

01:42In the spirit of the building. And last year, slightly more intense,

01:45you had slightly more speakers, slightly fewer this year, probably a slightly more

01:50relaxed atmosphere this year. Yes, we've given a bit more breathing space

01:53between the sessions rather than back to back. You don't need time to absorb what you've

01:59heard and have a cup of coffee and chat to people about it. And by the books, obviously,

02:06the authors bring their own books, always source them from the publishers, and they're

02:11very happy to sign them, obviously. So, yes, we've got only five speakers per day,

02:18each person speaking for about an hour. That sounds manageable.

02:21Wouldn't it? Yes, it is manageable.

02:23Absolutely. And presumably you get your own momentum with the festival. Does it

02:28get easier to find the speakers each year, do you think?

02:32I think we have more choice as a consequence of becoming better.

02:38Yes. And so we try to provide a nice sort of balanced variety of literary matter to consume.

02:46Fantastic. Well, I hope it goes extremely well. It sounds a great event running from March the

02:516th to the 8th in Arundel, the Arundel Literary Festival at the Victoria Institute.

02:57Lovely to speak to you, Mike. Thanks. Great.