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Swindon Festival Of Literature
Swindon Festival of Literature is an annual literature festival held in Swindon, Wiltshire, England, which was founded in 1994 by Matt Holland of Lower Shaw Farm. It takes place in early May. History The festival was founded in 1994 by Matt Holland, who still organises the festival. Holland works at Lower Shaw Farm, an arts centre in Swindon. The festival was initially supported by the Chamber of Commerce and a donation from Dominic Winter, a local book auctioneer. In 2025 it is sponsored by Swindon Borough Council, Swindon Artswords, and Lower Shaw Farm. The festival, which takes place in early May, typically begins with a 'Dawn Chorus' event at 5.30am on the first day. Events The festival typically includes creative writing workshops, poetry in the park, flash fiction slams, storytelling walks, and film nights. Speakers at the first event included former Labour leader Michael Foot, and historian and civil servant Clive Ponting. Other well-known writers or speakers who have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Literature
Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, Play (theatre), plays, and poetry, poems. It includes both print and Electronic literature, digital writing. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed.; see also Homer. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment. It can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role. Literary criticism is one of the oldest academic disciplines, and is concerned with the literary merit or intellectual significance of specific texts. The study of books and other texts as artifacts or traditions is instead encompassed by textual criticism or the history of the book. "Literature", as an art form, is sometimes used synonymously with literary fiction, fiction written with the goal of artistic merit, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Rosen
Michael Wayne Rosen (born 7 May 1946) is an English children's author, poet, presenter, political columnist, broadcaster, activist, and academic, who is a professor of children's literature in the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has written over 200 books for children and adults. Select books include '' We're Going on a Bear Hunt'' (1989) and '' Sad Book'' (2004). He served as Children's Laureate from June 2007 to June 2009. He won the 2023 PEN Pinter Prize, awarded by English PEN, for his "fearless" body of work. Early life and education Michael Wayne Rosen was born into a Jewish family in Harrow, Middlesex, on 7 May 1946. His ancestors were Jews from an area that is now Poland, Romania, and Russia, and his family had connections to The Workers Circle and the Jewish Labour Bund. His middle name was given to him in honour of Wayne C. Booth, a literary critic who was billeted with his father at Shrivenham American University. Rosen' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Jefferies
John Richard Jefferies (6 November 1848 – 14 August 1887) was an English nature writer, noted for his depiction of English rural life in essays, books of natural history, and novels. His childhood on a small Wiltshire farm had a great influence on him and provides the background to all his major works of fiction. Jefferies's corpus of writings covers a range of genres and topics, including ''Bevis'' (1882), a classic children's book, and ''After London'' (1885), a work of science fiction. For much of his adult life he suffered from tuberculosis, and his struggles with the illness and with poverty also play a role in his writing. Jefferies valued and cultivated an intensity of feeling in his experience of the world around him, a cultivation that he describes in detail in ''The Story of My Heart'' (1883). This work, an introspective depiction of his thoughts and feelings about the world, gained him the reputation of a nature mystic at the time, but it is his success in conveyi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author. He is an Oxford fellow, emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Professor for Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008, and is on the advisory board of the University of Austin. His book ''The Selfish Gene'' (1976) popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and coined the word ''meme''. Dawkins has won several academic and writing awards. A vocal Atheism, atheist, Dawkins is known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. He wrote ''The Blind Watchmaker'' (1986), in which he argues against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a creator deity based upon the Evolution of biological complexity, complexity of living organisms. Instead, he describes evolutionary processes as analogous to a ''blind'' watc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muir Gray
Sir John Armstrong Muir Gray is a British physician, who has held senior positions in Screening (medicine), screening, public health, information management. and value in healthcare. He was the Chief knowledge officer, Chief Knowledge Officer for EXI, a digital health therapeutic company prescribing exercise to people with or at risk of up to 23 long-term health conditions, and is Chief Wellbeing Officer for Learning with Experts, a health related online learning company working with the NHS. He was director of Research and Development for Anglia and Oxford List of NHS Regional Health Authorities (before 1996), Regional Health Authority and supported the United Kingdom Centre of the Cochrane Collaboration in promoting evidence-based medicine. He held the positions of director at the UK National Screening Committee, during which he helped pioneer Britain's breast and cervical cancer screening programmes, and National Library for Health, and director of Clinical Knowledge Proces ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nigel Biggar
Nigel John Biggar, Baron Biggar (born 14 March 1955) is a British Anglican priest, theologian, ethicist, and life peer. From 2007 to 2022, he was Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford. Early life and education Nigel John Biggar was born on 14 March 1955 in Castle Douglas, Scotland. He was educated at Monkton Combe School, a private school near Bath, Somerset. He studied modern history at Worcester College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1976. As per tradition, his BA was promoted to a Master of Arts degree in 1988. Biggar attended the University of Chicago, graduating with a Master of Arts degree in religious studies in 1980; and the evangelical Regent College in Vancouver, graduating with a Master of Christian Studies in 1981. He returned to the University of Chicago to study for his doctorate in Christian theology and completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1986. Career On his return to Oxford in 1985, Biggar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Higgs
John Higgs is an English writer, novelist, journalist and cultural historian. The work of Higgs has been published in the form of novels (under the pseudonym JMR Higgs), biographies and works of cultural history. In particular, Higgs has written about the 1960s counterculture, exemplified by writers, artists and activists such as Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Alan Moore and The KLF. Career Higgs began as a director of children’s television and was BAFTA-nominated for pre-school animation before going on to create and produce the BBC Radio 4 quiz ''X Marks the Spot''. At Climax Group studios he was videogame producer for games that appeared on Xbox, PS2 and GameCube including '' Crash 'n' Burn'' and '' ATV Quad Power Racing''. Higgs has written for ''The Guardian'', ''The Independent'', ''The Daily Mirror'' and '' Mojo'' magazine. As an author, Higgs has written the novels ''The First Church on the Moon'' and ''The Brandy of the Damned''; biographies of Timothy Leary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claire Fox
Claire Regina Fox, Baroness Fox of Buckley (born 5 June 1960), is a British writer, journalist, lecturer and politician who sits in the House of Lords as a non-affiliated life peer. She is the director and founder of the think tank the Academy of Ideas (formerly Institute of Ideas). A lifelong Eurosceptic, she was previously a member of the Trotskyist British Revolutionary Communist Party but later began identifying as a libertarian. She became a registered supporter of the Brexit Party shortly after its formation and was elected as an MEP in the 2019 European Parliament election. She was nominated for a peerage by the Boris Johnson-led Conservative government in 2020, despite her past opposition to the existence of the House of Lords. Early life and career Fox was born in 1960 to Irish Catholic parents, John Fox and Maura Cleary. She spent her early years in Buckley, Wales. After attending St Richard Gwyn Catholic High School in Flint, she studied at the University of War ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kate Adie
Kathryn Adie (born 19 September 1945) is an English journalist. She was Chief News Correspondent for BBC News between 1989 and 2003, during which time she reported from war zones around the world. She retired from the BBC in early 2003 and works as a freelance presenter with ''From Our Own Correspondent'' on BBC Radio 4. Early life Adie was born in Whitley Bay, Northumberland. She was adopted as a baby by a Sunderland pharmacist and his wife, John and Maud Adie, and grew up there. Her birth parents were Irish Catholics and she made contact with her birth family in 1993, establishing a loving relationship lasting more than 20 years with her birth mother "Babe" Dunnet. She failed to trace her birth father John Kelly, or his family from Waterford, despite public appeals, she knows only that he had a brother (her blood uncle) Michael. She had an independent school education at Sunderland Church High School, and in 1963–1964 travelled to Berlin, including the Soviet Sector ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde (born 11 January 1961) is an English novelist whose first novel, '' The Eyre Affair'', was published in 2001. He is known mainly for his '' Thursday Next'' novels, but has also published two books in the loosely connected '' Nursery Crime'' series, two in the '' Shades of Grey'' series and four in '' The Last Dragonslayer'' series. Fforde's books abound in literary allusions and wordplay, tightly scripted plots and playfulness with the conventional, traditional genres. They usually contain elements of metafiction, parody, and fantasy. Early life Fforde was born in London on 11 January 1961, the son of John Standish Fforde, the 24th Chief Cashier for the Bank of England. He is a grandson of the Polish political activist, Joseph Retinger, and a great-grandson of the journalist E. D. Morel. Fforde was educated at Dartington Hall School. In his first jobs, he worked as a focus puller in the film industry. He worked on a number of films, including '' The Trial'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pam Ayres
Pamela Ayres MBE (born 14 March 1947) is a British poet, comedian, songwriter and presenter of radio and television programmes. Her 1975 appearance on the television talent show '' Opportunity Knocks'' led to appearances on other TV and radio shows, a one-woman touring stage show and performing before the Queen. Early life Pam Ayres was born in Stanford in the Vale, Berkshire (now administered as part of Oxfordshire), the youngest of six children (having four elder brothers and a sister) of Stanley and Phyllis Ayres. Her father worked for 44 years as a linesman for the Southern Electricity Board, having been a sergeant in the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War. Ayres considered her upbringing "a country childhood"; she was raised in one of a row of small council houses. After leaving Faringdon Secondary School at the age of 15, she joined the Civil Service as a clerical assistant and worked at the Army (RAOC) Central Ordnance Depot in Bicester. She soon left and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Festival
A festival is an event celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, Melā, mela, or Muslim holidays, eid. A festival constitutes typical cases of glocalization, as well as the high culture-low culture interrelationship. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agriculture, agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern. Festivals often serve to fulfill specific communal purposes, especially in regard to commemoration or thanking to the gods, goddesses or saints: they are called patronal festivals. They may also provide entertainment, which was particularly important to local communities before the adven ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
