Chiswick Book Festival ‘Goes From Strength To Strength’
This year’s Festival hailed as ‘biggest and best yet’
Local authors
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Hundreds of people attended this year’s Chiswick Book Festival to hear speakers such as Cressida Cowell, Max Hastings, AN Wilson and Jane Garvey, with many proclaiming it ‘the best yet’.
The Festival ended last Wednesday at Gunnersbury Park and Museum in Ealing, the first time it has held an event outside Chiswick W4.
“Gunnersbury was one of two new venues this year, along with Orchard House School, and both proved great innovations” said Festival director Torin Douglas. “We also introduced a new Children’s Marquee and a second Cookbook marquee and we sold over 5,000 tickets – 25 per cent more than last year.”
There were full houses at Chiswick House, where AN Wilson spoke about Prince Albert: The Man Who Saved the Monarchy; at Waterstones for the Local Authors Party; in St Michael & All Angels Church, to hear children’s laureate Cressida Cowell, Max Hastings on the Dambusters raid and David Nott, The War Doctor; in the Parish Hall, for Ken Livingstone’s London and four WW2 events, The Mountbattens, Appeasing Hitler, and Our Man in New York; at Orchard House School, for Women In The Archers and A Woman of No Importance; at the ArtsEd Theatre, for Remembering Richard Briers; and the London Buddhist Vihara for the Young People’s Poetry Prizegiving and WB Yeats.
James O'Brien greets a fan
Torin said: “We had a huge range of speakers and subjects this year and the feedback from our audiences and speakers this year has been excellent, not least on social media where there are lots of comments, videos and photos.
"My personal highlights included the wonderful local authors party at Waterstones, where James O’Brien signed over 75 copies of his book, two speakers were in their 90s and we launched the new Read Well Book Club; the hilarious and moving Richard Briers evening, with his daughter Lucy, friend Peter Egan and biographer James Hogg; the patient queues of children and parents to have books signed by (and photos with) Cressida Cowell; hearing Chiswick artist Marthe Armitage, who is still designing wallpaper in her 80s, talking about the influence of William Morris and motherhood on her work; and the spontaneous outburst of applause at the Archers event when John Rowe, who plays Jim Lloyd, made a surprise appearance.
“We are very grateful to our wonderful speakers, our dozens of hard-working and friendly volunteers and our generous sponsors, most notably the team at Waterstones, who sold a great many books signed by this year’s authors” he said. You can see many photographs in the Festival’s Flickr albums
Sally Malin
Now in its eleventh year, the Festival is a non-profit-making community event, raising money for St Michael & All Angels Church, which hosts the event, and three other charities: InterAct Stroke Support, which employs actors to read to stroke patients at Charing Cross Hospital; Doorstep Library, which brings the magic of books into children’s homes in deprived parts of west London; and a new charity this year – The Felix Project, which distributes food to charities and schools that would otherwise go to waste.
September 23, 2019
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September 23, 2019
