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Mark Maslin 537
Global Warming:
A Very Short Introduction
5.15pm (10 minutes ) / Blackwell Festival Bookshop
Meadows Marquee, Christ Church / Free
Global warming is arguably the most critical and
controversial issue facing the world in the twenty-first
century. Climate change expert Mark Maslin will
briefly examine the key topics in the environmental
debate - from the political controversies to proposed
solutions such as carbon trading.
There is something special about the
Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival;
quite apart from the extraordinary setting
of Christ Church in the spring blossom. In
this city for six hundred years people have
read and thought and written and defended
liberty of ideas, and the power of words
and argument breathes off the stones
themselves. Here, it just feels right to be
focusing on books. And when there is a cast
of speakers as diverse and powerful as this
festival pulls in, a synthesis of frivolity and
politics, poems and science and stories, the
result is heady stuff.
Libby Purves
THURSDAY APRIL 2009
William Fiennes,
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Philip Pullman, Katie Waldegrave,
and Frances Wilson
Passing on the Word
6pm / Hall, Christ Church / £7.50
‘Having been a teacher myself,’ writes Philip Pullman,
‘I know how writing – real writing, not the artificial
exercises produced for tests and examinations –
can liberate and strengthen young people’s sense of
themselves as almost nothing else can.’ For this reason,
he and a host of other leading authors – Romesh
Gunesekera, Mark Haddon, Helen Simpson and Zadie
Smith among them – have been lending their support
to First Story, a new initiative arranging and paying
for acclaimed writers to work in state schools across
the country as writers-in-residence. In an event
organised jointly by First Story and The Royal Society
of Literature, Pullman explains why children thrive on
creative writing, and invites Katie Waldegrave to tell
First Story’s story. William Fiennes, prize-winning
author of The Snow Geese and The Music Room, joins
acclaimed biographer Frances Wilson in discussing
the rewards and challenges of working in ‘difficult’
schools, and pupils from Highbury Grove School and
Cranford Community College read from their work,
and talk about it with Philip Pullman.
In association with Royal Society of Literature.
Tamasin Day-Lewis,
Kit Hesketh-Harvey,
Sam Leith, Harry Mount,
Sarah Sands and A N Wilson.
Quizmaster James Walton
The Reader’s Digest
Word Power Quiz
527
6pm / Garden Marquee, Christ Church / £8.00
Big names from the Reader’s Digest will test their
knowledge and love of words in the first ever Reader’s
Digest Word Power Quiz. Two teams will compete
to win the Word Power laurels and we expect the
competition to be fast and furious. Joining us are
Tamasin Day-Lewis (cookery writer, film-maker and
RD columnist), Kit Hesketh-Harvey (Kit of Kit and
the Widow, lyricist and RD contributor), Sam Leith
(author and RD contributor), Harry Mount (author
and editor of the Word Power column), Sarah Sands
(Editor-in-Chief of RD) and A N Wilson (author and
RD Literary critic). Our quizmaster is the writer and
broadcaster James Walton, another RD contributor,
who’ll be setting the questions and keeping score
will be RD researcher Rachael Adams.
And audience members will have a chance to
demonstrate some Word Power of their own with
prizes for the winners.
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