Box Office 0870 343 1001 www.sundaytimes ... - Blackwell's

4 SATURDAY
APRIL 2009
Mark Easton, Andrew O’Hagan
and Kieron O’Hara
Chaired by Martin Bell
Is Britain in Decline
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12pm / Garden Marquee, Christ Church / £8.00
With declining educational and moral standards,
rising crime rates, economic stagnation and loss
of personal freedom, is Britain now a nation in
decline, or are we over-critical of our country
Discussing these issues will be Booker-shortlisted
novelist Andrew O’Hagan, Dr Kieron O’Hara, whose
Spy in a Coffee Machine looks at the effects of
new digital technology on personal freedom, and
the BBC’s Home Affairs Editor, Mark Easton,
who describes his job as ‘sitting on a cloud and
reporting how Britain is changing’.
Michael Holroyd and
Tiziana Masucci
Violet Trefusis
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12pm / Newman Rooms, St Aldates / £7.50
Violet Trefusis is best known for her torrid love affair
with Vita Sackville-West (the subject of Nigel Nicolson’s
famous Portrait of a Marriage) and also for Virginia
Woolf’s fictional pen portrait of her as the exotic
Sasha in Orlando. Has Violet been imprisoned
by the Bloomsbury Group Or is she an unjustlyneglected
writer whose novels, sometimes written in
French, sometimes in English, should be rediscovered
by a new generation of readers Her Italian translator
Tiziana Masucci discusses with the biographer Michael
Holroyd Violet Trefusis’s life and work - including
her retaliatory portraits of both Vita and Virginia.
Sponsored by The Arts Club
Christ Church Cathedral Spire
Harry Mount 708
A Lust for Window Sills:
A Lover’s Guide to
British Buildings from
Portcullis to Pebble Dash
12pm / Festival Room 1, Christ Church / £7.50
Ever wondered why the floors in our terraced houses
are different heights Did you know you can date a
building by its window sills Harry Mount, author
of Amo, Amas, Amat, takes us on an engrossing,
enlightening and wide-ranging tour of the nation’s
architecture, exploring the quirks, foibles and tiny
details that make our buildings unique, and revealing
the fascinating stories and anecdotes behind them
along the way.
Sponsored by Purcell Miller Tritton
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