I am beginning to think no Port Eliot Festival will ever be complete without my next guest. He was an absolute sensation at his last visit to the dovegreyreader tent, and to the festival at large...
...remember Brian Selznick..
author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck.
Brian is hugely entertaining, a vibrant (orange pants as I think you would say in America...we called them trousers of course) and gifted speaker who rolls with the crowd (not literally) and owns the floor (grass in this case) so we are all very excited that he agreed to come back for more....and just can't wait to hear his laugh, it is completely infectious.
Peter Beacham
Right, who is he I hear you all exclaiming...
Do you remember a book I wrote about last year called Down the Deep Lanes. I had borrowed it from the library and knowing I might never take it back I ordered my own copy. It is a wonderful evocation of many of the lesser seen aspects of Devon life and landscape.. things like cob and corrugated iron and chapels and belfrys, and the book has completely inspired my walking and my looking around me here in the Tamar Valley. When Cathy (St Germans) suggested that I might like to take a look at the new Pevsner Guide - The Buildings of England - Cornwall and placed this most sumptuous little tome in my hands, a chunky book rich in geographic and historic detail about every building of historic interest in Cornwall, I was really hoping my hand would stick to it and I wouldnt have to give it back. Cathy then suggested that as I would already be across the border from my homeland, perhaps I could think Cornwall and talk to the book's author... Peter Beacham.
'What not the Down the Deep Lanes Peter Beacham??' I asked somewhat incredulously.
And we checked, 'twas the very same. Thank you to Yale University Press who kindly sent me my own copy so expect a few experimental trips to Kernow with the book as our guide.
I think that makes eight guests revealed, one more to go and I am going to write more about Louise Carpenter and her book An Unlikely Countess - Lily Budge and the 13th Earl of Galloway in a post of its own.
Louise will be part of the Women's Lives theme in the tent, and I should add that the book was actually first published ten years ago and might now be out of print. I don't know how I missed it back in 2004, or how I have missed it since, or why I have never heard it mentioned, but hopefully all that is about to be rectified because it is a brilliant read. I have plenty to say about it and endless questions for Louise on the day.
Copies are being sought for the festival, but there are second-hand copies readily available on You Know Where...just saying. I am also hearing news of a forthcoming Kindle edition (surely this book deserves a second wind I said...and thankfully everyone agrees) so much more about the incredible Lily Budge soon.
So there you have it. I hope you will agree that is one fabulous line-up over the three days of the Festival starting on July 25th, and my thanks to Cathy St Germans and her team for making it all happen. If you can be there even better, tickets are on sale here, but if not have no fear, team dovegreyreader will be out and about reporting on it all here and I will introduce them properly soon. I do hear the Happy Campers have already packed their tent and are busy planning their schedule, and the Knit Angel is busy making the knitsuke various, she is getting some very unusual requests from me. To explain, the Knitsuke are the knitted or crocheted gifts of great relevance that we give to each speaker, here's the very first one we presented...Edmund de Waal's amber-eyed hare seen here making himself very at home in Edmund's studio.
So there you have it, that's us sorted.
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