Sherborne Travel Writing Festival

Sherborne Travel Writing Festival

These last years have brought dramatic changes to our lives: Brexit, Covid lockdowns, soaring energy costs, climate change and the largest, most brutal war in Europe since 1945. While our horizons have drawn in, travel writers have continued to reach out, rediscovering and reinterpreting the world for a new age. On the 14-16 April 2023 weekend, ten of the UK’s finest travel writers will come to Dorset to transport readers, listeners, armchair and intrepid travellers alike towards the four corners of the globe.

I am thrilled to have been asked to curate the Sherborne Travel Writing Festival, the first travel literature festival to be held in the UK in recent years. At its heart is the idea – and the timely theme – of reaching for the horizon. To propel the journey, a stellar line up of top writers will take to the stage at the Powell Theatre. The acclaimed master wordsmith Colin Thubron will recount his thousand mile Amur river odyssey, undertaken by horse, train and boat at the tender age of 81. The Amur – the tenth longest river in the world – is the most densely fortified border on earth and almost unknown to us. Next, the effusive and entertaining John Gimlette will entice us away from the Russia-Chinese border to the fantastical landscapes, beguiling creatures and isolated tribes of tropical Madagascar. Tharik Hussain will talk about his “trailblazing” and “pioneering” debut book, Minarets in the Mountains: a Journey into Muslim Europe – a work that lets us see “the world through a wider lens”, according one of the many effusive reviews. In her new book Glowing Still, the bold and audacious Sara Wheeler traces the female travel writer’s journey, embracing with full heart the words of her heroine war correspondent Martha Gellhorn: “I do not wish to be good. I wish to be hell on wheels, or dead.”

Add into the mix the teen idol historian and Arabist Justin Marozzi whose Islamic Empires travels across the centuries to discover the 15 great cities that define a civilisation. In the Summer Isles, the award-winning Philip Marsden will cast off from shore to sail us up the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland in a wooden sloop. Then explorer John Blashford-Snell and the adventurer Sophy Roberts will tell all about their incredible travelling and writing lives.

Finally, as horizons are not only external, Jay Griffiths will explore the necessary wildness both within us and outside us. A fierce advocate of nature’s remaining wild places, her talk will range from the deepest experiences of life in the Peruvian Amazon to the whales who are offering friendship to humans in the Laguna San Ignacio.  Then on a journey into a different unknown, and towards the artist’s inner creative self, the Berlin-based Californian poet Demi Anter and I will unveil the secrets of David Bowie’s prolific Berlin sojourn, focusing both on the reinvented city and on his unassailable devotion to continual imaginative growth: never be complacent, never play to the gallery, always reach for the furthest horizon.

Special events and surprises will further enhance the weekend including Afternoon Tea with the Authors, catered by Comins Fine Tea Importers of Sturminster Newton and Bath. Charities involved will include Kashfi’s Children which gifts bilingual books to educate young people, aiming to foster tolerance, positive change and hope. Booking is now open and tickets are selling fast. So please mark the dates in your diary and try to join us for an unforgettable April weekend of spellbinding stories and bold adventures at the Sherborne Travel Writing Festival; reaching for new horizons, helping to reopen the world and reminding us of the richness of travel during this one and only life.