Everything you need to know about Bridport Literary Festival

Bridport Literary Festival kicks off this Sunday, with four events at the Electric Palace, an afternoon of poetry and music at Sladers Yard, West Bay, and a performance by young people at Bridport Arts Centre.

The festival stars at Sladers Yard at 12pm with Ciderhouse Rebellion musicians Adam Summerhayes and Murray Grainger joined by Adam’s daughter, the award-winning poet Jessie Summerhayes.

They collectively create an immersive and expansive collection of folk-poems, woven between and around spontaneously created music.

Their latest work, Tales of Colonsay, is inspired by stunning landscapes and awe-inspiring seascapes – a brand new journey in spoken word, deeply connected to the land.

At the same time at the Palace, journalist and academic Will Hutton will be taking about his book, This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain.

He will reflect on where both the left and right have gone wrong in the past year of political upheaval, and how we can now rebuild a new, better Britain.

At 2pm at the Palace, historian Giles Milton tells the incredible story of The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance That Won The War. He explains how a select team of British and Americans, by befriending Stalin, kept the fraught Allied alliance on track and forge a path to victory.

Giles Milton publicity shot (Image: BridLit)

This is followed at 4pm by bestselling nature writer John Lewis-Stempel with England: A Major Natural History in 12 Habitats, where he will capture the essence of England.

Revered actor Dame Harriet Walter is at the Palace at 6pm, talking about She Speaks: Shakespeare’s Women. She imagines what Lady Macbeth, Gertrude, Cleopatra, Juliet and Ophelia were really thinking and reveals that Shakespeare is very much a man for all times as well as his time.

Then The Bank of Dreams and Nightmares take over Bridport Arts Centre for a special event, Resonate, of readings, poetry and performance. It starts at 7pm. Admission is £5 and under-19s get in free.

Highlights during the week include former prison governor Ian Acheson’s timely talk about Screwed:  Britain’s Prison Crisis and How to Escape It, on Monday, November 4 at The Bull Ballroom; Daisy Dunn on The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World Through the Women Who Shaped It, at The Sir John Colfox Academy on Thursday, November 7at 2pm, and Daisy Goodwin and Diva, about the tempestuous life of opera star Maria Callas, on Saturday 9 November at 12 noon at Electric Palace.

Daisy Goodwin publicity shot (Image: BridLit)

The festival runs for a week in various venues across Bridport and then, on Wednesday, November 20 at 2.30pm, legendary dancer and entertainer Wayne Sleep takes to the Electric Palace stage.

In his memoir, Just Different, Wayne looks back on the extraordinary times he has lived through. He’s danced with ballet legends Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn, partied with Freddie Mercury and danced with Princess Diana, who became a close friend, but he has always felt like an outsider.

Behind the glitz and glamour, he reveals the difficulties for a working-class, gay man in handling the prejudices of his generation and living through the Aids epidemic.

Full details of all BridLit events can be found on the website  https://www.bridlit.com/.

Tickets are still available for these events and can be bought on the website or by contacting Bridport Tourist Information Centre, either in person or by calling 01308 424901.