St Hilda’s Writers’ Day, Oxford Literary Festival 2017
On International Women’s Day, we at St Hilda’s College can proudly reflect on our past. In 1893 we were the last of the Oxford colleges established to give women the right to continue their education. Today, as a fully mixed college since 2008, we remain true to our pioneering roots.
At the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival, we will proudly introduce some of our former students and Fellows as participants in St Hilda’s Writers’ Day. Some may know St Hilda’s as the University of Oxford’s ‘media college’. We own this reputation in part to our Writers’ Day at the Literary Festival. Now in its eighth year, this tradition began as an idea from our alumna and children’s books critic at the Sunday Times Nicolette Jones, to showcase College members’ achievements.
Since 2010, St Hilda’s Media Network has organised our Writers’ Day. Speakers at the inaugural Writers’ Day included alumnae Victoria Hislop, Anita Mason and Adele Geras on fiction and Sue Lloyd Roberts, Sarah Baxter and Bettany Hughes on a journalism panel. Our Honorary Fellow P D James talked about alumna Barbara Pym, and alumnae Christine Finn and Gaynor Arnold spoke on the wives of famous men (notably Dickens and Priestley). Participants in subsequent festivals have included the newsreader and journalist Zeinab Badawi, BAFTA-winning actress Katherine Parkinson, and novelist Hannah Rothschild.
This year’s Literary Festival is a particularly momentous one for St Hilda’s College. We are proud to have on our programme a discussion on ‘The War on Women’ by Sue Lloyd Roberts CBE. Sue, our alumna and pioneering video journalist and reporter, died of leukaemia in October 2015. Her daughter Sarah Morris completed her mother’s last book and will talk about it here with Sue’s husband, BBC producer Nick Guthrie. This session will be chaired by broadcast and medical journalist Sue Saville.
In 2017 our day will be held on 1 April, with a seriously impressive our line-up. Our theme is ‘Families’ and we are looking forward to first welcoming Wendy Meddour and Mina May. Mother and daughter, author and illustrator, they will discuss their internationally best-selling Wendy Quill books. The series first hit the shelves in 2012 when Mina was 11 years old.
Next up, Rosalind Jana and her mother Polly Peters will discuss Rosalind’s book, ‘Notes on Being Teenage’ and debate whether writing runs in the family. Claire Armitstead of the Guardian and the Observer will chair the discussion by Rosalind, an award-winning author, poet, journalist, speaker and style blogger and Polly, a poet, playwright, performer, and children’s author.
Chaired by Nicolette Jones, actor and writer, father and daughter, Oliver Ford Davies and Miranda Emmerson will discuss his study ‘Shakespeare’s Fathers and Daughters’, and her recent novel ‘Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars’.
We have more reasons now than ever before to celebrate our links with the Festival. The Bodley Medal will be awarded to William Boyd, who taught English Literature at St Hilda’s between 1980 and 1983. It was during this time that his first novel, ‘A Good Man in Africa’, was published. We have fond memories of the 2012 Festival, when Mr Boyd was a speaker at our St Hilda’s Writers’ Day. In the same year, he received the honorary fellowship of Oxford Literary Festival.
Our alumna Bettany Hughes will discuss her latest book ‘Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities’ on 25 March. On the same day, Stephen Isserlis, Patron of our Jacqueline du Pré Music Building, will, with Simon Callow, revisit Robert Schumann’s Advice to Young Musicians.
You can find out more about what is planned here or by contacting Programme Director Triona Adams, Triona.adams@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk. We hope to see you there!
Written by: Claire Harvey
Communications Manager, St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford
Contact: claire.harvey@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk
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