Step Into The Story

Literary Festivals are marvellous things. They are full of thought-provoking talks on topics that can give you endless story ideas, you can meet famous authors who make you feel great because it turns out they experience exactly the same writing process that you do, and you can give your credit card a really good work out. Over the past 10 days I’ve been attending various events at the Swindon Literature Festival. Now in its 16th year the festival is beautifully run by Matt Holland and always provides a fascinating programme with a great mix of writers, thinkers, philosophers and storytellers. Last week I heard the ever-entertaining Julian Clary talk about his latest novel, I went to a talk by Professor Kathleen Burk about the historical and current relationship between Britain and America and I went to a Philosophy Society discussion on the nature of friendship. And today I sallied forth to hear Claire Harman talking about her book Jane’s Fame, an exploration of how Jane Austen conque...

Last week David Starkey, who non-co-incidentally has a new TV programme starting this week on King Henry VIII, commented on the way in which history has been feminised by female authors who concentrate on Henry’s wives rather than on the King himself, a situation which Dr Starkey apparently finds “bizarre.” To quote: “But it's what you expect from feminised history, the fact that so many of the writers who write about this are women and so much of their audience is a female audience. Unhappy marriages are big box office.” Earlier this month Dr Starkey said he believed Henry VIII's handwriting showed he had an "emotionally incontinent" personality because he was brought up in a female-dominated household. Dr Starkey has never made much secret of the fact that he enjoys being outrageously provocative so I suppose this shouldn’t come as a surprise. What is a surprise is that these comments don’t strike me as being particularly scholarly. Let’s start with the emotionally...