Nicolas Ridley

ACTOR, SOLDIER, PLAYWRIGHT, FATHER; A personal portrait of Dad’s Army’s Private Godfrey

As a young man, Arnold Ridley was best known as the author of the classic comedy thriller, The Ghost Train. In old age, he played the much-loved Private Godfrey in television’s Dad’s Army. In his talk, Arnold’s son, Nicolas, paints an affectionate picture of a truly  remarkable man who lived an extraordinary life. The talk will include readings from Godfrey’s Ghost, Nicolas’s book about his father, and  will be followed by a question-and-answer session.

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Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival Appearance
N.B. All dates / times are provisional and subject to final confirmation

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About Nicolas Ridley
To everyone’s considerable relief, Nicolas Ridley did not follow in his parents’ footsteps and go on the stage. From his father and mother he inherited several ‘tricks of the trade’ but neither their looks nor their talent, and any lingering theatrical ambitions he may secretly have harboured were blighted by an inexplicable tendency, while performing, to adopt an ersatz Welsh accent and waddle about like a poorly-upholstered duck. Instead he became a random traveller, an uncertain teacher and an accidental publisher. He currently lives in London where he writes, very slowly, under different names.

Godfrey’s Ghost is, at its heart, the story of a father written by his son. As a young man, Arnold Ridley was chiefly known as the author of the long-running comedy thriller, The Ghost Train. Today he is remembered for his television performances as Private Godfrey, the oldest member of the Dad’s Army platoon. But Army came towards the close of a long life, and although Arnold Ridley was Private Godfrey, Private Godfrey was not Arnold Ridley.

From humble beginnings living above the family boot-shop in Bath, through the horrors of the Great War, to the life of a celebrated playwright in London’s West End. From unprecedented success and sudden wealth to unforeseen disaster and financial ruin. From the nightmare of another war through painful years of struggle and obscurity to a new, late-flowering fame in a television classic.

Anecdotal, engaging and truthful, Godfrey’s Ghost is an affectionate – and often moving – portrait of a remarkable man who, faced with more than his fair share of life’s vicissitudes, through love, courage and the kind of well-grounded philosophy that doesn’t recognise itself as such, lived his life valiantly and well.

Godfrey’s Ghost: From Father to Son
Price: GBP 6.49

27 used & new available from GBP 2.84

Mal Peet

When he was a boy, Mal Peet’s love of both football and books made him something of a rarity among his peers. These days, he aims to bridge the perceived divide between the two activities in his work.

His success in doing so can be measured not just by the critical acclaim his books receive, but by the letters he gets, both from readers surprised to enjoy a book about football and from non-readers surprised to enjoy a book at all.
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Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival Appearance
N.B. All dates / times are provisional and subject to final confirmation

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Mal Peet is a writer of exceptional talent who has established himself as a strong and distinctive voice in young adult fiction.

Mal Peet grew up in North Norfolk, and studied English and American Studies at the University of Warwick. Later he moved to south west England and worked at a variety of jobs before turning full-time to writing and illustrating in the early 1990s. With his wife, Elspeth Graham, he has written and illustrated many educational picture books for young children, and his cartoons have appeared in a number of magazines. He and Elspeth live in Exmouth, Devon.

He is the author of several novels for young adults. His first, Keeper, was published in 2003, and won the Branford Boase Award. His second, Tamar (2005), the story of two men caught up in secret operations during World War II, won the 2005 Carnegie medal. His third novel, The Penalty (2006), returns to the South American location of Keeper, and sets a modern-day story of crime and corruption against an historical narrative of slavery and occult religion. It was shortlisted for the 2007 Booktrust Teenage Prize.

His latest novel is Exposure (2008), a modern re-telling of Othello and winner of the 2009 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.

Mal Peet’s work is notable for its refusal to submit to categories – the constraints which label what a book should be about, and who it should appeal to. His books to date prove that successful literature for young readers doesn’t have to be didactic, or have overtly youthful themes, or even centre on young characters. It is the quality of the writing which is, ultimately, the most important thing.

LINKS:

A Writer’s Life: Mal Peet | Daily Telegraph | July 2006
Mal Peet on winning the Guardian children’s fiction prize
Mal Peet Q&A
Interview with Mal Peet

Exposure
Price: GBP 5.99

33 used & new available from GBP 0.55

Terence Frisby

Terence Frisby’s book Kisses on a Postcard recounts his experiences as an evacuee in the West Country during the Second World War.

>> Kisses on a Postcard website

>> Read an edited extract

Terence Frisby’s radio play, Just Remember Two Things: It’s Not Fair And Don’t Be Late for BBC Radio Four, on which Kisses On A Postcard is based, won The Giles Cooper Play Of The Year Award and achieved some sort of record by being broadcast ten times in a few months on Radio 4 and BBC World Service. A musical stage version of his radio play was produced at the Queen’s Theatre, Barnstaple in 2004.

Terence Frisby is best-known for his long running play – There’s A Girl In My Soup – which ran for 6 and a half years in London before transferring to Broadway and becoming a worldwide hit.

That and other plays, including Rough Justice and The Subtopians, continue to be produced around the world. Terence has worked for many years a playwright, actor, director and producer. He has also written TV plays, two comedy series, and has acted, produced and directed in London, Paris and all over the UK.

Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival Appearance
N.B. All dates / times are provisional and subject to final confirmation

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Alex Wade

Alex Wade is a writer, freelance journalist and occasional media lawyer. He is the author of Surf Nation: In Search of the Fast Rights and Hollow Lefts of Britain and Ireland and Wrecking Machine: A Tale of Real Fights and White Collars.

Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival Appearance
N.B. All dates / times are provisional and subject to final confirmation

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Alex lives in the far west of Cornwall and writes a weekly column for The Times on all things coastal. In February 2009, Alex was nominated as Sports Feature Writer of the Year in the Sports Journalists’ Association’s annual awards. He was the first UK writer to cover surfing in serious depth for a national newspaper thanks to a daily blog at timesonline, now hosted by A1 Surf at surfnation.co.uk.

As well as running the Surf Nation blog for A1 Surf, he contributes regularly to The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Independent on Sunday and The Guardian, and among other national newspapers has also written for The FT Magazine, The Telegraph and The Sun.

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LINKS:
www.alexwade.com
Alex Wade Interview | Cooler Magazine | May 2008•

Surf Nation: In Search of the Fast Lefts and Hollow Rights of Britain and Ireland
Price: —

5 used & new available from GBP 3.87

Festival Film: The Last Station

Film about the life and death of Leo Tolstoy.

We are screening The Last Station (2009) to end the 2010 Festival.

Both Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer were nominated for awards by the U.S. Academy (Oscar) 2010 and the Golden Globe 2010. Director: Michael Hoffman.

Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival
N.B. All dates / times are provisional
and subject to final confirmation

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LINK: www.thelaststation.co.uk
The Official Site for The Last Station, a film by Michael Hoffman, starring Anne-Marie Duff, Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, James McAvoy.

“Set in the last tumultuous years of Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s life, ‘The Last Station’ centres on the battle for his soul waged by his wife Sofya Andreyevna and his leading disciple Vladimir Cherkov.

Torn between his professed doctrine of poverty and chastity and the reality of his enormous wealth, his thirteen children and a life of hedonism, Tolstoy makes a dramatic flight from his home. Too ill to continue beyond the tiny rail station at Astapovo, he believes that he is dying alone, while over one hundred newspapermen camp outside awaiting hourly reports on his condition.”

Ian Frost & Bill Studdiford

Bringing Byron to Budleigh

Ian Frost’s one man shows have been performed in New York City, in London, at the Edinburgh and Piccolo Spoleto Festivals, at the Luxembourg National Theatre, on tours of major cities in the U.S., the U.K., Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy and Greece, and for Cunard in the Mid-Atlantic, the Caribbean, and twice through the Panama Canal!

After training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and the Royal Court Actors Studio, Ian appeared with leading repertory theatres in England, including seasons at Plymouth, Perth, Farnham, Colchester, Birmingham and Coventry. His many television credits include ‘Z Cars’, ‘Dr. Who’, ‘The Poet Herrick’, ‘Ivanhoe’ and, for BBC Open University, Rousseau in ‘Dinner at Holbach’s’ and Guardiano in ‘Women Beware Women’: from a man with too many principles to one with none at all.

Productions in the London Fringe include ‘The Sitwells’, ‘Plague Wind’, ‘Pythagoras’ and ‘The Provoked Wife’. During a break in the one-man show performances, he returned to London to appear on stage in the premiere of ‘Screamers’ and in the TV sitcom ‘Girls on Top’.

Ian’s professional association with Lord Byron began several years ago. A founder-member of ATC-London, he created the part of Byron/Narrator in its award-winning production of ‘Don Juan’ at the Edinburgh Festival. The company then toured extensively through England and Scotland and was invited to the Avignon Festival. The Byron connection continued with ‘Byron: In Words & Music’ for the British Council in Amsterdam and at the Edinburgh Festival, and the BBC Radio series, ‘Byron’s Last Letters’. Ian then decided his next Byron project must be a solo performance: both the man and the poet had so much to say about life, love and the human condition that this was the only way to attempt to do justice to such a remarkable character.

Bill Studdiford spent five delightful seasons at the Bremerton (Washington) Community Theatre as actor, director, designer, stage manager, and playwright before joining IBM for 26 years, working in 12 countries on four continents, with a special two-year leave of absence to help found the Children’s Museum of Manhattan.

Bill majored in journalism at Pacific University in Oregon and started writing for the theatre at that time. Bill enjoyed writing and adapting the three plays making up the Byron Trilogy, compiling ‘Byron in Venice’, and touring in the U.S. and Europe as stage manager, sound and light technician, stagehand and chauffeur – but welcomed the opportunity to become acquainted with John Keats and to write about him.

With both Byron and Keats on the boards, it was almost inevitable for Shelley to follow. Once that play was completed, he couldn’t help but wonder why he had made Shelley wait so long?

But then it was back to Lord Byron once again and his wonderful use of words, with an adaptation of his delightful poem, ‘Beppo’. Then it occurred to him – after exploring each of the poets individually, it was time to compare, contrast, and enjoy the three of them together. The result – ‘Three Romantics: Byron, Keats & Shelley’, with the American playwright joining the English actor in presentation. This was followed by another collaboration on stage with new material in ‘Extraordinary Friends, Byron & Shelley’.

Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival Appearance
N.B. All dates / times are provisional and subject to final confirmation

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LINKS

www.byronetc.com

An Unpublished Poem written by the Poet Laureate

Reproduced with the permission of Carol Ann Duffy.

A GOLDFISH

I bought, on a whim, a goldfish for a good daughter.
It swam in an antique bowl in the kitchen there,
talented among the lentils and the marmalade,
painting itself over and over, self-portrait in liquid;
learning its letters, O for oxygen, for only.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -  – - It seemed unlonely;
the hoop-la of its constant swim unrolling a pond
below willow trees, an imperial palace lake
where the poet sat, floating on silence. A golden mouth
in the cold. Walking towards him, carrying fragrant tea,
his beloved and favourite child.

Carol Ann Duffy, 2010

The National Trust

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In collaboration with The National Trust, Jeremy Musson will speak about Travels Around Curious Houses at the NT property A la Ronde - 11.30am, Friday 24th September 2010.

Tickets (£7.50 to include wine and canapés) for this event will be sold by the National Trust, tel 01395 265514, and attendance will be limited to 30 people.

A la Ronde
Summer Lane
Exmouth EX8 5BD
Tel 01395 265514
www.nationaltrust.org/A la Ronde

Jeremy Musson is a writer, broadcaster, architectural historian, and a former National Trust curator.

From 1998-2007 he was the Architectural Editor of Country Life; he was also the presenter of the BBC 2 series The Curious House Guest screened in 2005 and 2006, and author of The English Manor House (1999), How to Read a Country House (2006), The Country Houses of Sir John Vanbrugh (2008) and most recently Up and Down Stairs: The History of the Country House Servant (2009). He lives in Cambridge with his wife and two daughters.

BBC Radio Camridgeshire interview with Jeremy Musson – listen here
Interview with Jeremy Musson - National Trust – Campaign to save Seaton Delaval (Vanbrugh)

Narrative Bodies

“Narrative Bodies” is a collective of three female artists working in Devon who share a passion for narrative.

The artists – Louisa Currier, Jane Osmond, Ali Pawson – work across a range of disciplines including printmaking, sculpture, painting and drawing. The storytelling at the heart of each artist’s work ensures that whilst the styles and media are varied, the works complement and speak to one another.

This exhibition will be their third since 2008, and the collective are excited to be exhibiting alongside the Budleigh Salterton Literature Festival. Carol Ann Duffy’s appearance at the Festival is of particular interest to the collective. Ali especially draws inspiration from her poetry and this year is exploring themes from Carol Ann Duffy’s book “The World’s Wife”.

The artists:

Louisa Currier
Louisa works with both painting and drawing, using the language of figures to describe relationships and encourage the viewer to explore possible narratives.

Jane Osmond
Jane’s clay sculptures draw inspiration from the range of emotions that can be expressed in a simple embrace. Working with figures to tell the story behind each interchange, she works both figuratively and with a degree of abstraction.

Ali Pawson
Ali’s prints draw inspiration from a variety of female narratives including the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy and local folk legends. She is currently using monoprint, screenprint and photo-etching techniques.

Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival Fringe Exhibition
N.B. All dates / times are provisional and subject to final confirmation

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Fringe Events – Creative Writing & Performances

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MORNING | Fringe Events – Writing Fiction & Poetry Workshops

Creative Writing Workshops and Performances organised by the East Devon Writing Workshop.

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AFTERNOON | Fringe Events – Writing Performances “On The Edge”

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EVENING | Fringe Events – Poetry Performances – An Evening of Poetry

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