Headingley LitFest: Ilkley Literature Festival Fringe

Tuesday, 7 October 2014

Ilkley Literature Festival Fringe - COMING UP

Richard Wilcocks writes:

The Ilkley Literature Festival is well underway now, and I would guess that quite a few of you will be going. This year, no less than three of its Fringe events first took place in Headingley, in March. If you missed any of them, or just want to turn up in solidarity, here they are in date order:

Tuesday 14 October – War Hospital Stories – event 149

The wartime hospital at Beckett Park was the setting for extraordinary scenes a hundred years ago. I will not be giving a straight reading from the book which was launched in the New Headingley Club, but telling true stories, illustrated on screen by a number of old, rare photographs and drawings. It will be as dramatic as I can make it.

See the book’s website at www.firstworldwarhospital.co.uk

Ilkley Playhouse, Wildman Theatre, 9 – 10pm FREE

Thursday 16 October – Tibet: an Accidental Pilgrimage – event 168

Ivan Cooper read from his book in Headingley Library, and the audience response was extremely positive. The book is occasionally scary – but there are comic passages as well. Join him on a trip through the remote and hardly-visited regions of Tibet.

YouTube publisher’s video here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE7aCuJNkZw,

Ilkley Playhouse, Wildman Theatre, 9 – 10pm FREE

Saturday 18 October – Surviving – event 197

Expect to be moved, surprised and entertained as writers from Osmondthorpe Hub perform short stories, poetry and plays on the theme of surviving, bridging words and worlds. Did you see them in the Heart Centre?

Church House, 7.30pm – 8.30pm FREE

The LitFest committee is beavering away for 2015, and we’ll have something more to tell you soon!

All best

Richard Wilcocks

No comments:

Post a Comment

LITERARY HEADINGLEY

Headingley is just the place for it! Don't expect a big circus with marquees, though: we're not at that stage yet. We're all volunteers as well.

Our venues include the HEART Centre on Bennett Road, the New Headingley Club on St Michael's Road, friendly cafés, historic local cinemas, Headingley Library, people's houses and the historic Leeds Library in Commercial Street, city centre.

Headingley's Literary Links

Headingley has strong connections with many writers:

Arthur Ransome was born in Headingley, J R R Tolkien lived at 5 Holly Bank and also at 2 Darnley Road, West Park when he was reader in English Language at the University of Leeds 1920 - 25, Alan Bennett lived over a butcher's shop opposite the Three Horseshoes, now Royale Dry Cleaners.

Lucy Newlyn has published poetry about her early life in Headingley, George Orwell stayed at 21 Estcourt Avenue with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey 'Humpy' Dakin (with whom he visited the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth), T S Eliot used to visit his mother-in-law in Weetwood Lane, William Fryer Harvey was brought up in Spring Bank, Trevor Griffiths lived just off Victoria Road on Winstanley Terrace, Jon Silkin's first office of STAND magazine was his flat at 144 Otley Road, Sir Geoffrey Hill lived in Shire Oak Road, Peter Redgrove lived in Headingley between 1962 and 1965 when he was Gregory Fellow of Poetry at the University of Leeds, and playwright Kay Mellor still lives near The Hollies in Far Headingley.

Wilson Barrett, the charismatic first manager of the Grand Theatre, Leeds (a prolific playwright as well), lived in Beech Grove Terrace, Woodhouse in the 1870s. His house was a meeting place for many writers, artists and visitors to Leeds - such as W. S. Gilbert, George Grossmith and Atkinson Grimshaw.

Headingley LitFest 2020 was the thirteenth. The fourteenth will take place from March 2021 and will be adapted to the rules of the Covid pandemic. We are now a proud part of the annual Leeds Lit Fest.