Marlborough’s LitFest 2017 programme is bursting with great names, overflowing with events and buzzing with activities this year.
Among the big names are Will Self - who will be appearing at the Town Hall on September 29.
He is author of more than twenty books including novels, short stories and non-fiction. In 2008 he won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and his recent novel Umbrella was shortlisted for the Man Booker. His latest, Phone, the final in the trilogy, is a satirical examination of how we have become constrained by the very technologies that promised us liberation.
Also taking part is Frank Gardner OBE - the BBC’s full time security correspondent as well as a territorial army officer and highly successful author.
In 2004 he was shot by terrorists and paralysed for life.
He was educated at Marlborough College and then Exeter University, from where he gained a BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies.
As well as serving in the Royal Green Jackets and Regular Army Reserve, Frank worked in oil and investment banking before joining the BBC. Frank is author of two non-fictional accounts of his travels, particularly in the Middle East.
His first novel, Crisis, was published in 2016 and became an instant bestseller. His latest fictional work is Ultimatum which will be published in November.
Another heavy hitter is best selling author of The Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell.
He is also co-translator of Naoki Higashida’s autism memoirs The Reason I Jump, Fall Down 7 Times, Get Up 8.
Mitchell’s novels reflect the fact that stories are made out of perspectives on events rather than the events themselves.
They frequently cross time zones, locations, viewpoints and genres. Thriller, ghost story, science fiction, love story, fairytale may co-exist within a single book.
Twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, he was named one of the most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2007.
Among the other authors featured are poet Kayo Chingonyi, biographers Edmund Gordon, Craig Brown and Keggie Carew, young authors Daniel Shand and Xiaolu Guo.
