Get ready for the tenth Essex Book Festival (From Maldon and Burnham Standard)

Get ready for the tenth Essex Book Festival

10:55am Thursday 26th February 2009

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THERE will be something for everyone at this year’s Essex Book Festival.

The event launches at Chelmsford Library on World Book Day - March 5 - from 10am and some of the most well-known writers in the county will be there to celebrate its tenth anniversary.

Essex writers, including Barbara Erskine, Martin Newell, Michael Foley, Julia Jones and Sylvia Kent, will all be making an appearance and you are invited too.

There will be a chance to meet and greet the authors and have your books signed.

The line up for this year’s festival, which began on March 2, is claimed to be one of the best so far and features a number of well known writers, as well as up-and-coming new authors.

Top names include author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres, writer and broadcaster Joan Bakewell, prolific author and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, crime writer Simon Brett, popular historian Alison Weir and best selling writer Kate Atkinson.

History is also a prominent theme in the line up. Michael Foley explores Essex during the Second World War, while Andrew Summers and John Debenham take a whirlwind ride through Essex history discovering who and what left their marks on the county.

Rachel Duffett, from Essex University, will give a flavour of life in the trenches of World War One, and homegrown talent will also be out in force.

Essex poet Martin Newell, will be making an appearance at Maldon Library in Carmelite Way, Maldon, and literary critic and former Colchester boy John Sutherland, novelist Barbara Erskine, Margery Allingham biographer Julia Jones and JoJo Moyes will all be at various events throughout the festival.

Essex journalists, writers and biographers, Francis Wheen and Simon Heffer, will unveil the secrets of writing biographies while Prof Jules Pretty, from Essex University, will deliver the 2009 Burrows Lecture about his year walking and boating around East Anglia.

For more information and to find out what’s happening near you pick up a festival brochure from your local library.

Tickets can be booked by post using the booking form in the centre of the programme, by calling the box office on 01206 573948 or online by visiting www.essexbookfestival.org.uk

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