A busy programme has been confirmed for the third Arundel Literary Festival.
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00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely this
00:06morning to speak to Mike Carey. Now Mike, you've got the third Arundel Literary Festival
00:11coming up at the Victoria Institute, running from March the 6th to March the 8th. It's
00:16something that's established itself pretty quickly, hasn't it? And you found out quite
00:21quickly there was an appetite for this, didn't you, in the first year?
00:25Absolutely, yes. Arundel is a very art-oriented town, so it didn't come as a huge surprise,
00:31but it's nice for that to be confirmed and affirmed. Yes, we've developed from a single
00:38day in our first year to a three-day festival, which runs from 11 in the morning till 6 at
00:45night, with five different speakers coming from all sorts of different aspects of the
00:50literary world. And then three evening concerts, events, I should say, one of which is a film,
00:58National Theatre Live streaming film, one of which is a mixed arts, poetry, art and
01:03music celebration. And the third is a music and somebody is reading the Ballad of Reading
01:10Jail, actually, which is a 35-minute solo exposition. So it should be interesting.
01:17It sounds great. And the lovely thing is you're in the Victoria Institute, obviously,
01:21but the point is that you are building on the original intentions of that building,
01:25the reason why it was built by doing this, aren't you, in a sense?
01:29Yes, indeed. Yes, it was set up as a charity to further the education of the people of
01:37Arundel and its visitors. So we're trying to do that.
01:42In the spirit of the building. And last year, slightly more intense,
01:45you had slightly more speakers, slightly fewer this year, probably a slightly more
01:50relaxed atmosphere this year. Yes, we've given a bit more breathing space
01:53between the sessions rather than back to back. You don't need time to absorb what you've
01:59heard and have a cup of coffee and chat to people about it. And by the books, obviously,
02:06the authors bring their own books, always source them from the publishers, and they're
02:11very happy to sign them, obviously. So, yes, we've got only five speakers per day,
02:18each person speaking for about an hour. That sounds manageable.
02:21Wouldn't it? Yes, it is manageable.
02:23Absolutely. And presumably you get your own momentum with the festival. Does it
02:28get easier to find the speakers each year, do you think?
02:32I think we have more choice as a consequence of becoming better.
02:38Yes. And so we try to provide a nice sort of balanced variety of literary matter to consume.
02:46Fantastic. Well, I hope it goes extremely well. It sounds a great event running from March the
02:516th to the 8th in Arundel, the Arundel Literary Festival at the Victoria Institute.
02:57Lovely to speak to you, Mike. Thanks. Great.