Sandon Literature Festival 2025

Dear book lovers,

We are happy to announce that Sandon Literature Festival is returning on the 18th & 19th of October 2025!

You are invited to join us for two days of enjoyable and stimulating conversations with some brilliant authors. At £35 for the entire day, or £60 for the weekend our tickets represent excellent value and offer the chance to enjoy the beautiful surroundings of Sandon Hall.  There is a very limited amount of single session tickets available. Delicious food and drink options will be available to purchase on the day to keep you fed and watered.

Once again, we are enormously grateful to Burleigh, our wonderful lead sponsor, for supporting Sandon Literature Festival.
And as in previous years, all profits from the Festival will be donated to Staffordshire Women’s Aid which has been supporting victims of domestic and sexual violence services since 1976.

Whether it’s your first visit, or you have joined us in previous years, we very much look forward to welcoming you to Sandon Literature Festival.

Caroline, Countess of Harrowby & Caro Sanderson
Co-producers

Saturday:

10.30-11.30am
OF THORN & BRIAR - Paul Lamb

I have always been drawn to this life amongst the woodlands and hedgerows.  

Living in a converted horse box and travelling the Southwest of England, Paul Lamb is a hedge layer, working alone and by hand to maintain and restore hedgerows, from the end of each summer until birds begin to nest the following spring.
Evoking landscapes which often recall the novels of Thomas Hardy, his book – ‘Of Thorn and Briar’ - beautifully conveys the rhythm of the seasons as he describes how the British countryside is shaped by these ancient boundaries and ecological treasure troves. He also reveals how his outdoorsy New Zealand childhood led to his unconventional career path.
We’re delighted to welcome Paul to Sandon Literature Festival to shine wonderful light on hedge-laying, as well as other ancient, yet still essential rural crafts and skills.

12.00-1.00pm
THE NIGHT IN QUESTION - Susan Fletcher

In a quiet corner of England, one night will unlock a lifetime of secrets…

Florrie Butterfield has lived an extraordinary life full of travel, passion and
adventure. But at eighty-seven, she suspects there are no more surprises to come her
way. Then one midsummer’s night, something terrible happens, and Florrie is
suspicious. Was it really an accident, or is she living alongside a would-be murderer?
The only clue is a magenta envelope, discarded earlier that day. And Florrie –
cheerfully independent but often overlooked (as are so many women at her time of
life), is the only person determined to uncover the truth.
Susan Fletcher won the Whitbread First Novel Award and a Betty Trask Prize for her
debut novel, “Eve Green”. She joins us to discuss her marvellously intriguing and
emotionally rich latest novel, “The Night in Question”, which has a delightful
eightysomething protagonist at its heart.

2.00 – 3.00pm
DOGGEDLY ONWARD: A LIFE IN POEMS - Pam Ayres

If people are fond of me, I am delighted, and I hope I have given a lot of people a laugh, as that is a great experience – to laugh!

Much-loved poet Pam Ayres has indeed been making the nation laugh for 50 years. What’s more, The Bookseller magazine recently revealed that, after Ted Hughes, she is the UK’s bestselling poetry author since records began.
We are thrilled to welcome Pam to Sandon Literature Festival to talk about her latest book, “Doggedly Onward” which collects her poems in a single volume for the first time, along with Pam’s reminiscences across subjects including much-loved dogs, her fascination with wildlife, mistakes, regrets and the sober business of ageing.
Pam will share stories and poems from the book which covers the period from the 1970s to the 2020s.

3.30-4.30pm
BREAKING THE TABOO - Theo Clarke

I continue to campaign to ensure that all mothers in this country and around the world get the care they need and deserve

In an emotional debate in the House of Commons in October 2023, former Stafford MP Theo Clarke broke down in tears as she described being rushed into emergency surgery after the birth of her daughter, terrified she was going to die.
After receiving a standing ovation in the Commons, she was quickly inundated with accounts from other mothers of their traumatic birth experiences, and she later chaired the first UK inquiry into birth trauma.
Her urgent and compelling book – “Breaking the Taboo: Why We Need to Talk About Birth Trauma” – aims to start a conversation that is as essential as it is overdue.
Theo joins us to discuss her book and why, although birth trauma is a huge issue, there is still a real taboo around speaking about it.

Sunday:

10.30 – 11.30am
THE NATURE OF FASHION - Carry Somers

If plants have shaped fashion’s past, couldn’t they hold the secret to its future?

Carry Somers is a global leader in sustainable fashion. As co-founder of Fashion Revolution, her reach extends across 90 countries and she is a frequent speaker across the media on the world of fashion.
Her marvellous book, “The Nature of Fashion: A Botanical Story of Our Material Lives” takes us on an epic journey through time and across the globe to chart the history of how we learned to create clothing with plants.
For thousands of years of clothes have been made by human artistry working in rhythm with the natural world, not against it, argues Carry. Fashion is at a turning point – to look forward, we need to look back.

12.00-1.00pm
The HOMEMADE GOD - Rachel Joyce

They were family. They shared the same beginning. They were woven into the same story.

In a welcome return to Sandon Literature Festival, we are delighted to host an event with bestselling novelist, Rachel Joyce
Rachel’s acclaimed novels include “The Music Shop”, “Miss Benson’s Beetle” and “of course, her much-loved debut novel, “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry” which has been made into a film, and also a musical which premiered at Chichester Festival Theatre earlier this year.
Rachel joins us to discuss her new novel, “The Homemade God”. It’s the enthralling story of three sisters and one brother who travel to Italy and gather at the family house on Lake Orta following the death of their famous artist father. Recently remarried to a much younger woman, he decamped to Italy to finish his masterpiece.  Now he is dead. And there is no sign of his new wife, or his final painting.

2.00-3.00pm
TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK - Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason

Music is our family’s most fundamental mode of expression and the language we use to establish connections and to understand ourselves.

Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason is a former university lecturer and mother of the seven musically gifted Kanneh-Mason siblings; including cellist Sheku who won BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2016 and played at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
When Kadiatu’s eldest daughter, pianist Isata made her debut at the BBC Proms in 2023 she could not have been prouder. Days later however, one of her younger daughters was reduced to tears, having read online abuse to the effect that Isata did not deserve to be there. It prompted her to write “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”, an impassioned defence of Black excellence in the arts.
We are delighted to welcome Kadiatu to Sandon Literature Festival to discuss what it’s like to come of age in these turbulent times, Black artistic self-expression, and how we find a hopeful, powerful way through disparagement and online abuse.

3.30 – 4.30pm
REMEMBERING OUR FATHERS - Ben Masters & Caroline Sanderson

Most of us, at some time in our lives, will experience the loss of a parent. In the case of writers Ben Masters and Caroline Sanderson, the deaths of their beloved fathers took them both on journeys of discovery and remembrance that they would never have anticipated, and each later wrote a memoir about the experience.
For Ben Masters, his voyage into the natural world to identify and revel in the many species of butterflies that his father loved inspired his book, “The Flitting”. And for Caroline Sanderson, her listening odyssey to discover the classical music and composers her father cherished led to writing of “Listen With Father”.
Ben and Caroline join us to discuss their fathers and the remembrance journeys they inspired.