Lowdham Book Festival, that's it for another year

The last chair has been stacked, the last wine glass dried and the last cake eaten. The last speaker will be on his way soon. Lowdham Book Festival is over for another year - except that we have a year round programme so it's back to the Methodist Chapel on Friday for a "First Friday" lecture. But nevertheless, what stands out? Firstly, I realise I'm getting a bit old to put out 500 chairs on my own. Does Peter Florence do this at Hay? Secondly we must bring back our "last Saturday" book fair and all round jamboree. This year, because of family problems, I wasn't able to organise this, and the Festival missed it. I missed it. Thirdly, we might be on to a winner with a new funding stream. At our Dickens Day at the St. Mary's Church venue, someone turned up late for a session, but that happens, so he was duly charged £3 to come in. After praying for a while he left. Goodness me. Right, since we now do pay-to-pray, next year we could have a scale for charges - absolutions, confessions, holy relics.
What stood out from the programme? I couldn't attend everything this year, but the highlight for me was The Bookshop Band - one of the few events where ticket sales were lower than we expected. The Band write songs about books, it's as simple as that, but well crafted songs played on all sorts of instruments including an eighteenth century cello. More about them on http://www.thebookshopband.co.uk/. Ticket sales were really pretty low for the Band, and we're not having that so next year they are coming back as a support act for a must-see author. The band is currently on tour round small indie bookshops and book festivals - do see them if you can, or book up when you see them at Lowdham next year.
Regulars will know that though Lowdham is a Five Leaves project (run jointly with The Bookcse in Lowdham) it is not a festival of Five Leaves writers. This year our Pippa Hennessy designed and layout out the programme and publicity material. Our sole featured book was Made in Nottingham by Peter Mortimer, though some Five Leaves regulars and irregulars appeared on other platforms including John Lucas (a Lowdham fixture), Chris Arnot, Jon McGregor, John Harvey, Stephen Booth and Heather Reyes. Attendances were around 2,500 and ticket sales in total were among our best ever. In these times that is good going.
My fellow organiser Jane Streeter had to do most of the work this year, and she must be exhausted. But the Festival would be impossible without the staff of The Bookcase, our technician Mark Gittins and our regular front of house team of Julia Pirie, Richard and Liz Kaczor and Helen Pallett.
You can join our mailing list via janestreeter(a)thebookcase.co.uk.

"Not the culture of power but the power of culture"

This slightly misquoted apercu from Edward Said ends the film documentary Shatila Theatre which documents the second tour of Britain by the Palestinian children's theatre troupe set up by our writer Peter Mortimer (the first tour, the background and the establishment of the troupe is outlined in the Five Leaves book Camp Shatila). Showing the film in Nottingham on Saturday, Peter outlined the plans of the Shatila Theatre Trust - organising exchange visits by street artists from the North East and Shatila camp, a joint choral project with singers from Shatila and the North East, and, thinking big, the possibility of a permanent theatre in Shatila. Peter is aware of the problems, aware that not everyone in Shatila welcomes this work and is mindful of the murder of Juliano Mer-Khanis, the late director of the Jenin Freedom Theatre. Yet seeing the transformation of a raggle taggle group of early teenagers into a troupe of actors and dancers, performing under the direction of a choreographer must make it all worth while. You can contact the Trust at http://www.shatilatheatre.co.uk/. The planned visit from the North East by street artists has had to be postponed because of the trouble in Syria spilling over into Lebanon, but later this year Shatila street artists are definitely coming to the UK.
Peter was in town to launch Made in Nottingham at a sodden and windswept Sherwood Festival. The weather conditions and the racket from the rock musicians an entire field away stopped the planned readings, but Peter will be in the Nottingham area again on 30th June at Lowdham Book Festival.

Five Leaves 2012 publications catalogue

Email us on info(at)fiveleaves.co.uk if you would like an emailed copy, or a printed copy, or several.

New from Five Leaves: 1948 ebook edition

"An intriguing reworking of 1984 – in sonnets... Fine indeed; very fine, really, perfectly precise and commanding."

Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian
Illustrated by Martin Rowson.

1948 is a comic verse-novel, audaciously rewriting George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four in Pushkin sonnets. Set during the 1948 London Olympics, it offers a radically alternative history of the Cold War, in which Britain has a Labour-Communist coalition government, the Royal Family have fled to Rhodesia and the US threatens to impose an economic blockade on Britain.
Featuring cartoons drawn especially for the book, 1948 combines hard-boiled detective-novels and Pushkin sonnets, film-noir and Ealing comedy.

Andy Croft's books include Red Letter Days, Out of the Old Earth, A Weapon in the Struggle, Selected Poems of Randall Swingler and Comrade Heart. He has written five novels and forty-two books for teenagers, mostly about football. He has edited many anthologies of poetry. His own collections include Ghost Writer, Sticky and Three Men on the Metro (with W.N. Herbert and Paul Summers). 1948 is his second novel in Pushkin sonnets.

Martin Rowson is a multi award-winning cartoonist whose work appears regularly in The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday, The Daily Mirror, The Morning Star, Tribune and many other publications. His books include an updated version of Gulliver's Travels.

 1948 is available now as an ebook, for the weird price of £4.12 at http://tinyurl.com/croftandrowson

New from Five Leaves: Made in Nottingham, by Peter Mortimer

The Tyneside writer Peter Mortimer is used to writing about difficult places. Against Foreign Office advice he wandered round Yemen. He set up a children's theatre group in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and, over one summer, walked the length of Britain with one dog and no money, dependent on the kindness of strangers to provide accommodation and food.
In this book, part memoir, part documentary and social commentary, he undertook a shorter journey, taking up residence in the same street he grew up in, on the Sherwood council estate in Nottingham. It was a journey of only 160 miles, but one which involved revisiting his previous Nottingham life, some fifty years back.
Often feeling like a ghost, or disembodied spirit, Peter Mortimer stalks the streets of his past, attempting to put it into the context of how he lives now, trying to make sense of the two times.His sojourn makes for an unpredictable, often comic, sometimes painful journey.
Themes of changing times, class and society are universal. Anyone who has returned to their childhood home, however briefly, will immediately identify with the feelings and contradictions so vividly portrayed.
Peter Mortimer is probably best-known for his book Broke Through Britain, recording his walk through Britain with no money and nowhere to stay. His has written other extreme travel books including Camp Shatila and Cool for Qat. He lives in the North East, where he runs Cloud Nine theatre company and Iron Press.
Made in Nottingham is available from bookshops soon or, post free, from: http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/made-in-nottingham-a-writer-s-return/

Five Leaves - the Buddy Holly connection

Remember Don Juan by Byron? That long and funny poem that attacked William Wordsworth, Robert Southey and, well, look it up. Byron published Don Juan between 1819 and 1824, so it is time for a new version. But who has that time? It's a massive work. So, Andy Croft has asked a total of twenty poets to write between 50 and 100 stanzas each, with their own take on Don Juan today. We'll come back to this at a later date - the book won't be published until late 2013 or, more likely, as a birthday present for Byron in early 2014. A sort of modern Don Juan then. So, to whet your appetite is Buddy Holly, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFj_aVm_G78, with his Modern Don Juan.

Call the Kops

Our chum and writer Bernard Kops's career is finally taking off, with his most recent poetry collection being reprinted, a new novel, a do at the Jewish Museum, a play being revived, something coming on the BBC soon, featured in Spitalfields Life... and as young as ever at 84. David Paul has now become his regular publisher (with our blessing) but Bernard still keeps flogging our Bernard Kops' East End and The World is a Wedding at his assorted readings.
The Norwegian magazine Klassekampen asked us for a copy of this picture, to go with an interview, from the East End book, so I thought it might be nice to reprint it here. The picture first appeared in Encore: the voice of vital theatre in September/October 1958, being a line up of promising new writers. Clive Goodwin, the editor, was clearly a good picker.
Back row: Arnold Wesker, Errol John, Bernard Kops, David Compton
Front row: NF Simpson, Harold Pinter, Ann Jellicoe, John Mortimer