Charleston Festival

Charleston Farmhouse, halfway between Lewes and Polegate, was the favoured country retreat of many of the most influential writers and artists of the early part of the twentieth century, including, of course, the novelist Virginia Woolf and the economist John Maynard Keynes. Now it is the base of the Charleston Trust, which, as well as running a museum and shop, arranges a literary festival every year in a specially erected marquee, which attracts many of the country’s top-drawer writers. We will be featuring a number of the key speakers over the next couple of issues.

Highlights this week include the poet laureate Andrew Motion (talking with John Lanchester about the genetics of dysfunctionality); Booker winner Graham Swift (on his new novel Tomorrow); novelist Edward St Aubyn (on his latest novel, Mothers Milk, the fourth in a series of vitriolic skeleton-out-of-his-own-cupboard novels about the Melrose family); Idler founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney, on his very public passion for cloud forms, and Spare Rib founder Rosie Boycott (on a ‘Good Life’-like shift she made from the fast lane to her own farm). There is a licensed bar and refreshments throughout the day: you are advised to dress in warm clothing as the marquee can get chilly. AG