Authors

Writer and television director Rick Stroud is best known for directing popular soaps and television series such as Coronation Street and Cadfael. He recently wrote and directed the BBC’s celebration of the life of John Betjemen, and is currently writing The Book of the Moon (Transworld) to celebrate the 40th anniversary of man’s first steps on the moon. To celebrate its publication this spring, Rick will be leading a moonwatching session in the Walled Garden at this year’s Port Eliot Festival.

Found in Translation has been described as “a quest of arbitrary limits and new frontiers, written in the tradition of Luke Rhineheart’s The Dice Man and Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure: one part literary lecture, one part multimedia performance, and with a hefty dose of cutting-edge satire.”

One of Granta’s 20 Best Young British Writers. British Book Awards Author of the Year 2003. Waterstone’s Author of the Year 2003. Winner of the Somerset Maugham prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 2002. Shortlisted for the Orange, Man Booker and Mail on Sunday/John Llewelyn Rhys prizes… Sarah Waters’ impressive list of literary achievements is too long to list in full here – but suffice it to say we’re thrilled to welcome her to the Port Eliot Festival this year.

Rebecca Lenkiewicz is a playwright, poet and actress. Her first play Soho: A Tale of Table Dancers won a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival, while her second play The Night Season won the 2004 Critics Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright. Lenkiewicz’s other plays include Shoreditch Madonna, Blue Moon Over Poplar and Her Naked Skin, which premiered in 2008 on the Olivier stage at the National Theatre, making her the first living female playwright to achieve this.

Henry Hemming is the author of In Search of the English Eccentric (2008) and Misadventure in the Middle East (2007). Both books are based on year-long journeys: one through England looking for eccentrics; the other in the Middle East around the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He has been described in The Spectator as “a fresh new voice, idealistic, engaging and human”. Henry also makes art, some of which was shown at the last Port Eliot Literary Festival.

An iconic figure in British fashion, Barbara Hulanicki founded the now-legendary Biba boutique with her late husband in 1964. Striking a chord with an increasingly hip and free-thinking public, Biba became synonymous with swinging London in the 1960s and 1970s and was a popular hangout for artists, film stars and rock musicians, including Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Marianne Faithfull.

An sparkling and entertaining show of poetry and music from internationally bestselling author, Louis de Bernières, and acclaimed flautist and keyboard player, Ilone Antonius-Jones, the Antonius Players have delighted audiences across the UK and abroad – including a run of sell-out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House (Bloomsbury, 2008) – hailed as “a classic” by John Le Carré – won the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction in 2008, and has been storming the book charts this year. She also wrote the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay, a biography of British power boat racer Betty ‘Joe’ Carstairs, winner of the 1998 Somerset Maugham award and shortlisted for the 1997 Whitbread Biography award.

Author of 2002’s bestselling non-fiction memoir, If The Spirit Moves You, Justine Picardie’s first novel, Wish I May, was published in 2004 and her latest, Daphne, (2008, Bloomsbury) has been described by The Times as ‘glorious’. She is also a Sunday Telegraph Magazine columnist and former features editor of British Vogue.

Mick Brown’s latest book, Tearing Down the Wall of Sound (Bloomsbury), is a biography of legendary record producer Phil Spector. His interview with Spector, published in the Telegraph, was the first in 25 years and took place only days before Lana Clarkson was found dead in his ‘castle’ in Los Angeles.