Lit Preview: London Literature Festival @ Southbank Centre

Rachel Holdsworth
By Rachel Holdsworth Last edited 165 months ago
Lit Preview: London Literature Festival @ Southbank Centre

llf_logo.jpg There's more authors than you can shake a really really big stick at during the first couple of weeks in July at the Southbank Centre. The London Literature Festival starts by overlapping with The Festival of Science + Arts, bringing you talks by Ben Goldacre (which has already had to be moved to a bigger room, so get tickets now), Marcus du Sautoy, oceanographer Sylvia Earle and physicist, mathematician (and, judging by his photo, Jeremy Northam lookalike) Brian Greene. Another strand running through the festival is Brazil, part of the larger Festival Brazil - poet and musician Arnaldo Antunes is appearing, as well as football legend Sócrates.

Big hitters elsewhere on the bill include Joseph O'Connor, Andrea Levy, Jeanette Winterson, Jackie Kay, John Cooper Clarke, Bret Easton Ellis, Orange prize winner Barbara Kingsolver, Alexei Sayle and Andrew O'Hagan, but we've also spotted a few more, less headline-grabbing, but still interesting-looking events.

A discussion of whether adding technology to our brains and bodies is a way to improve them; "wobbly" comedian Francesca Martinez and Robin Ince; Gabriel Weston, Adam Foulds and Samantha Harvey talking about psychiatry and art; poets John Agard, Val Bloom, Jean 'Binta' Breeze and Grace Nichols; Slavoj Zizek, who never, ever, minces his words; journalist Gary Younge on national identity; Emma Larkin talking about life in Burma under the junta; and a book club and site-specific theatrical enactment of The Yellow Wallpaper.

Tickets are on sale now and at various prices, but if you go to multiple events there's a discount scheme in operation (though it looks like you'll have to buy them all at the same time). And with the stuff above only about half of what's on, your main problem may be deciding what to leave out...

The London Literature Festival runs 1st-18th July at the Southbank Centre. For more information go to their website.

Last Updated 22 June 2010