Trio in Top 40 reads

Three of the Festival’s speakers have appeared in a list of the top 40 summer books featured in the Sunday Times.

Andrea Wulf, Katja Hoyer and Jess Venner are all named as well worth a look in the newspaper’s guide to summer reading.

Andrea Wulf’s The Traveller follows the fascinating life of George Forster who, at the age of 20  and in his search for humanity, joined Captain Cook in a voyage across the world. Forster’s published account of the journey brought him fame.

Katja Hoyer, in Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe, weaves her story of the ill-starred Weimar Republic through the lives of various locals – book-keepers, hoteliers and party activists – to show what it was like to live in such times.

Jess Venner takes us back to the blast that flattened Pompeii in AD79 in a lively account of  The Lost Voices of Pompeii: The Final Day. She gives voice to a slave, a priest and a pub landlord, among others, in a city bustling with life until the very point it was snuffed out.