News
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Personal Poems On Request
Kit the Poet is packing up his portable typewriter and bringing it to the Festival where he will write poems on demand. For a personal poem, all you need to do is pick a topic, approach the poet, watch while he taps out your poem, and pay him what you think is a fair price.…
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Fine Food at the Festival
Eight local eateries just a short walk from Cedars Hall are offering Discounted Dining for festivalgoers who book in advance. Just give them a call, show your Festival tickets on arrival, and you will receive a discount of 10% on your bill. The eight are: The Thai food stall Secret Recipe will no longer be…
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Still time to book the Quiz
Brainy bookworms have the chance to test their literary know-how at the Festival’s fun quiz night at Cedars Hall. Once again quirky quizmaster Gary Wigglesworth, author of The Book Lover’s Quiz Book, will host another lively evening of testing teasers. The former bookseller began writing and hosting his own quizzes when he discovered that it…
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Small boats, big Hearts
We Came By Sea, by Horatio Clare, gives a different side to the small boats crisis from the one we hear on the news every day. Instead, the travel writer and memoirist reveals a side to the British people that is rarely acknowledged. It is the story of the volunteers who help thousands of refugees…
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Top award for Masud Husain
Festival speaker, neurologist Masud Husain, has won the 2025 Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize for his book Our Brains, Our Selves: What a Neurologist’s Patients Taught Him About the Brain. The prize exists to bridge the divide between science and the public, championing non-fiction books that use captivating narratives to open science to a…
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justice for war crimes
Will we ever see Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu on trial, asks Steve Crawshaw in Prosecuting the Powerful. As someone who has devoted his career to the pursuit of international justice, working for the likes of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Freedom From Torture, he replies with the answer that the possibilities of justice…
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Pre-Festival orders at Waterstones
Pop up to Waterstones in Wells High Street to pre-order copies of books by any of the speakers you look forward to hearing at the Festival. Waterstones will also be running its Cedars Hall Festival Bookshop during the Festival, and all available copies of the featured books will be displayed in the pop-up, and not…
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The Lost Girls of Autism
Why is the history of autism male? This is a question asked by neuroscientist Gina Rippon whose eponymous book delves into the emerging science of female autism. Autistic girls are often misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression or personality disorders because they are more likely to camouflage or hide autistic traits to fit in. Gina points to…
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Collision of destinies
Troubled minds and dysfunctional families meet head on in Edward St Aubyn’s latest book Parallel Lines, a sequel to his 2021 novel Double Blind. It picks up the story of Sebastian, now in treatment following a breakdown that has left him with a fragile hold on reality and a desire to connect with his birth…
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Passion in Love and Art
Artists through the ages have been inspired by love, whether in the throes of an affair or the pain of unrequited desire. Now art historian Nick Trend has produced a guide to understanding art through the passions that inspired some of the world’s greatest masterpieces. What Art Can Tell Us About Love explores how the…
