A strange journey into history

Sophy Roberts, a speaker at this year’s Festival, is on the shortlist of the 2025 Wainwright prize for conservation writing for her latest book A Training School for Elephants.

Following in the footsteps of four elephants shipped from India to the East African coast in 1879, she explores colonial greed and human-animal relationships through both historic and modern narratives.

The story reveals a compelling cast of characters from ivory dealers to Catholic nuns, set against the rich descriptions of landscapes travelled.

Her previous book The Lost Pianos of Siberia, an absorbing piano hunt through two centuries of Russian history, was a Sunday Times Book of 2020.

Sophy appears at the Festival on Saturday morning 18 October.