Arranged on 16 posts, a QR code geo-locates content, offering walkers a diverse mix of materials inspired by the journey. This year’s theme is “Communities within Communities”. Join in to stay active and creative.

£300 Prize money is split for the winners, £150 for first place and £50 for 3 runner ups.
How to join:

• Travel the WWW route around Colchester
• Get creative with photos, art, poetry and more that relates to the theme.
• Go to the website https://walkwithwords.co.uk/
• add your contact details and submission
• Wait for the results.

Winners will be announced at a special awards ceremony as part of our Day on the Wild Side at The Minories, Colchester on Sunday 22nd June.

Submissions are unlimited, and we encourage you to participate with your friends or communities. Good luck!

For full details visit walkwithwords.co.uk.

The post Walk With Words Competition officially launched! appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

After all, with our Radical Islands Launch featuring Ken Worpole and Jules Pretty on Mersea on 1st June already sold out, and tickets selling fast for other events – especially Maggi Hambling and James Cahill at The Minories on 22nd June, Robin Ince at Colchester Samaritans Community Hall on 7th June, and Shami Chakrabarti’s talk with Pam Cox Labour MP for Colchester at Anglia Ruskin University on 5th June – now really is the time to get booking those must have tickets.

One special date that we are marking with two events this June is the 400th anniversary of the death of King James VI of Scotland and King James 1st of England and Ireland. We all know all about the many twists and turns of the Tudors, but much less it seems about our first Stuart monarch, beyond, that is, the King James Bible, the foiled Gunpowder Plot that threatened to bring James’ reign to an early end, and his tempestuous and challenging relationship with Mary Queen of Scots, his mother.

As a consequence, we’re thrilled to be welcoming historian Gareth Russell to Layer Marney Tower on 29th June to talk about his latest book Queen James: an unputdownable account of James’ early life, the excesses of his Court, and intimate friendships and great loves.

This includes favourite courtier George Villiers, the 1st Duke of Buckingham, who James referred to as his “sweet child and wife”, and who forms the subject of cultural historian and biographer Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s new book The Scapegoat, which she will be discussing at Anglia Ruskin University on 12th June.

Why not make a date with both James and George this June!

The post Get Booking appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

The focus for the Essex Book Festival 2025 is Community. The richness and diversity of Essex. Our extraordinary history and heritage, and the people who have shaped it and continue to shape our wonderful county. Our wonderful coastline and the many islands forming the Essex ‘Archipelago’…

‘Community’ is generally felt as a good word: warm, friendly, sharing, banding together, helping each other. Community can often be experienced at its most intense when people are brought together by some external pressure — living surrounded by the sea, for instance — or when they are facing a calamity, such as an inundation or a threatened invasion. Awareness of community can be a joyous coming-together as people celebrate deliverance from threat or a fact of daily life as groups of people help each other survive and be happy. ‘Community’ may even have some similar resonances to the famously untranslatable Danish concept of ‘hygge’ with its ten ideals of atmosphere, presence, pleasure, equality, gratitude, comfort, togetherness, harmony, truce, and shelter (as identified by author Meik Wiking in The Little Book of Hygge).

But if community is such a strong and positive concept — a human survival mechanism — what happens to those who are outside the community — outliers, people who have been ex-communicated, perhaps for failure to conform to community expectations? Communities imply boundaries, whether they are as tangible as the water encircling an island, or whether they are the shared ideals and practices which bind communities of belief. Community is indeed a way of looking at Essex, the county of coastline, islands and the marshland experience. But it is not always a comfortable way. Think of the c19th practices of the Essex Peculiar People, banding together to live good lives, to worship and stay sober, yet so resistant to outside interference that the most committed early believers would let their children die rather than accept medical treatment.

Essex is also a county of obstreperous individualists – and I love it for that. I’m glad to have been asked to be part of this year’s festival, talking about my new book Stars to Steer By, because I hope that this will make some sort of reverse contribution to the exploration of community. STSB celebrates twentieth century women who went to sea. These women were necessarily non-conformist individuals because the traditional concept of sea-faring has either excluded women or marginalised us.

I have Charles Kingsley’s 1851 poem ‘Three Fishers’ singing in my head as I write this blog:

Three fishers went sailing out into the west,
Out into the West as the sun went down.
Each thought on the woman who loved him the best
And the children stood watching them, out of the town.
For men must work and women must weep,
Though storms be sudden and the waters be deep,
And the harbour bar be moaning ………

(If you notice that two words in the first and second lines ‘out into’ have been changed from ‘away to’ Kingsley’s poem, it’s because what I’m hearing is Joan Baez’s beautiful mid 1960s version, not the c19th century original.)

Charles Kingsley was writing from Clovelly in Devon; his fishermen can reasonably sail west into the setting sun, whereas our Essex coastal communities face east, as do the vast majority of North Sea harbours and river mouths from the Thames to John O’Groats. But whether west, east, north, south the traditional gender roles within the maritime communities are polarised: ‘For men must work and women must weep’. This is similarly true of island Britain’s historic naval and trading communities – men go down to the sea in ships, and may never return, for ‘storms be sudden and the waters be deep’. The role of the women, apparently, is to remain behind, to care for the children and keep the home fires burning. But what if they too wanted to set out? If not to fish, then perhaps to race, to explore, to escape the conformities of the land. As my research led me to look more critically at the accepted picture I found more and more exceptions: women speaking out for active participation, for adventure in their own right.

‘To enjoy racing to the full, you should have it all in your own hands, with no one to say you ‘nay’, otherwise that spirit of independence – so rarely enjoyed by our sex – is lost. The sensation of being master of your own vessel, with the helm in your hand and a willing crew to do your commands unquestionably, these are elements that should be experienced to be enjoyed.’ (Barbara Hughes ‘Cruising and small yacht racing on the Solent’ 1898)

In Kingsley’s poem the three stay-at-home wives tend the harbour light but, historically, lighthouse keepers and the crews of light vessels marking the navigational hazards around the British Isles have been male. The official exclusion of women from active participation in almost any aspect of sea-faring life has been far more structural than, say, in agriculture or even mining.

Trinity House, the corporation appointed in 1514 to oversee the safety of mariners around the British Isles – managing lighthouses, light vessels and navigational marks — has its operational headquarters in Harwich. One of the women I interviewed for Stars to Steer By, was Jill Kernick, who now lives in the Isle of Wight. She was the first woman to work at sea for Trinity House – a small personal triumph of the 1980s. Jill was the daughter of a merchant seaman and never wanted to do anything other than follow in her father’s wake. When she was 16, in 1974, she attended her school’s careers fair. Heading straight for the stand run by the General Council of British Shipping she asked about becoming a navigation officer. ‘We don’t have women at sea,’ was the crushing reply.

There was nothing else Jill wanted to do so she stayed at school and studied modern languages at A-level. In 1975, however, the Sex Discrimination Act was passed. Jill began applying to shipping companies for a cadetship, and this time she was successful. She loved her training, and her work as a junior officer on merchant ships, but the advent of containerisation meant that world trading conditions were changing. In 1983 she and many other merchant seafarers were made redundant. Jill didn’t give up. With her second mate’s certificate AND those extra two years at school learning French, she was the only suitably qualified candidate when Trinity House needed to find sea-going supervisors for a cable laying project Sangatte-Folkestone. She thus became their first sea-going female officer.

Keeping a static mid-Channel watch over a cable-laying project wasn’t enough for Jill. She wanted active work on the Trinity House buoy tenders, the vessels constantly employed around the coast, checking and maintaining the navigation marks. This was a skilled, potentially dangerous job – women weren’t suitable, she was told. Jill persisted, certain that she had the necessary courage and agility, and I’m happy to say that the Trinity House senior captain who took her on, recognised her skills and encouraged her initiative, was Essex resident Richard Woodman, distinguished maritime author and Trinity House Elder Brother, who died in October 2024.

Image: Jill Kernick services a navigation mark for Trinity House

Stars to Steer By celebrates more than one hundred 20th century women who went to sea in many different capacities. Generally, this was for adventure and personal challenge rather than employment. A few became famous. I tell the stories of Ann Davison, the first woman to sail alone across the Atlantic; Naomi James, the first to sail alone around the world; Tracy Edwards, the first to lead an all-woman crew in a global race: Heather Thomas, the first to lead an all-woman crew in a global race and win.

These weren’t easy achievements as they all had to battle disbelief and prejudice as well as the natural hazards of the sea. Finding sponsorship was hard: one company wrote to Clare Francis, saying ‘they could not believe that a little thing like me could cross the Atlantic and they would not like to encourage me to do so.’ Clare and Naomi, like Jill Kernick, were making their breakthrough achievements in the mid-1970s, the decade of ‘Women’s Lib’. I was initially surprised that none of them identified with the feminist movement. They were pure individualists, driven by their own sense of adventure and appetite for challenge.

Today, looking back, both Jill and Naomi feel that perhaps they should have shown more awareness. At the time, Naomi explains that she felt then that she needed to separate herself from all the male/female stereotypes that didn’t feel relevant to the person she was – not risk exchanging one set for another by identifying as the champion of a cause. Now she sees feminism as ‘an aspect of equality, which matters to us all’. Clare felt passionately that she should be able to take on a challenge for its intrinsic appeal, rather than being labelled a ‘women’s libber’. Sharon Sites Adams, the former dental assistant from Los Angeles who, in 1969, became the first woman to sail solo across the Pacific, simply ignored the gender argument, commenting, ‘I didn’t see what there was about it that I couldn’t do.’

Sharon’s name is unlikely to be familiar to readers, not only because she’s an American in a book focused on British women, but because, in her time, she was an outlier among outliers. Naomi James or Clare Francis were sailing in the age of Francis Chichester, Robin Knox-Johnston, Alec Rose, Chay Blyth when maritime adventure was still seen as part of the British national psyche and a single-handed round-the-world achievement could merit an instant knighthood. There was no equivalent public interest within Sharon’s American West Coast community. Even so, I have been shocked to discover how easily women’s achievements have been overlooked within our public narrative. An understanding of both the power and the limitations of community may help explain this.

More than a decade ago, I was invited to the EBF to talk about Fifty Years in the Fiction Factory (2012) my biography of detective novelist Margery Allingham’s father, Herbert. Before the Allinghams came out of London to live in Layer Breton Rectory, Essex, Herbert had been a magazine editor. I learned from him how hard magazine editors work to develop a sense of community with their readers. A magazine provides information or entertainment in varying proportions, according to its type, but it also presents its regular readers with a distinctive world. A world shaped as much by the readers’ assumed preferences as by the editor’s personal interests.

The magazine with which I’m most involved is Yachting Monthly, a respected periodical which has been running since 1906. Both my father and uncle wrote for it quite regularly from about 1938 and I feel an instinctive affection towards it. When I took over its book pages, however, I was startled by the absence of books by women. When I looked back further, I found issue after issue with no articles by women, no books by women, no letters from women, no mention of women’s achievements. Yet I knew we existed, I knew we could read and write. I’d been there. During WW2 the magazine was edited by a woman, yet readers were given no hint of her identity and later, when she wrote a couple of instructional books, she used a male pseudonym. She was certain no one would buy them if they knew the author was a woman.

Yachting Monthly was not unusual. During the c20th, the yachting community saw itself as male and the magazine (and others like it) both endorsed and abetted that view. Partly this reflected ‘Corinthian’ ideals of self-reliance, hardihood, adventurousness which were seen as distinctively masculine characteristics. When family cruising became more popular, such holiday sailing was presented in a hierarchical manner, with Dad as Skipper and Mum as Mate (or Cook). Women who wanted some different experience were quietly overlooked.

I noticed this particularly in the case of Nicolette Milnes-Walker, the first woman to sail across the Atlantic alone and without stopping. The national press at the time was full of her achievement, in both Britain and America. The yachting magazines ignored it completely. I could only assume that her face didn’t fit. At the 1972 Boat Show Max Aitken of the Daily Express gave her a special Yachtswoman of the Year award, alongside Chay Blyth, but when I came to check the lists, held by the Yachting Journalists Association, as part of my research, her name had gone and the people I contacted had never heard of her.

Yachting is only one aspect of our relationship with the water. If you’re having a conversation with someone who says they ‘go sailing’ it can take several minutes of delicate probing before you discover whether they’re racing round the cans in a dinghy on a Saturday afternoon, propping up the yacht club bar as soon as the sun ‘goes over the yardarm’, moored for the night up a muddy creek with the water birds calling or setting off to circumnavigate the world. Then there’s fishing, trading, environmental exploration, defence. Essex can provide examples of them all. Yet where are the women in the history of maritime Essex? Stars to Steer By is a celebratory book, highlighting inspirational women from many areas of the British Isles. From Essex there are two women working in the distinctive world of the Thames sailing barges: two different decades, two quite different experiences, saying something, perhaps, about changing social attitudes.

I’ll leave you with an image that I find haunting, it’s about isolation in the midst of community. Burnham-on-Crouch is Essex’s best known yachting centre, ‘the Cowes of the East Coast’. Yacht clubs, moorings, marinas, racing, social and competitive activity – all the attributes of a busy, successful community. Yet Miranda, one of my interviewees for Stars to Steer By, described the first three and a half years of her childhood spent with her mother alone on an old prawning boat in Burnham, swinging with the tide, while her father went to work. He had left his wife and children for Miranda’s mother, who had been disowned by her own family when she became pregnant with Miranda. They had a charcoal stove, no running water and very little money. Once a week they had a bath in one of the yacht clubs. Unsurprisingly Miranda’s mother suffered from depression and later made several suicide attempts.

‘For men must work and women must weep?’

Not necessarily. For Miranda grew strong and rebellious, struck out on her own, managed a successful sailing career, high levels of skill, a happy marriage and two daughters who are developing their own independent careers at sea. A Star to Steer By…

Julia Jones will be discussing her hugely entertaining and inspiring book, Stars to Steer By: Celebrating the 20th Century Women Who Went to Sea, at Frinton Library on Wednesday 11th June 2025.

The post ‘For men must work and women must weep’ – must they? appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

Visit the Radical Islands Launch page for full details and to book your tickets.

The post Extra tickets released for Radical Islands Launch with Ken Worpole and Jules Pretty appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

To inaugurate the series of art-themed talks, James Birch, the curator, gallerist and art impresario with many ties to East Anglia, will introduce his newest book, Gilbert & George and the Communists.

The book memorialises James’ experience of mounting major art exhibitions in Moscow and China for the irreverent and iconic art duo, Gilbert & George, after the great success of bringing Francis Bacon to Russia in 1988.

It’s a multi-faceted romp through the art world and politics of the late 80s and early 90s that James will bring to life when he joins us on stage at The Minories.

Find out more and book tickets at eafestival.com.

The post New Event Series in Partnership With EA Festival and The Minories appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

A revamped Peacock Enclosure in Westcliff-on-Sea, The High Lighthouse in Harwich (and yes, there is a companion Low Lighthouse, plus multiple Lightships moored out to sea); an old oyster packing shed aptly known as The Packing Shed on Mersea Island, (once feted as a retirement community for Roman officers – we’re guessing the oysters played their part in that); a Norman Keep (arguably the best preserved in England) in Castle Hedingham, Colchester Samaritans Community Hall, and a nascent community food forest in the newly-created The Wild Space in Maldon: these are just some of the intriguingly – some might say ‘inspired’, others ‘intrepid’ – free-ranging venues that will be hosting 100+ events at this year’s inimitable Essex Book Festival.

With Ben Okri, Diane Abbott, Robin Ince, Maggi Hambling, Shami Chakrabarti, Monique Roffey, Abi Daré, Marina Warner, Alison Weir, James Cahill, Stig Abell, and Chloe Dalton in the festival mix, plus a plethora of other authors and artists, including two Essex debut authors: Nicolas Padamsee, one of The Observer’s Best Debut Novelists in 2024, and Maldon-based Sarah Hornsley, who’s book Bad Blood has been billed as one of the biggest debuts of 2025, there is plenty to get the literary juices going this June.

Essex Writers House

We are also delighted to be co-hosting the 8th iteration of Essex Writers House at Chalkwell Hall in Southend-on-Sea in partnership with Metal. Running throughout June, Essex Writers House is a hot bed of creativity and writing.

With complimentary hot desks overlooking the mercurial Thames Estuary; a programme of adventurous writing workshops incorporating everything from early morning wild swims to mud-larking; writing residencies; a wild writing desk (weather permitting) in the revamped Peacock Enclosure; open advice sessions ETC, anyone with a writing itch should make a beeline for Essex Writers House.

Radical Islands

As part of our ongoing RADICAL ESSEX programme, which aims to shed new lights on a county that arguably is more often than not misunderstood and misrepresented, and that to date has included everything from our RADICAL WALKS IN ESSEX, RADICAL ESSEX PROCESSION and RADICAL PILGRIMAGE from Southend to Saffron, we will be launching our new 18-month project: RADICAL ISLANDS on Mersea Island on Sunday 1st June.

Together with social historian Ken Worpole and writer/environmental activist Jules Pretty, audiences will be invited to take the ferry from Mersea Island’s mainland to The Packing Shed to find out what makes Essex islands’ so special – Essex has the most islands of any English county, some inhabited, some partial islands, some in a process of rewilding, others with rich and wild stories to tell – and what the past, present and future holds for them. Be there at the start of this intriguing conversation …

‘Given the nature of the ‘beast’, it’s almost impossible to sum up the ‘explosion’ of festival events that will be taking place – literary and other – across Essex in June. One thing is certain, however. It will be a wonderful community celebration. An opportunity for people across the county and beyond to savour some of our best writers, cultural thinkers, historians, politicians in the land in a variety of amazing venues from Chelmsford Cathedral to Layer Marney Tower. An opportunity for people, particularly families, to join in a range of events and activities focusing on nature and the environment. An opportunity for people to dip their pens and get writing at the Essex Writers House. For people to make new friends, have new conversations, share their stories. And most importantly, to have fun.’

Festival Director ROS GREEN

The post Full Programme to be Announced on Thursday 03 April appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

Essex Book Festival are delighted to be partnering with EA Festival once again on two very special events.

Renaturing: Chloe Dalton and James Canton in conversation with William Sieghart
Saturday 14 June, 10am

James Canton and fellow author, Chloe Dalton, will explore their different approaches to nature writing.

Dalton’s Raising Hare is a charming account of unexpectedly raising a leveret during lockdown and a feel-good, life-affirming treat.

Canton’s Renaturing shows how the concept of rewilding can be adopted by us all. We can all make positive change, however large or small. We can all be involved in caring for and restoring the natural world.

In this session, we will discover how their experiences – of nature and writing – have intersected.

Book tickets here

Always Take Notes (live podcast taping) featuring Frank Close
Sunday 15 June, 4.30pm

As the capstone of EA Festival 2025, we are taping an episode of the UK’s #1 podcast about writing, Always Take Notes, co-hosted by Simon Akam and Rachel Lloyd.

Besides interviewing authors about their latest work, in this case, Destroyer of Worlds by physicist and multi-award-winning science writer Frank Close, the podcast delves into the creative process, research, habits and quirks of each guest, the better to understand what makes their books so good.

Considering that Destroyer of Worlds is a new and seminal history of the atomic bomb authored by one of the world’s top science writers, strap yourself in for a fascinating look under the hood of what makes Frank Close tick.

Book tickets here

Visit eafestival.com for EA Festival 2025 Programme, Line-up and to book tickets.

The post Line-up announced for this year’s EA Festival appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

Friday 4th and Saturday 5th April – Basildon: St Martin’s Church

Monday 7th April – Grays: Church Hall, West Street

Tuesday 8th April – Southend: Clifftown Theatre and Studios

With the destruction of Planet Splorf imminent, The Rocket is about to launch 3 Very Important People into space to save the species. But there’s a glitch: now, it’s down to the Teacher, the Mechanic and the Influencer to help launch The Rocket! Will they succeed?

Sadie Davidson wrote this play after the Unpuzzled Theatre Company team led drama and visual arts workshops with South Essex’s refugee and asylum seeker community members in February. Thanks to all the participants. Thanks to the support of the UK (Southend and Grays) and Mother’s Kitchen.

Tickets are free but must be booked in advance.

Run time: approximately 35 minutes.

Find out more and reserve a free place at eventbrite.co.uk/o/unpuzzled-theatre-company-108610713061

The post Launching this Easter Holidays – The Rocket: a brand new family-friendly theatre experience appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

Professor Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu embark on a pulse-pounding quest across Europe. When a brutal murder in the Louvre Museum uncovers hidden clues within Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpieces, the duo must unravel a web of intrigue that could alter the course of history…

Uncover the twists and turns of ancient secrets, relentless rivals and coded messages in a quest to protect a secret that could change the world forever.

A Mercury Theatre Colchester and Wiltshire Creative Production

From Wednesday 07 May – Saturday 24 May 2025 at Mercury Theatre, Colchester.

Visit mercurytheatre.co.uk/event/the-da-vinci-code/ for more information and to book tickets.

The post Electrifying Stage Adaptation of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code coming to Colchester’s Mercury Theatre appeared first on Essex Book Festival.

Ideal for Ages 2 to 5, Tiny Tales promises a joyful, enriching experience that will leave kids giggling and eager for more stories. All sessions will be themed around animals and nature with a different focus each time. Reserve your spot today and let the adventures begin!

Tuesday 11 March to Tuesday 13 May, 10.30am
Venue: Main Bar, Chelmsford Theatre, Fairfield Road, Chelmsford, Essex, CM1 1JG
Duration: 45 mins
Tickets: £5.00
Box Office: chelmsfordtheatre.co.uk/event/tiny-tales

Accompanying adult is free
A £2 fee is applicable per transaction
Wheelchair accessible and essential companion tickets must be booked via our Access Scheme

Please note you only need to purchase a ticket for children, adults are free. Every child ticket includes 1 free hot drink for their grown up!

The post Step into a world of wonder and imagination with Tiny Tales appeared first on Essex Book Festival.