The History Books, Sunday 30 June
Layer Marney Tower, Near Colchester, CO5 9US
Step back in time for a series of fascinating conversations at the beautiful Layer Marney Tower. Boasting the UK’s tallest Tudor Gatehouse and stunning grounds, no wonder it was one of Henry VIII’s favourite Tudor Palaces. Festival tickets include free entry to the Tower and Gardens.
Tickets: £14 per event
Make a day of it! Ticket Deal: All three events for £36
12.00pm Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Jobs for the Girls
A brilliant and accessible new history of women’s lives in the workplace by the Sunday Times bestselling author of British Summer Time Begins.
Using interviews with women from a variety of industries across the UK, Ysenda Maxtone Graham paints a vivid portrait of young women setting out into their working lives in Britain from the 1950s up to the first ping of emails in the early 1990s.
Covering themes such as the joys of workplace gossip, the daily struggle of knowing how to spend lunch hours, office crushes and romances, the feeling of that first job and the terrifying job interview, Jobs for the Girls is an important piece of social history which brings the British workplace in the second half of the twentieth century to life.
2.00pm Estelle Paranque in conversation with Suzi Feay, Thorns, Lust and Glory
Anne Boleyn has mesmerised the English public for centuries. Her tragic execution, orchestrated by her own husband, never ceases to intrigue. How did this courtier’s daughter become the queen of England, and what was it that really tore apart this illustrious marriage, making her the whore of England, an abandoned woman executed on the scaffold? While many stories of Anne Boleyn’s downfall have been told, few have truly traced the origins of her tragic fate.
Historian and acclaimed author of Blood, Fire and Gold: Elizabeth I and Catherine De Medici, Estelle Paranque, will be interviewed by Suzi Feay. Join them for a fascinating new perspective on Tudor history’s most enduring story.
4.00pm Simon Heffer in conversation with Rowan Pelling, Sing As We Go
In partnership with EA Festival
In this event co-presented by EA Festival and Essex Book Festival, Rowan Pelling will interview Simon Heffer about his most recent book, Sing As We Go.
The fourth and final volume in his critically-acclaimed sequence of books charting the history of Britain in the century from the accession of Queen Victoria to the outbreak of the Second World War, Sing As We Go explores and explains the politics of the period, and puts such moments of national turmoil as the General Strike of 1926 and the Abdication Crisis of 1936 under the microscope. It traces the changing face of Britain as cars made their first mass appearance, the suburbs sprawled, and radio and cinema became the means of mass entertainment. And it probes the deep divisions that split the nation.
