Warwickshire News Mine

An experiment using OpenCalais and Google Maps to tag news stories

Eliot expert appears at family festival

Kathryn Hughes, the award-winning historian who is acknowledged as one of the world’s leading experts on the works of George Eliot, was among the performers appearing at Wild About at Compton Verney, a family Readers and Writers weekend organised by Compton Verney Art Gallery and Warwickshire County Council’s Libraries service.

Kathryn Hughes, whose book ‘George Eliot: The Last Victorian’ earned her the James Tait Black Prize, will be marking the 150th anniversary of Eliot’s first novel with a talk on the author’s life and works.  Her talk at Compton Verney was part of this month’s George Eliot ‘Scenes Revisited’ festival, a partnership between the George Eliot Fellowship, Nuneaton and Bedworth Heritage Forum and the County Council.

This year’s readers and writers festival, which is the third time the event has been staged at the gallery, featured family fun events based on a green theme.  The spectacular event-filled weekend took place over the weekend and featured storytellers, illustrators, authors, workshops, bounce and rhyme for under 3s and much, much more.

Staging the event was made possible by a joint bid between the County Council and the art gallery to the Arts Council for funding.  Other writers to appear included the Dreadlockalien, poet Richard Grant and Orange prize winning author, Helen Dunmore.

Also present were children’s writer Lynne Chapman whose drawings of animals have won her a large fan base, creative thinkers Campbell Perry and Jo Roberts, two writers who have worked on projects in Warwickshire and Helen East, a storyteller who specialises in environmentally-friendly tales.

A trail lead children through several of the house’s galleries where fine art is displayed from the Naples collection dating back to the early 17th century through to modern British folk art. 

Wild About… coincides with the annual summer Reading Challenge, a national initiative aimed at enthusing more young people to read books. The theme for 2007 is The Big Wild Read, which is linked to the BBC’s Breathing Places campaign, a project encouraging people to become more involved with nature.

Edwina Cordwell, Head of Libraries, Learning and Culture for Warwickshire County Council, said:  “The weather was perfect for the weekend and a lot of families enjoyed the range of acts.  We were delighted to see so many people and this will have done a great deal to generate further interest in reading.”