Louise Frith (pictured right) and Amanda Dackombe are the co-founders and directors of the festival. Along with a team of dedicated stewards from the local community, they keep everything running smoothly. Louise briefed me for the events with one word, “community.”
Faversham’s 3rd literary festival is upon us and it’s given me an opportunity to reflect on the two years I spent covering the festival as its resident photographer.
The event is co-directed by Louise Frith and Amanda Dackombe, who created the festival from scratch. Like so many of the best things in Faversham, it relies on a volunteer workforce comprised of the local community, an indispensable team of stewards, who look after visiting authors (and their pets) and provide sanctuary and sustenance in the Green Room.
For the past two years I have shot the festival from start to finish, latterly maxing a 50 hour shoot that began with Will Self on a cold and wet February evening and ended with Jo Brand on a night much the same, five days later. Both years were as exhilarating as they were gruelling.
A packed house at the Alexander Centre listening to Jo Brand talking about her life and her book Born Lippy.
I dashed between many of Faversham’s most iconic buildings; the Alexander Centre, Shepherd Neame Brewery, Limes Public House, Assembly Rooms and of course the Guildhall, in an attempt to capture as much as possible. The programme covered author talks and readings, workshops and Q&As as well as a free children’s event curated by Stella Fry and I was constantly on the move.
Justin Coe performs poetry from his Dictionary of Dads in Faversham’s iconic Guildhall.
Festival Director Louise gave me the photographic brief. She summed up the event with one word; “community” and wanted me to capture that as much as possible in my pictures.
There is a great deal of excitement in the town on festival weekend. Suddenly we have Will Self, John Hegley, Martin Bell and Lionel Shriver arriving at Faversham train station and walking down Preston Street, while queues for events spill out onto the streets.
Lionel Shriver read from her book Property. We’d previously met at a launch to open the new Surrey Quays library in 2011.
It has the look and feel of a much more established literary event and benefits hugely from having its very own independent bookseller, Rachel Thapa Chetri of Top Hat & Tales. Rachel runs her business from West Street in Faversham where she sells books and hats and co-ordinates pop-up book stalls at all the larger venues throughout the festival each year.
I often get asked if I’m able to pay attention to what the authors are saying while I’m shooting and I do for the most part. More than anything, the author’s reading informs how I photograph them. It’s important to communicate and ideally there needs to be time to do this beforehand. My priority is to not distract and knowing when to put the camera out of sight is really important. I have to balance that with being ready, anticipating what might happen, so I don’t miss a reaction.
John Hegley performing songs and reading from Peace, Love and Potatoes.
If I have time, I like to make notes at the end of each event. Here are some of my personal highlights from the past two years…
Viv Albertine, guitarist from the massively influential, all woman punk band The Slits, discussing her autobiography To Throw Away Unopened with Anouchka Grose. She set the Alexander Centre alight with her honest, funny and insightful thoughts on the patriarchy, monogamy, parenting, (among other things) and announced to a packed house “we’re the daughters of the witches you couldn’t burn” just prior to deftly turning down a random proposal of marriage from a very drunk man. Truly inspiring.
Anouchka Grose interviewing Viv Albertine.
“We are the daughters of the witches you couldn’t burn”
Dame Jenni Murray speaking to an almost exclusively female audience at the Alexander Centre, about her book A History of the World in 21 Women. She gave thanks to the fathers who (just like her father) have insisted their daughters are educated to the same standard as their sons. She spoke of Artemisia as the first #metoo artist and revealed why she didn’t include Michelle Obama in her 21 and why she should have. Her final revelation was that 40% of Woman’s Hour listeners are men and it’s been that way since 1946.
Listening to Dame Jenni Murray… A History of the World in 21 Women.
Faversham resident Griselda Cann Mussett and Dame Jenni Murray, who forged a lifelong friendship whilst working at the BBC fifty years ago.
Salena Godden bringing the (public) house down in The Limes, with her live performance of poems from Pessimism is for Lightweights.
Diana Evans revealing that she doesn’t have a structure for her writing process at all but instead writes in fragments or scenes and only really sees the links between them afterwards. All the while the world is changing around her, feeding into these fragments. For her novel, Ordinary People, an emerging Brexit forced her to write a bigger and braver book than the one she had intended. She spoke about the North, South London divide and of her characters who have to cross the river to realise parts of themselves. She read a passage in which her characters throw a party to watch Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration and why his daughters walking onto the stage “in excited shoes” was both a “celebration” but also a “mighty lament” recalling as it did “the four little girls bombed forty-five years before in the church in Alabama by the Ku Klux Klan.” It was impossible not to be deeply moved by this.
Diana Evans Ordinary People and Claire Fuller Bitter Orange, with host Nicolette Jones.
Sonia Velton in her book Black Berry and Wild Rose, explained how NASA drew on the technical brilliance and innovation of Playtex’s female underwear designers when creating the Apollo 11 spacesuit. A weave pattern they found so complex, they needed engineers to translate its intricacies.
Tessa Boas revealing that the RSPB was started by women who wanted to stop bird feathers from being used in hats, calling it “that murderous millinery”.
Will Self at the Shepherd Neame Brewery, reading from his novel Phone and resenting the ubiquitous presence of the mobile, which he has to tell his students to put away during lectures. He thinks it is undermining societal cohesion and leading to short attention spans. He also spoke candidly about how fame confines by “hammering you into a single identity for the rest of your life.”
Perhaps my favourite moment was the least expected. Between assignments I ran into Martin Bell having lunch at the Limes. He invited me to keep him company, bought me a drink and we talked while he ate. He was keen to get a local’s view of the geographical and political landscape of Faversham, this being his first visit.
Martin Bell, in The Limes 2018, “Trump is more dangerous than Nixon and needs to be held rigorously to account but our media is not up to the job.”
Later in the Assembly Rooms he talked with great humour about hugging Ann Widdicombe “not something you’d forget,” politics; “everyone in politics lies but it’s okay because no one is listening” and expressed despair over Brexit, to great applause. He warned a packed Assembly Rooms that Trump is more dangerous than Nixon and needs to be held rigorously to account but that our media is not up to the job. This is the subject of his excellent book War and the Death of News.
He spoke affectionately of his daughters and their astonishment that he doesn’t have PTSD. Earlier we had talked about the photography of Don McCullin and the award winning work of war correspondent Anthony Lloyd. Lloyd spent two years tracking down McCullin’s “Shell Shocked Marine” from the Battle of Hue, Vietnam. McCullin has spoken openly about how tormented his experiences have left him. Bell by contrast says that he isn’t at all haunted by his war zone past. The content of his flashbacks and nightmares are all about “losing his luggage at Heathrow” and sitting in the House of Commons, where “it’s always the same speaker.” I found him funny, gracious, humble and fascinating and I could have listened to him for hours.
Horatio Clare interviewed by Alex Preston. In his book Something Of His Art he recounts the walk he took in J.S. Bach's footsteps and made sure he walked Oare marshes during his visit to Faversham.
Once again, many of the visiting authors were clearly charmed by Faversham, its sense of community, historic architecture and beautiful surrounds. Now it also has a literary festival to be proud of.
© Images and text Amanda Russell, all rights reserved.