When I tell people I run a book festival, there are always a few who say, usually apologetically, that they don’t read. I tell them it’s not obligatory! But if I mention a few of the non-fiction subjects we are featuring at the Festival, there is invariably something that grabs their interest.
From Prince Harry to hospitals and grammar
Every autumn, a slew of non-fiction books are published for the Christmas market, from celebrity memoirs to political diaries and from cookery books to travelogues.
While Prince Harry’s memoir Spare became the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time and Jamie Oliver whips up bestselling cookery books almost annually, non-fiction titles like Lynne Truss’s 2003 grammar book Eats, Shoots & Leaves and Adam Kay’s 2017 junior doctor’s memoir This is Going to Hurt were perhaps less obvious bestsellers.
The era of huge advances for celebrity memoirs has mostly passed, however, and there’s no doubt that some Christmas titles make a lovely gift but are destined to remain unread before being quietly dropped off at the local charity shop.
The challenge of programming…
Non-fiction charts show the breadth and depth of subjects covered and it’s a challenge to decide which books to feature at the Festival every year.
It’s easy for me to get excited about a particular area of interest – I’ve always been a fan of popular science and often volunteered to work on these books when I was a publicist back in the 1990s.
But I have to consider first and foremost what will interest our audiences, as well as looking at books that cover important topics that deserve wider discussion. All within the confines of a limited budget and limited available slots!
While there is never going to be space for everything I’d like to include, I hope that our 2025 Festival has a good balance, with talks on subjects as diverse as Ancient Egypt and AI, taking audiences from the distant past to issues current today.
The natural world
Our Festival theme last year was ‘Nature’ and books on the natural world are perennially popular, from bestsellers about personal journeys, such as The Salt Path, to issues around the environment and the Climate Crisis.
This year’s Festival continues the theme, with entrepreneur Hannah Dale giving a talk based on her book A Wilding Year, an account of rewilding her Lincolnshire farm. It will be accompanied by a slide show of her own illustrations – a great way to bring a non-fiction subject to life.
For our online programme, I’ve selected Polly Atkin’s The Company of Owls, billed as “a love song to these incredible creatures, and a reflection on what makes them, and us, unique”. Our online programme not only makes it easier for audiences to join us from anywhere in the world, but also allows us to include authors such as Polly, who lives with a chronic illness and finds it harder to travel.
Bringing it home to Huddersfield
This year’s theme of ‘Yorkshire’ features heavily in our non-fiction offer as much as our fiction and poetry, with events with Yorkshire Vet Matt Jackson-Smith, and Alan Johnson’s new biography of Huddersfield born former Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
Music to our ears
We’ve been lucky enough to welcome some great music writers and musicians to the Festival over the years, from journalist John Aizlewood’s talk on Radiohead to Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie’s in conversation on the publication of his memoir.
This year it’s writer and broadcaster Stuart Maconie’s turn. In a return visit to the Festival, he will this time be talking about his new book on The Beatles – including what is sure to be a fascinating story about seeing them play live.
Another music-related event is Hardeep Sahota’s talk on his current exhibition of photographs about South Asian music and culture, Rassam.
Box-ing clever
As with fiction, TV tie-ins provide plenty of material for non-fiction books. This year we have invited local author Catherine Curzon to talk about the difference between The Royal Family and how they were portrayed on the popular Netflix series The Crown.
And Great British Sewing Bee judge Patrick Grant will be here in person to talk about his book Less, a critique of fast fashion and the consumer society.
Variety is the spice of non-fiction books
We can never cover every topic under the sun, but we will always do our best to offer a variety of non-fiction events each year at the Festival
So the next time someone says to you: “Literature festival? I don’t read”, direct them to our website as there might just be something that they wouldn’t want to miss!