Oxford Literary Festival Comes to Lincoln

The 27th Oxford Literary Festival, which runs from Saturday 16 March until Sunday 24 March, will take place at various venues across the city. Amidst an exciting line up of events, Lincoln College is proud to host a number of talks, including ones given by members of our Lincoln community. Lincoln alumni can receive a 20% discount with the code ALUMNIOLF24.

On Crime Fiction Saturday (16 March) alumna and bestselling author Lynn Shepherd (nom de plume Cara Hunter) will give not one but two talks. Her first talk, Ain't That the Truth: Where Crime Fact Meets Crime Fiction, will take place at 10:00am in the Oakeshott Room. She will be joined by author, Victoria Selman, to ask why we're so fascinated by true crime and why the genre is often stranger than fiction.

Her second talk, Watching the Detectives: Dishing the Forensic Dirt on Crime on the Telly, will be at 2:00pm in the Oxford Martin School. Detective Inspector Andy Thompson and former crime scene investigator Joey Giddings will discuss with Cara the realities of police investigations and what it's like for them to watch crime portrayed on television.

Cara said, "The best thing about the Oxford Literary Festival is the sheer range of things to see - from Crime Fiction Saturday (which I just love and will be doing for the third time this year) to Professor Peter McCullough performing a John Donne seminar in our beautiful Lincoln Chapel. Everything you could ever want in a book festival and more besides."

This year's Lincoln Lecture, The Secret Life of John le Carré, promises to be a fascinating one where John le Carré's biographer Adam Sisman will reveal the secret life of le Carré that he couldn't include in his definitive 2015 book about the writer. The talk will take place in the Oakeshott Room at 4:00pm on Saturday 16 March.

Professor Peter McCullough's (Schmer Fellow in English Renaissance Literature) talk, Be Something, Be Somebody: A Sermon by John Donne will take place Wednesday 20 March at 12:00pm in the Lincoln College Chapel. Before giving a reading of an original John Donne  sermon - first preached before the Court of Charles I on the first Friday of Lent, 1628 - he will discuss the poet's sermons and why the Lincoln College Chapel is suited to their delivery. The talk is free of charge.

Peter McCullough said, "I've been delivering Donne's sermons in Lincoln Chapel for students for almost thirty years, and gradually attracted others from the wider Oxford community who are interested in hearing this remarkable prose as a live performance in a perfect period setting, as it was intended. The extension to the OLF has come by popular demand, and been a terrific success - both for Donne's powerful art, and for our remarkable Chapel building."

See the full programme of talks HERE. Lincoln alumni will receive a 20% discount with the code ALUMNIOLF24.