Literary Weekend 2007

The biennial event took place this year at Devonshire Hall, University of Leeds from 7 to 9 September.  The weekend's programme was centred around celebrating an important anniversary - the 70th anniversary of the first Carnegie Medal being awarded.

In 1937, the Carnegie Medal for excellence in children’s literature was awarded to Arthur Ransome for Pigeon Post. The prize was awarded not so much for its outstanding quality but in recognition that Arthur Ransome was a leading children's writer, actively engaged in writing a classic series of lasting quality.

Programme of Speakers

Sharon Sperling of CILIP (formerly the Library Association) spoke on the continuing importance of the Carnegie Medal, and its prizewinners from Lucy M. Boston’s A Stranger at Green Knowe to Melvin Burgess’s highly controversial Junk.

Other topics included: Emma Holt, the original Great Aunt; Children’s sailing author Aubrey de Selincourt; The Latin of Missee Lee; Being Extraordinary - a talk on Ransome’s Adjectives; and AR, Ship’s Naturalist.

All this, plus endless gossip and literary chat till the wee small hours, threats of verse and worse from TARS President Norman Willis, visits to the Brotherton Library and Ransome locations in Leeds.

Red Ransome?

Roland Chambers spoke on his book on Swallows, Amazons and Trotsky, which Faber publish in 2008. He examined the life of a man who spied for Britain at the same time as he fell in love with Trotsky’s secretary.

Marcus Sedgwick, acclaimed children’s writer, was shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal for The Dark Horse. His all-time favourite book when a child was Old Peter’s Russian Tales. He spoke on his new novel Blood Red, Snow White, which was published in July. Set during the Russian Revoution, it is told as three linked novellas: part fairy tale, part spy thriller, and part love story.

Your Own - Your Very Own

Home-spun speakers drawn from the finest that TARS can provide included Ann Farr on the Brotherton Collection, major archive in Britain of Arthur Ransome’s writing and material, and Peter Willis, Chairman of the Nancy Blackett Trust on literary references in We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea.