Alderney Literary Festival

Each year, the Alderney Literary Trust holds the Alderney Literary Festival of Historical Literature, having as its consistent theme the convergence of historical fact and literary fiction.

This is a boutique literary festival, kept deliberately small to create a ‘salon’ feel and encourage interaction between authors and audience.

The Festival takes place over a long weekend every March in the historic Island Hall, Alderney’s seat of government, built in 1763. We keep audiences small to create an intimate and friendly feel to this ‘salon’ style gathering of historians, biographers, novelists, and fans of historical fiction and non-fiction. In 2017, we inaugurated a special speaker slot – the Festival’s Debut Novelist – inviting a new author who we believe is one to watch for the future.

In this Festival, history is explored through biographies, thrillers and crime stories, the fantastical and the supernatural, romance, adventure, warfare and political analysis. Our guest authors bring fresh insights into old events, reinterpret them in the light of new evidence, and make history relevant to the present time.

This year, returning for another visit is Sunday Times bestselling author Simon Scarrow (pictured) who is a former Chairman of the Festival. He immediately posted on social media:  “Delighted to be returning to Alderney. They have one of the best Literary Festivals I have ever been to. Also, the island is a magical place well worth a visit.”

Another returnee is Clare Mulley, an award-winning author who focuses on female heroics during World War II, who will discuss her latest book Agent Zo: the untold story of a Polish Freedom Fighter. She guested at the Festival in 2019 and recently appeared on History UK’s documentary Hitler’s British Island.

Simon Scarrow, whose latest novel A Death in Berlin is the third in his Inspector Schenke series set in wartime Berlin, and Mulley are joined by these renowned authors:

• Leo Vardiashvili – a child refugee from Georgia whose debut novel, Hard by a Great Forest, follows the fortunes of a father and sons who must return to their decaying but still beautiful Georgian homeland to rescue each other and make peace with the past.
• Rosie Garland – whose new novel The Fates (Quercus Books) is a re-imagining and retelling of the Greek myth of the Fates. Val McDermid has named her one of the most compelling LGBT+ writers in the UK today.
• Lavie Tidhar – who works across genres combining detective and thriller modes with poetry, science fiction and historical and autobiographical material. His novel Golgotha launches in 2025.
• Flora Johnston – a writer from Edinburgh with a particular interest in stories from Scotland’s past. Her latest novel, The Paris Peacemakers, tells the story of three Scots and their struggle to rebuild their lives after the trauma of the First World War.
• Lesley Downer – author, historian and all-round Japan buff. She will focus on her newest book, The Shortest History of Japan.
• Eleni Kyriacou – an award-winning editor and journalist who will feature in conversation with local author Rachel Abbott about her research and writing of her novel, The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou, based on the true story of the penultimate woman to be hanged in Britain.
• Ellen Apsten – an international bestselling author and scriptwriter born and raised in the Kenyan highlands whose third book, The Last Princess, is the retelling of 1066 and Gytha Godwinson, daughter of Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.
• Anna Abney – whose Measham Hall novels are affected by many of the major incidents of the Seventeenth century – plague, civil war and revolution. Though often overlooked, this is a century that was fundamental in shaping modern Britain.