Leeds Lit Fest featuring Stuart Maconie at Leeds Minster

Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor

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In Conversation with Stuart Maconie - The Full English

13-23 June 2024

Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.

Stuart Maconie
Image supplied by Leeds Inspired
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In its sixth year, the city’s award-winning Leeds Lit Fest in 2024 runs from 15 to 23 June across a range of the city’s venues bringing together writers and performers from Leeds and beyond, taking part in 35 events over 10 days. The Poet Laureate Simon Armitage’s band LYR get proceedings underway “in great poetic and musical style” at the historic Leeds Library (13 June), while another headliner is best-selling writer, journalist, broadcaster and BBC Radio 6 Music show presenter Stuart Maconie.

He’ll be bringing The Full English to Leeds Minster (15 June), following in Bradfordian polymath JB Priestley’s footsteps across our nation. Deftly weaving history and politics in engaging, conversational prose, The Full English is a love-letter to England written in Maconie’s inimitable style, taking as its start point, 90 years on, Priestley’s English Journey, “a warm, funny and tender forgotten classic: scathing about vested interests, intensely patriotic and politically progressive”.

Also on 15 June, globally renowned poetry powerhouse Salena Godden returns to Leeds after a two-year hiatus, as she headlines LIVEwire’s night of electric spoken word poetry at Hyde Park Book Club, in an event that aims to “transform your preconceptions around poetry forever”.

On 18 June, we’ve earmarked a Tolka Journal showcase featuring readings by Clare Fisher, Angelica Krikler and Kimberly Campanello, while on 22 June, there’s a Peepal Tree Press poetry showcase at Leeds Library (5pm), featuring two Leeds-based poets, Adam Lowe (whose Patterflash is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation) and Emily Zobel Marshall (Bath of Herbs), and a Northern Fiction Alliance Roadshow at Hyde Park Book Club, with book stalls from 11am and performances, from 3pm, by acclaimed writers Dylan Byford, Elliot J Harper, Matt Hill, Christine Roseeta Walker and SJ Bradley (stay for her play at 7.30pm).

Head over to the Leeds Lit Fest website for the full programme and all the details about dates, times, venues and prices.

Where to go near Leeds Lit Fest featuring Stuart Maconie at Leeds Minster

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Come to Swithens Farm for a great family day out in Leeds. Our farm has plenty to offer whatever age you are!Swithens Farm is a working farm. For many years now Ian and his wife Angela have built a following that they welcome in all year around. We now have a farm shop, café, playbarn and petting farm. When we first opened we only had the usual farm animals – cows, pigs, sheep, chickens and it was free entry. We now have llamas, alpacas, meerkats, rabbits, guinea pigs, donkeys and a pony.On the working farm, we breed our own cows, pigs and sheep and we sell the meat through the farm shop and the café. If you buy a sausage sandwich from the café the sausage will be from the butcher who has made the sausage by hand using our own pork. We also produce our own free-range eggs.
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Swithens Farm is a working farm. For many years now Ian and his wife Angela have built a following that they welcome in all year around.

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The Chequers Inn

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Salt & Pepper

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