18/10/2025
On a crisp Sunday morning, we opened the final day of the festival with an important discussion between doctors Grace Spence Green and Gabriel Weston about illness, disability and treating the body as a whole. One audience member shared that “this discourse... doesn’t get built into everyday things like book festivals.” It was a privilege to have it as part of ours.
We journeyed down the A1 through place and history with Rob Cowen, and took a glimpse back in time to re-examine the work of Catherine Cookson for a live recording of The Working Class Library Podcast, featuring Terri White.
It was a great afternoon for fiction fans. A packed-out audience came to see beloved crime writer Ann Cleeves and broadcaster Steph McGovern in conversation about their new murder mysteries. There’s nothing like the buzz of a book signing queue full of superfans!
Vincenzo Latronico, Gráinne O’Hare and Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin discussed their bitingly witty new books. “The LGBTQ community love to have a bit of a laugh about quite serious things,” said Niamh on using humour to deal with heavier topics. “As a writer you’re entitled to steal from anyone’s lives as long as you’re respectful,” said Vincenzo.
And the fiction fest continued as Jonathan Coe shared his new satirical novel on the main stage, and the studio audience experienced an exclusive dramatic live reading of Eliza Clark’s short story The King, performed by Laura Elphinstone, and followed by a Q&A with Eliza.
Foreign policy expert Fiona Hill returned to her native Durham to launch our newly commissioned podcast series, Forged in the North. She was joined by Dan Jackson and Richard O’Neill to talk about North East identity and storytelling, in a discussion that will form the final episode of the podcast.
We finished the weekend over at Collected Books, where poetry fans came out in force to hear from Mona Arshi and Caroline Bird, in an event curated by the Poetry Book Society. They offered contrasting tones in their poetry, creating a perfect balance of heaviness and hopeful energy that left us hanging on each word as the evening light dimmed on another year of Durham Book Festival.
Photos: Rob Irish
