Literary festival to celebrate heyday of Island’s tourism

Members of the playwright group Jersey-based Plays Rough will write and perform a series of pieces in tribute to cabaret star Bob Anthony’s 1975 album Ile d’Amour, which contains many well-known songs, including ‘Let’s go down, down, down to St Helier’ and ‘Castle at Gorey, tell me your story’.

The event, which has the blessing of the late Mr Anthony’s family, will be staged at the Maritime Museum in association with Jersey Heritage.

The halcyon days of tourism in Jersey are also the inspiration for Italy’s Other Island: The Italians and the Making of Modern Jersey, the new book by home-grown festival writer, journalist and broadcaster Hamish Marett-Crosby.

Mr Marett-Crosby will tell the story of the men and women who came to work in Jersey’s hotels and restaurants from the 1950s onwards, becoming the mainstay of the industry for over a quarter of a century and contributing to the Island’s distinctively cosmopolitan community. The Island’s Norman heritage will be the basis of a major local literary event later this year when the first translation into English of Les Chroniques de Jersey – a key history of the Island written in Old French in the 16th century – will be published by the Société Jersiaise.

Before that event, its translator, Brownyn Matthews, will talk about the challenges of the project at the festival, the anonymous chronicler and some of the ripping yarns he recorded.

And 50 years on from the first publication of The Mersey Sound – the best-selling anthology which made Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Adrian Henri as famous as rock stars – Jersey’s own poets will present an evening of readings from it, as well as new work of their own. The event, titled From Mersey to Jersey, will also explore the poetry of song lyrics.

Other events involving Jersey writers at this year’s festival, which runs from Wednesday 27 September to Sunday 1 October, include A Conversation with the Blonde Plotters – successful Island novelists Gwyn GB, Kelly Clayton and Deborah Carr – and Reflections of D-Day with poet Juliette Hart. There will also be a panel discussion featuring Jersey Evening Post picture editor Peter Mourant and visiting writers Miranda Doyle and Felicia Yap, who will examine fake news, social media and self-curating.

There will also be workshops on calligraphy and short-story writing, as well as storytelling for children in French, Portuguese and Polish.

Paul Bisson, the Festival of Words’ vice-chairman, said: ‘We are proud to promote the fantastic work produced by a wide array of Jersey writers.

‘We’re grateful not only for the insights they will be providing into their writing, but also for their assistance in helping us celebrate the unique culture, history and traditions that the Island has to offer.’

The festival, now in its third year, will be headlined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

For information on tickets, venues and event times, visit jerseyfestivalofwords.org.

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