A festival that I come home from feeling stimulated but relaxed. We were first attracted by the Caught By The River stage, and that is still the main draw, but there is also a cracking roster of book talks, great poets and comedians, the best festival food you are ever going to eat, beautiful grounds to enjoy, the Idler Academy for some casual education, and a bracing swim in the estuary to set yourself up for the day.
My round-up of Latitude 2015. There won’t be any prizes for guessing that Wolf Alice turned in the most exciting performance of the festival, but an energetic Malian blues band, Songhoy Blues, ran them close.
I was introduced to Per Petterson’s ‘Out Stealing Horses’ by the inventive organisers of ‘Future Built 2015′, who provided gifts of Norwegian literature to all the foreign speakers at their wonderful event in Drammen a few months ago. Based on a sample of eight natives at the pre-conference dinner table, the novel has been read by about four fifths of the country’s population. I’m not surprised – it is a wonderful book, combining a glimpse into the simultaneously dark and uplifting history of Norway’s’ Second World War, alongside a subtle exploration of family, adolescence and loss as the ageing narrator seeks to come to terms with a defining event in his childhood.
markontour 