Bath: Move fast for tickets

Hurry hurry hurry to secure tickets for Bath for 28 Feb to 9 March! Because lots of great events are sold out: Germaine Greer, Austentatious, Rory McLean on Berlin, Alev Scott on Turkey, Henry Marsh on neurosurgery, Stephen Grosz on psychotherapy, several of Joanna Rossiter’s book groups (author of our Big Bath Read, The Sea Change — click here for the Goodreads group to join the conversation online)… If you are desperate for a ticket, please sign up for the waiting list with our box office on 01225 463362 — I have been monitoring the situation and I am seeing tickets emerge from time to time so it is worth doing. (This happens because sometimes people make block-bookings and then realise a couple of people can’t come.)

And a lot of events are down to single figures for remaining tickets: Jeff Williams’ jazz gig on the final night (he’s a jazz drumming legend and Mr Lionel Shriver — this is the first festival they’ve performed at together); historical novelists Sarah Dunant and S J Parris in conversation about what will be the next Wolf Hall; philanthropy expert Theresa Lloyd on the psychology of giving.

What you should buy now because tickets flying and will soon be in the final phase: Jennifer Saunders, Great Bath News Debate (with Alain de Botton and Jon Snow), Joanna Trollope, Tim Moore, Ben Chu’s Chinese Whispers, Hanif Kureishi, Claudia Roden, Alastair Campbell.

Some of my own favourite events:

— Patrick Barkham and his badgers — Britain’s leading nature writer on our most elusive creature

— Julian Baggini on the art of eating — The entertaining philosopher on why we’re obsessed with food

— Sally Magnusson on her memoir about her mother — An extraordinary moving family story about memory and grief 

— Gary Shteyngart: “America’s funniest writer” on a rare visit to the UK — if you love David Sedaris, you have to see him

— Miranda Seymour: the award-winning biographer on the colourful historical relationship between England and Germany

— Tom Rob Smith: “My father told me my mother needed psychiatric treatment. My mother told me my father was lying. Who was I to believe?” His new novel The Farm is based on this nightmarish true story

— Darragh McKeon: Fantastic debut author with an extraordinary novel that tells you everything you need to know about Chernobyl.

PLUS: The “A Woman’s Place Is…?” debate with Kirsty Wark, Jane Shepherdson, Hadley Freeman and Sarah Bailey; and the Encouraging Wealth Creation debate with Stefan Stern, Nick Cohen, Steve Richards, Theresa Lloyd and Tom Hughes Hallett. For a guide to all our debates click here. 

There are more updates on the all the events and the changing picture daily as we come into the Festival countdown on our Facebook page, including news on the latest press coverage for all the authors at the Festival. Meanwhile I need to start planning my shoes.