As you’ll probably have noticed, during the Covid pandemic we’ve had to cancel the 2020 and 2021 HULFs, which were meant to take place in April.

We had hoped that by the time the next Festival was due to take place, we’d be living in a world free of hand sanitiser, face masks and social distancing, but currently we’re not convinced that by April 2022, we’ll feel comfortable holding crowded book talks and workshops in the relatively small spaces of our village venues. We’re also not keen to bring vast crowds of strangers into the community.

Back to our Community Roots

Rather than cancel the Festival for a third time, we’ve decided to take HULF back to its roots as a small event designed to serve our community. We’ll do this by holding just one event at a time, in a single venue, for an afternoon, rather than what feels like taking over the whole village for the day and bringing in authors and visitors from far and wide. (For the cancelled 2020 event, We had authors willing to fly at their own expense from Sweden and France to take part, and a visitor from the US planning her whole holiday around HULF.)

Smaller Events at Greater Frequency

To offset the reduction in the size of the event, we will increase frequency to roughly quarterly. Where possible the events will be held on the last Saturday of the month to make it easier to remember when they are. We will of course avoid the last Saturday in August as that is always the day of the Hawkesbury Horticultural Show, at which we always have a stall.

The first HULF Talk, as we’re calling the new style event series, will be on Saturday 27th November on the theme of Travel and Adventure in the beautiful setting of the Bethesda Chapel. (Limited number of tickets still available here – admission is by advance booking only to help us control numbers.)

We would like to thank rare book dealer Peter Harrington of London (www.peterharrington.co.uk) for their kind sponsorship of this event. Their short film, One Hundred Seconds to Midnight (www.onehundredsecondstomidnight.co.uk), about a remarkable collection of rare books related to climate change, will be part of the programme.

The second HULF Talk will be on Saturday 29^th January, and as we’ll be in the run-up to Valentine’s Day, the theme will be the Romantic Novel. Speakers will include Katharine E Smith and Kate Frost, who write bestselling romantic novels set in Cornwall, Greece, Africa, and other alluring destinations. The full speaker line-up will be announced on the Festival website in December.

We look forward to welcoming you to the new-look HULF.