The Smithdown Litfest 2025

29/09/25

We celebrated a very successful Smithdown Litfest this September, with fantastic guest speakers and our biggest audience numbers yet.

We were delighted to welcome Sir Michael Palin to the Litfest. He was interviewed by Dr Kate Walchester of Liverpool John Moores University in front of a sold-out audience at Ullet Road Unitarian Church.

We welcomed back popular guests from last year’s festival – journalists and writers Anthony Quinn and Ragnhild Lund Ansnes. This year they appeared at St Bridget & St Thomas Church, talking about Anthony’s new book on Kevin Keegan.

I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing Ann Dinsdale, Principal Curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, and biographer and journalist Sharon Wright, about their fascinating Brontë book Let Me In. The beautiful surroundings of the Sefton Park Palm House added to the lovely atmosphere.

Our screening of archival film footage of Liverpool was another sold-out event. It was a very special opportunity to talk to Nicki Wilkinson, whose late father Angus Tilston MBE collected and filmed the footage. We took the audience on a journey from the earliest known moving pictures of Liverpool in Victorian times, through two world wars, the Swinging Sixties, and ended with the celebrated 1984 International Garden Festival.

Historical fiction writer JP Maxwell took us on a very interesting tour of Toxteth Park Cemetery, recounting tales of some of the interesting historical figures who are buried there.

It was a packed four days of events, and thoroughly enjoyable, with great feedback from the speakers, venues and audience. Ticket proceeds will once again go to Smithdown in Bloom.