Speakers

Malcolm Guite

Malcolm Guite is a poet and priest, and Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge. His books include Sounding the Seasons; Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year (Canterbury 2012) and Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Hodder 2017)

In 2023 he was awarded the Archbishop Lanfranc Medal by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

 He has a YouTube series called A Spell in the Library at https://www.youtube.com/c/MalcolmGuitespell

Sessions

Francis Spufford

Francis Spufford is the author of Unapologetic, shortlisted for the Michael Ramsey Prize, and the literary bestseller Golden Hill.

His most recent book is Cahokia Jazz. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is married to the soon-to-be Dean of Chelmsford.

Sessions

Cathy Rentzenbrink

Cathy Rentzenbrink is the author of the novel Everyone Is Still Alive and several acclaimed works of non-fiction including the Sunday Times bestseller The Last Act of Love. She grew up in Yorkshire, spent many years in London and now lives in Cornwall.

Sessions

Mark Oakley

Mark Oakley is the Dean of Southwark and a Festival favourite. He is a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Kings College London; Visiting Scholar at Sarum College, an Ambassador for StopHate UK, Patron of Tell MAMA (supporting those affected by anti-Muslim hate crime) and a Trustee of the Civil Liberties Trust. His books include By Way of the Heart: the Seasons of Faith, My Sour Sweet Days and The Splash of Words which won the Michael Ramsey Prize.

Sessions

Chine McDonald

Sessions

Elizabeth Oldfield

Elizabeth Oldfield has spent her career trying to lever open space for deeper conversations - about what it means to be a human being, where we can find wisdom and how we build a society where we hate each other a little less. She has worked at BBC Radio 4, led a Westminster think tank, and is now the host of The Sacred podcast, speaking to guests like Nick Cave, Sally Phillips, Rabbi Sacks, Rainn Wilson, Sathnam Sanghera and Krista Tippett about their deepest values. She lives with her family in a Christian intentional community in South London.

Sessions

Andrew Ziminski

Andrew Ziminski has spent decades as a stonemason and church conservator, acting as an informal guide to curious visitors. Church Going is his handbook to the medieval churches of the British Isles, in which he reveals their fascinating histories, features and furnishings, from flying buttresses to rood screens, lichgates to chancels. it is a celebration of British architectural history. Come and hear from an author with a unique perspective on churches.

Sessions

Archbishop Stephen Cottrell

Archbishop Stephen Cottrell is the 98th Archbishop of York. He is a member of the Church of England’s Committee for Minority Ethnic Concerns, and Chair of Church Army, an Anglican society for evangelism and social outreach. He is a member of the House of Lords. He is a well-known writer and speaker on evangelism, spirituality and catechesis.

He is married to Rebecca who is a potter. They have three sons, one grandson and a dog.

His books include Kingdom Calling, and Do Nothing to Change Your Life and P is for Pilgrim. His new book, Praying by Heart: The Lord’s Prayer for Everyone, is due out in October 2024.

Sessions

Carys Davies

Carys Davies is the author of two novels, The Mission House (2020) and West (2018), which won the Wales Book of the Year Fiction award, was Runner-Up for the Society of Author's McKitterick Prize and was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. Her short stories have been widely published in magazines and anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and have won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, the Society of Authors' Olive Cook Award, the Royal Society of Literature's V S Pritchett Prize, and a Northern Writers' Award. Davies' second collection, The Redemption of Galen Pike, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award 2015.

Sessions

Catherine Coldstream

Catherine Coldstream was born into a family of artists in London. After converting to Roman Catholicism in her 20s, she spent 12 years as a Carmelite nun. She has since studied at the universities of Oxford, East Anglian and London, and taught philosophy and ethics in schools. Now based in Oxford, she is associate editor of MONK arts magazine and a keen amateur musician. Her years as a nun have never left her and continue to inspire her writing.

Sessions

Claire Gilbert

Sessions

Diarmaid MacCulloch

Diarmaid MacCulloch is Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University. His Thomas Cranmer (1996) won the Whitbread Biography Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize; Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700 (2004) won the Wolfson Prize and the British Academy Prize. A History of Christianity (2010), which was adapted into a six-part BBC television series, was awarded the Cundill and Hessel-Tiltman Prizes. He was knighted in 2012 and was awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2022.

Sessions

Eddy Aigbe

Eddy Aigbe is a Nigerian-born visual artist, multimedia painter, and art tutor based in Birmingham UK, who believes that creativity is inherent to humanity and that symbolism serves as a universal language for spiritual expression. He has recently completed a commission for Hodge Hill Church in Birmingham, ‘Stations of the Cross’ which exemplifies this philosophy. Eddy is also a Senior Project Manager currently working for the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) Partnership Campaign Project at Citizens UK.

Sessions

Edward Stourton

Edward Stourton has worked in broadcasting for 45 years, and regularly presents Radio Four programmes such as Sunday, the World at One and the World this Weekend. He has been a foreign correspondent for Channel 4, ITN and the BBC, and for ten years he was one of the main presenters of the Today programme. He has published 12 books.

Sessions

Eve Poole

Dr Eve Poole OBE is Chair of the Woodard Corporation, a family of Christian schools. She has written several books, including Leadersmithing, Buying God, and Robot Souls. Previously she was Chair of Gordonstoun and Third Church Estates Commissioner. Eve has twins and lives in Edinburgh. 

Sessions

Francesca Kay

Francesca Kay grew up in Southeast Asia and India, and subsequently lived in Jamaica, the USA, and Germany. She now lives in Oxford. Her first novel, An Equal Stillness, won the 2009 Orange Award for New Writers, and her second novel, The Translation of the Bones, was longlisted for the 2012 Women's Prize for Fiction. Her third novel, The Long Room, was published in 2016 to critical acclaim.

The Book of Days is her fourth novel.

Sessions

Helen King

Helen King, Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at The Open University, is a historian of medicine and the body. In 2021 she was elected to the House of Laity of General Synod. She is a trustee of Women and the Church, and of Together for the Church of England. Her book, Immaculate Forms: Uncovering the History of Women's Bodies¸ is due out in September 2024.

Sessions

Hetta Howes

Dr Hetta Howes is a Lecturer in Medieval Literature at City University of London and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. Her book Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife paints a portrait of the world in which medieval women lived, and the ways in which their lives speak to us in the present.

Sessions

Jayne Manfredi

Jayne Manfredi is an Anglican deacon, writer, teacher and BBC Radio broadcaster presenting the Thought for the Day segment on the Today programme. Her book, Waking the Women: Faith, Menopause, and the Meaning of Midlife is due out in October 2024.

Sessions

Jem Bloomfield

Jem Bloomfield is an academic, writer and lay minister in the Church of England.  He writes about detective fiction, fantasy, Shakespeare and the Bible.  He is currently producing a series of literary studies of the Narnia novels; the first two volumes are called Paths in the Snow and Gold on the Horizon.

Sessions

Mark Pryce

Mark Pryce is a priest and poet whose academic work and poetry is focused around the meeting place of spirituality, gender and practical theology. His publications include Literary Companion to the Lectionary, Literary Companion to Festivals and Poetry, Practical Theology and Reflective Practice. Mark is Director of Ministry for Church of England Birmingham, and was formerly Dean of Corpus Christi College Cambridge. He is a Chaplain to the King.

Sessions

Michael Wheeler

Michael Wheeler is a Visiting Professor of English Literature at the University of Southampton and a former Lay Canon of Winchester Cathedral.  He established the Ruskin centre at Lancaster and has served as Chairman of Gladstone’s Library.  He is best known for his books on faith and literature and his contributions to the Church Times over four decades. 

Sessions

Natalie Collins

Natalie Collins is a Gender Justice Specialist.  She is the Creator and Director of the DAY Programme for young people and the Own My Life course for women.  Author of Out Of Control; couples, conflict and the capacity for change, she organises Project 3:28 and co-founded the UK Christian Feminist Network.

Sessions

Nick Spencer

Nick Spencer is Senior Fellow at the think tank Theos. He is the author of a number of books, most recently The Landscapes of Science and Religion: What are we actually disagreeing about? (OUP, 2025), Playing God: Science, Religion and the Future of Humanity (SPCK, 2024), and Magisteria: the entangled histories of science and religion (Oneworld, 2023). He really likes science and religion stuff but is frankly itching to work on something else now.

Sessions

Papagena

Sopranos: Elizabeth Drury, Imogen Ram-Prasad, Suzzie Vango

Altos: Shivani Rattan, Sarah Tenant-Flowers

In a field dominated by male and mixed voices ensembles, Papagena is a rarity in the UK, an all-female professional consort of singers set up to explore music from medieval times to the present day. The group’s programming defies pigeonholing; drawing richly on traditional folk music and women’s working songs from around the world, Papagena juxtaposes these pieces with medieval, classical and contemporary repertoire from Kassia and Hildegard of Bingen to Imogen Heap and Katy Perry, as well as writing its own material and commissioning from an eclectic range of composers including Errollyn Wallen, Oliver Tarney, Janet Wheeler and Jim Clements.

Formally launched in 2015, the group has performed throughout the UK including at the Edinburgh, Brandenburg Choral and Three Choirs Festivals. The group has released three albums including The Darkest Midnight (November 2018, SOMM) which reached No 1 in the classical download charts and Hush! (March 2020, SOMM)  which received stunning reviews in all major journals including Gramophone.

Papagena made its live BBC debut in 2018, since when it has given several more performances on the BBC, on both In Tune (Radio 3) and Woman’s Hour (Radio 4). In 2018 Papagena was one of Making Music’s Selected Artists and in the same year began a fruitful collaboration with the Orchestra of the Swan with whom it regularly performs in Stratford on Avon and at the Birmingham Royal Conservatoire. Forthcoming projects include performances in Manchester, Southwell, Winterton, a tour to the Netherlands and the devising of a major new work for Passiontide 2026.

For more information, visit: www.papagena.co.uk   @Papagenasingers

Sessions

Paula Hollingsworth

Paula Hollingsworth has a particular interest in the spirituality of novels, and her book The Spirituality of Jane Austen was published in 2017. She was in the first group of women ordained priest in 1994 and is currently the Chaplain of St Paul's Cathedral in London. In her spare time, when not reading, she is most likely to be found on a long distance footpath.

Sessions

Rachel Mann

Rachel Mann is a priest, award-winning poet and writer. She has written 15 books, including an Advent book based on Jane Austen’s novels, A Truth Universally Acknowledged. Her latest book, Do Not Be Afraid is the Archbishop of York’s Advent book for 2024. She is Archdeacon of Salford and Bolton in Manchester Diocese and a Visiting Fellow in the Manchester Writing School. She contributes to Thought For the Day on Radio 4 and Pause For Thought on Radio 2.

Sessions

Rupert Shortt

Rupert Shortt is a bestselling author and Research Associate at the Von Hügel Institute, University of Cambridge. He was Religion Editor of The Times Literary Supplement from 2000 to 2020 and has written for a range of publications, including the FT, Guardian, Church Times and Spectator.

Sessions

Sally Welch

Sally Welch is the Vicar of the Kington group of parishes in Herefordshire, along the route of the Offa’s Dyke long-distance footpath.  She is the author of  a number of books on pilgrimage and journeying spirituality. 

Sessions

Ian Collins

Ian Collins is a writer and curator. He has written numerous biographies and monographs, including the Runciman Award-winning John Craxton: A Life of Gifts and James Dodds: The Blue Boat which won the Creative Suffolk Author Award. He had a long career as an arts writer for the Eastern Daily Press and has worked with the Aldeburgh Festival, Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, British Museum, Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Benaki Museum in Athens and Meşher Istanbul. He lives in Suffolk and Greece.

Sessions