Cheltenham Literature Festival

The Cheltenham Literature Festival is an annual event, held in October. I attended a selection of talks this year, and today’s post highlights some of the most interesting things I learnt.

Sophy Henn: Life-size Animals

Sophy hosted an energetic presentation of her life-size book series. These children’s books illustrate some of the smallest, and largest animals in the world. Each page shows either an entire small animal, or part of a larger creature.

During the presentation, we learnt that the world’s smallest bird, the bee hummingbird, lives in Cuba. Its wings beat 80 times a second, and up to 200 times a second during courtship rituals. At around 5-6 centimetres long, the bird is sometimes mistaken for a bee. Sophy’s illustration of the bee hummingbird fitted very easily onto the page.

In contrast, only the eye of the giant squid is shown in the book. The giant squid has the biggest eye of any animal (about 25 cm across). Although having large eyes doesn’t make the murky depths of the ocean any clearer, scientists think they allow the squid to spot large shapes relatively quickly. This is important in avoiding predating whales. The actual whale might merge into the background, but their bulk disturbs countless tiny creatures in the water. These creatures emit bioluminescence, and it is this light which the squid’s extra large eye detects.

Living deep underwater, these enormous creatures are seen very rarely. The largest giant squid ever recorded was 13 metres long.

Chris Packham: Earth

As one would expect, a fascinating, and inspiring talk from Chris Packham. He spoke of the 1-2 million years of rain which the planet experienced, at the beginning of the age of the dinosaurs (about 230 million years ago). Resulting from a massive increase in planetary humidity, possibly owing to an enormous volcanic eruption, the rainfall caused a number of extinctions among land-based plants and herbivores.

The main beneficiaries were the dinosaurs, which grew in diversity and range, spreading from South America across all continents. Scientists believe that the period after the years of rain may have been one of the most important events in the history of life. The growth of the dinosaurs led, eventually, to the origins of most of today’s species, including fauna, modern amphibians, and mammals.

Kelechi Okafor, Genevieve Liveley, Oishee Kundu: Future (Hi)Stories

An impressive panel of successful women comprising an author, classicist, and technology researcher lined up for the final event. Their talk considered how we can fuse ancient and modern technologies to imagine future worlds.

As long ago as the late 8th, or early 7th century BC, in Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’, future technologies were imagined. In Book 8 of The Odyssey, Odysseus, the hero, is to be taken home by the Phaeacians. The description of Phaeacian ships suggests a telepathic technology even more advanced than our current satellite navigation systems:

“… so that my sentient ships may plan the right course to convey you there. For the Phaeacian ships have no helmsman or rudders. Our ships know by instinct what their crews are thinking and propose to do… they make their swift passage…with no fear of damage and no thought of wreck.” Homer Odyssey Book 8.

This talk encouraged us to imagine the worlds we can create by fusing the ancient with the modern. Not just in fiction, but in terms of future technologies.

Cheltenham is perhaps my favourite literature festival, of the ones I’ve visited. And the standard is high across them all. But with something for everyone, and a diverse setting, it’s certainly the one I recommend people put to the top of their list if they’re looking to spend time at such an event.