For the fourth year in a row the Ebury team decamped from Ebury Towers for the weekend and set up camp in the wilds of rural Suffolk to take part in Latitude Festival! Braving the rain and mud were members of our Publicity, Marketing and Editorial teams and of course a selection of our bravest authors.

Joining us in our tent in the Faraway Forest for our Eccentrically English themed weekend we had Stuart Maconie regaling us with hilarious tales of Britain from Hope and Glory, Mark Thomas drew the crowds for his talk on Extreme Rambling, Miles Jupp chatted to us about cricket and his latest book, Fibber in the Heat.

     Suzannah Lipscomb fascinated the forest with her Tudor facts taken from, A Visitor’s Companion to Tudor England and Lucy Edge calmed us and helped us find our centre with yoga classes in the main arena with an introductory reading from her charming memoir, The Handbag and Wellies Yoga Club. Vintage author, Adele Nozedar took groups of festival goers off foraging into the forest with top tips from her book, The Hedgerow Handbook and Tony Wrighton persuaded, relaxed and made us all confident in only a minute.

The lovely Lisa Comfort, our Sew Over It author, created a beautiful patchwork quilt with the help of festival goers, teaching them the techniques needed to hand stitch or machine sew their own part of the design.

 There were loads of things going on in the Ebury Library to ensure that passersby always had a chance to get involved. All weekend people dressed up and had their photograph taken in the Ebury Photobooth, if you’d like to see the pictures they have all been uploaded to the brand new Ebury Tumblr site: eburyphotobooth.tumblr.com

Embracing the Eccentrically English theme we hosted a festival tea party in the forest, giving out scones with jam and cream and a cup of tea to everyone for a much needed sugar boost!

The festival is a melting pot of literature, music, art, drama, poetry, dance and general creativity so to take advantage of all those flowing creative juices we provided art materials and paper for our visitors to write short stories, scribble down poems and sketch us some pretty pictures. Here are a few of our favourites:

 Thank you to all who came to say hello and got stuck in with all the activities, listened and chatted to our authors and sat under the canopy enjoying some peace and quiet, we hope you had as brilliant a time as we did!

 Check out the video we filmed over the weekend featuring our authors, activities and lovely Library visitors!

 See you next year!

 Jen - Marketing Assistant

Ebury headed off to Latitude Festival last weekend and re-opened the popular Ebury Library and Bookshop in the Faraway Forest. Despite the rain and the mud, we had great crowds for all of our authors who did talks, readings and workshops. Our striking red canopy offered shelter from the rain to festival goers and comfortable beanbags, deck chairs and picnic blankets gave everyone a place to relax, sip a cup of free tea and read a good book.

Numerous Ebury authors stopped by our tent to do talks, readings and workshops throughout the weekend. Miles Irving had people foraging for food all over the site, whilst Tony Wrighton taught festival goers, including Tania the very stressed Latitude Organiser, to Relax in a Minute. Emma Kennedy, Stuart Maconie, Henry Worsley, Mike Carter and Mark Thomas all gave readings on their books; well, Mark did once he had borrowed some reading glasses from an audience member. Our authors also provided a valuable news service to their audiences by keeping Latitude up to date with news from the outside world including Rebekah Brooks’ resignation and arrest.

Meanwhile away from the Ebury Library and Bookshop our authors did events and interviews all over the festival. Stuart Maconie , Mark Thomas, Louise Wener, Rory McGrath, Arianne Cohen and Henry Worsley all appeared in the Literary Arena, whilst Ben Okri did a reading in the Sunday Times Style tent and Lucy Edge ran yoga sessions from the Dance East stage.

On Saturday at 2pm we celebrated Ebury’s 50th anniversary with an old-school birthday party, complete with musical statues, pass the parcel and pin the tail on the donkey. We offered the chance to play games including Twister, Smite and Downfall in honour of Dave Gorman vs. The Rest of the World. We also had the return of the popular Literary Quiz as well as a quiz to do as people relaxed in the patches of sun and sheltered rain.

But it wasn’t all about the mud and rain for the Ebury Latitude Team, we also took in some of the amazing music and arts that the festival had to offer. Whilst some of these were well known like Paloma Faith, Suede, Dylan Moran and Shappi Korsandi, some like Forster the People, Jonny, The Opera Group (you could hear them from the Library most days) and Dizraeli and the Small Gods were not as well known but just as much fun. We also managed to in some art in the woods, to see the traditional pink sheep and a ride on the Helter Skelter.

Exhausted but happy and with the festival over for another year on Monday we packed up the cars and van to return to London with the happy thought that a hot shower and a proper bed was waiting for us.

Watch this space for a video clip of some of the fun.

The Latitude Team
Jenny, Hannah, Liz, Kasi, Katie, Nick, Roxanne and honorary members Peter, Woody and Abby

Those who read this blog regularly may have picked up on the fact that I am not from ‘round these parts. My passport is British, my accent is American, and my upbringing was all over the place. I moved to the UK to make use of my citizenship at the ripe old age of 19, when I started university in the dizzy heights of Norwich. Although I was forced to sit down and learn to be a ‘real Brit’ by friends at uni (Rainbow, Timmy Mallet, Neighbours, Eastenders, pronunciation, spelling color with a ‘u’, tea drinking, talking about the weather, etc), I’m probably quite a long way from being from Middle England. What does Middle England mean, anyway?

When I was growing up, I would come to visit my mother’s family, and England then meant getting to eat exotic fruit like strawberries and raspberries, taking baths instead of showers, running around the magnolia tree in grandmother’s garden, and seeing very (very) thin layers of snow on the ground in the winter (technically, frost, but I think my cousins felt sorry for me and let me think it was snow). To me, even though my grandmother lives in West London, this is still what I conjure up when I think of Middle England. She reads the Daily Mail and The Telegraph, and before she got older than the hills, would get her hair done on a Wednesday at the local salon, ate Plaice every Friday and went to church once a week.

Does it matter that she’s based in London? Is Middle England more a state of mind than an actual place? I’m reading Stuart Maconie’s newest book, Adventures on the High Teas, in which he explores all the weird and wonderful things that make this country what it is. What does Middle England mean to you? Is it the actual centre of the country (which is officially Meridian, but geographically a small farm ten miles away)? Or is it something more? We want to know what you think.

To launch Stuart’s new website, we have put together a survey to find out a bit more about his readers and to see what and where you think of when you think of Middle England. So far, we have responses varying from Melton Mowbray pork pies to Watford to Pride and Prejudice, and we would love to know what you think. We’ll be posting a round up of all of the responses later on in the year, and if you fill the survey in before the end of June, you could be in with a chance to win all of Stuart’s great books. Just go to the website to find out more.  And make sure you pick up a copy of the book.  It isn’t out until the 5th of March, but it is available for pre-order through the Ebury website and all good book retailers.

Katie - Digital Marketing Executive