Gearing up for Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival

Published: 19 February 2010
by PETER GRUNER

FINSBURY Park neighbourhood activist Nicolette Jones is organising one of Britain’s biggest-ever children’s literary festivals in Oxford next month.

Ms Jones, who produces a regular  diary of events in Islington, is the children’s programme director for the ­Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival,  a seven day event starting on Saturday March 20.

The  programme in­cludes events with Highbury writer Meg Rosoff, Philip Pullman, Malorie Blackman, Mal Peet, Geraldine McCaughrean, Philip Reeve, William Nicholson and Louise Rennison.

Ms Jones is the children’s books reviewer for the Sunday Times  and  her own book about the Victorian philanthropist Samuel Plimsoll and his campaign on behalf of sailors, The Plimsoll Sensation (reviewed in this paper)  won  a Mountbatten Maritime awards.

“This is a bit of a golden age for children’s books,” Ms Jones said. “More children want to read, some because of Harry Potter.

“But where adult library borrowing is down, more children are borrowing books than ever before.“