TOWN Festival 2025

Everyone knows a Beatles tune. But their story goes beyond the omnipresent songs and iconic albums. Theirs is a tale that has become one of the core stories we tell about ourselves as a nation. The Beatles narrative has both shaped and reflected the country we live in today. But these four distinct personalities changed the world not in isolation but with more than a little help from their friends.

Split into 3 sections, Before The Beatles, With the Beatles and Beyond the Beatles, bestselling writer and broadcaster Stuart Maconie tells the epic tale of the people who made the band who made Britain, and along the way adds his own experiences, encounters and conversations that show the Beatles like you’ve never seen them before.

Stuart Maconie is a writer, broadcaster and journalist familiar to millions from his work in print, on radio and on TV. His previous bestsellers have included Cider with Roadies, Pies and Prejudice and Adventures on the High Teas. He hosts a show for BBC Radio 6 Music (with Mark Radcliffe) every weekend morning between 8 and 11am. Based in Birmingham and Manchester, he can also often be spotted on top of a mountain in the Lake District with a Thermos flask and individual pork pie. He is a champion ice skater and once shared a van with Napalm Death Fly.

Mark Mckay was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, moved to Halifax in 2007 and has been a sociology teacher for 25 years.

Tickets can be bought online here.

SAT 11TH | The Grayston Unity | 4pm | Elizabeth Alker, Everything We Do is Music | £11

Join Elizabeth Alker in conversation with journalist Abi Bliss to uncover how pop and rock owe a much
greater debt to the classical canon than we realise.

In her new book, Everything We Do is Music, Elizabeth highlights the innovators of classical music and their fans and collaborators in pop who challenged the notion that such musical worlds were mutually exclusive. Alker shines a light on the rich tapestry that exists between their borders through exclusive interviews with Sir Paul McCartney, Steve Reich, La Monte Young, Nils Frahm, The Blessed Madonna, Jonny Greenwood, Soweto Kinch and Jean-Michel Jarre among others.

Elizabeth Alker is a presenter for BBC Radio 3 where she hosts Unclassified and the afternoon show, Classical Live. She joined the BBC as a researcher in 2005 and soon became a reporter and presenter for Radio 6 Music. Born to classically trained pianists, she grew up learning the clarinet, recorder and piano, and later worked as a talent scout for Universal Classics and Jazz. She has written for the Guardian, Sunday Times and Dazed and Confused, and is the curator and host of a series of cross-genre concerts at the Southbank Centre with the BBC Concert Orchestra.

Abi Bliss is a writer and editor, originally from Dorset and now living in Slaithwaite. She has been a freelance contributor to The Wire magazine for 20 years and has also written for a range of other culture titles. She works for both the charity Contemporary Music For All and feminist CIC Yorkshire Sound Women Network, and in her spare time enjoys making horrible sounds with a violin and several battered effects pedals.

Tickets can be bought online here.

SUN 12TH | Calderdale Industrial Museum | 2pm | Lisa Taylor, Threads of Labour | £10/£8

Charting a collaborative art-based project using carpet-making skills and the industrial heritage of Halifax, Threads of Labour investigates how a cleaved ex-industrial community used arts methodologies as a cohesion strategy.

Drawing on images from the company’s archives, the book mines the history of Firths Carpets Limited, a firm based in Bailiff Bridge that carpeted interiors across the globe from the mid-1800s. Women’s labour and tastes were business critical to the production and sale of Firths carpets.

Drawing on her personal connection to the area, an ethnographic sensibility, and new research techniques, Lisa documents ex-worker responses to a village radically altered by ruination. Threads of Labour argues that left-behind deindustrialised places require acts of social re-making if their communities are to survive.

Lisa Taylor is Reader in Cultural Studies at Leeds Beckett University.

Tickets can be bought in person in the shop or online here.

SUN 12TH | Calderdale Industrial Museum | 3:30pm | Neil Horsley, Mills Transformed | £10/£8

Drawing on his recent book Mills Transformed, local author Neil Horsley will discuss the importance of industrial mills, the human-interest stories behind successful West Yorkshire mill renovation schemes and how further mills can be regenerated and repurposed.

Neil Horsley is the creator and author of Mills Transformed, a project documenting restored and repurposed textile mills. Over the last four years Neil has interviewed and photographed the people who have renovated and brought new life to over 30 previously disused mills across the North of England. Neil has over 40 years’ experience of working in areas of urban regeneration and planning. He is a keen photographer, member of Bingley Camera Club and lives in Wilsden.

Tickets can be bought in person in the shop or online here.

THU 16TH | The Book Corner | 6:30pm | Comma Press, The Book of Bradford | Free

Join indie publisher Comma Press at The Book Corner to celebrate The Book of Bradford, the latest in Comma’s Reading the City series. David Barnett will be hosting the event and he will be joined by M.Y. Alam and Lesley McEvoy.

A city built on proud northern values, but one which also boasts one of the UK’s youngest and most diverse populations, Bradford is nothing if not a place of immense contrasts. Bringing together fiction from some of the city’s most celebrated writers, this anthology reflects this intriguing juxtaposition, celebrating the city’s infinite potential while robustly challenging the sometimes unwelcome stereotypes. During this event, you’ll hear readings from The Book of Bradford, followed by a discussion with the authors and the chance to ask your own questions.

Comma Press is a Manchester-based independent publisher, initially founded to redress the dearth of short-story publishing opportunities in the UK. Comma has built an international reputation for excellent and ground-breaking commissioning. Comma has published two subsequent Nobel Prize winners; it has sold rights to its titles into over 30 languages, seen over 60 stories broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and had two stories adapted for the big screen.

This event is free to attend but please register your interest here.

FRI 17TH | The Book Corner | 6:30pm | Global Publishing from The North: Bluemoose Books with Fox & Ink Books | Free

Join indie publishers Kevin Duffy from Bluemoose Books and Hazel Holmes from Fox & Ink Books (formerly UCLan Publishing) as they discuss their unwavering commitment to putting Northern Publishing firmly on the map.

Bluemoose Books was founded in 2006 by Hetha and Kevin Duffy to find writers from working class and diverse backgrounds. They are an independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge and are Northern Publishers of the Year 2025. Bluemoose champions authors and stories deemed too risky by larger publishing houses and their authors have been shortlisted for sixteen literary awards in the last six years. The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers was recently adapted into a BBC2 series and Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession spent 11 weeks in the German Top 20. Their books have been translated into 13 languages and sold in 68 countries across the globe. They were described by The Guardian as ‘a small but mighty literary hit factory.’

Fox & Ink Books is a trade, independent publisher based in Preston, Lancashire who continually strive to produce the best books in every genre from Early Years and upwards. Hazel Holmes manages the design, editing and production process with the help of a small freelance team. She produces schedules for every stage of the process and sets the commercial and editorial direction for the business. Hazel also works closely with the academic team to imbed the business into the curriculum and guest lectures on the MA in Publishing course, while managing the student Major Projects . She also coordinates The Northern YA Literary Festival.

This event is free to attend but please register your interest here.

SAT 18TH | The Grayston Unity | 2pm | Simon Goddard, Bowie Odyssey 75 | £10

Join Simon Goddard in conversation with Michael Stewart for the ultimate literary trip, at the halfway point through Bowie’s greatest decade.

With his first starring role in a feature film and his first number 1s on both sides of the Atlantic, 1975 ought to be David Bowie’s golden year. But away from the spotlight the suave soul boy of Young Americans is tumbling into a self-made hell of cocaine, witchcraft and the dark fantasies of his new fascist alter-ego, the Thin White Duke. It looks as though the Seventies are about to reignite with a bang.

The sixth volume in Simon Goddard’s epic adventure through Bowie’s greatest decade, Bowie Odyssey 75 is an intricately plotted tour de force of rock’n’roll, crime, punishment, politics, punk – and a cautionary tale of tragicomic addiction.

Simon Goddard has been writing about music for nearly 30 years, both as a journalist and as the author of over a dozen books published across three continents. His Bowie Odyssey series has twice made the Sunday Times Books Of The Year (2020, 2024) while his other titles have made best-of-year lists in Mojo, Q, Uncut and Pitchfork’s Top 60 Music Books Of All-Time.

Dr Michael Stewart is the author of nine books, including four Gothic influenced novels: King Crow; Café Assassin; Ill Will: The Untold Story of Heathcliff; and Black Wood Women. He is also the creator of the Brontë Stones project, four monumental stones situated in the landscape between the birthplace and the parsonage, inscribed with poems by Kate Bush, Carol Ann Duffy, Jeannette Winterson and Jackie Kay. He is the director of the Brontë Writing Centre.

Tickets can be bought online here.

SAT 18TH | The Grayston Unity | 4pm | Jamie Taylor, Studio Electrophonique | £10

Jamie Taylor will be in conversation with Douglas Field to unpack the amazing story of the home studio that helped launch some of Britain’s most beloved bands.

The Sheffield space age began in 1961, when local mechanic Ken Patten won a tape-recording competition by recreating the sound of a rocket launch using a pencil and a bicycle pump. In the decades that followed, the makeshift home studio he constructed became the launch pad for a group of young musicians who would shape the futuristic sound of 1980s pop. The Human League, Heaven 17, Pulp, ABC and others made their early recordings with Ken, whose DIY ethic was the perfect fit for a city facing industrial decline but teeming with ideas.

Studio Electrophonique tells the story of a generation seeking new frontiers in music, using everything they could lay their hands on – from science fiction novels to glam rock, Dada art and cheap electronics – to get there. Drawing on original interviews with Jarvis Cocker, Martyn Ware, Mark White and others, it brings to light a world of humour, charm, creativity and unfounded yet undaunted self-belief.

Jamie Taylor is a writer and filmmaker from Sheffield. He is the director of The Campaigners and A Film about Studio Electrophonique. His book Studio Electrophonique was published by Manchester University Press in 2025.

Douglas Field is professor of American Literature at the University of Manchester. He is a founding editor of the journal James Baldwin Review, a series editor for the British Pop Archive series, and the author of three books on James Baldwin. Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, my father, and me was published in 2024. His work has been published in the Guardian, Literary Review, and the Times Literary Supplement, where he is a regular contributor.

Tickets can be bought online here .

SAT 18TH | The Book Corner | 6:30pm | This Is How I Fight poetry evening | £10/£8

Join three local poets – Rosie Garland, Suzannah Evans, and Amanda Dalton – for a poetry evening to celebrate Rosie’s latest collection, This Is How I Fight.

How do we maintain connection in times of disruption? In her new collection This Is How I Fight, Rosie Garland interrogates gods, beasts and monsters, but not to hammer down simplistic answers. Through a queer perspective, poems shift between human and other, exploring where we might find the courage needed to forge a way through the world, one word in front of the other, proposing kindness as a radical act.

Rosie Garland writes poetry, long and short fiction, and sings with post-punk band The March Violets. Her most recent novel The Fates (Quercus) is a retelling of the Greek myth of the Fates, and her short fiction is collected in Your Sons & Your Daughters Are Beyond (Fly On The Wall Press). In 2023, she was made Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and Val McDermid has named her one of the most compelling LGBT+ writers in the UK today. Her new poetry collection This is How I Fight (Nine Arches Press) is out now.

Suzannah Evans’ work combines eco-poetry with dark humour and irreverence, and has been described as ‘doom-pop poetry with an apocalyptic edge.’ She has published two books with Nine Arches Press, the most recent of which is Space Baby. Her pamphlet Green, published by Bad Betty Press, explores climate anxiety through the folkloric figure of the Green Man and his disgruntlement with humankind.

Amanda Dalton is a poet, playwright and essayist. Her poetry collections How To Disappear, Stray and Fantastic Voyage (May 2024) are published by Bloodaxe Books. For theatre and BBC Radio 4 and 3 she writes original drama, essays and adaptations. Amanda lives in Hebden Bridge.

Tickets can be bought in person in the shop or online here.

SUN 19TH | The Book Corner | 11am | Chris Mould Illustration Workshop | £15/£12

Would you love to be able to draw? Have you ever wondered how to start – or tried and become frustrated with the process?

Led by award-winning illustrator Chris Mould, this workshop will help you find a solution and make a start. Chris will take you through his creative process and show you how to make use of the blank page.

In a relaxed and comfortable environment that puts no pressure on you, see the results appear in front of your eyes.

Chris Mould was born and raised in West Yorkshire where he still lives with his family. He is one of twenty studio artists at the prestigious Dean Clough Mills arts and business complex. His work ranges from children’s publishing to theatre and film, having produced a long backlist of children’s titles, theatre posters, editorial cartoons for major newspapers and character development work for animated features. He exhibits his artwork regularly. To keep an eye on Chris’s current activities go to: @chrismouldink

Tickets can be bought in person in the shop or online here.

SUN 19TH | BC | 3pm | RLF Writers discuss “The Writer & the City” | Free

Join three acclaimed Royal Literary Fund writers for this unique hour of discussion and short readings on the fascinating theme of The Writer & the City. With music writer and biographer Zoe Howe, novelist, short story writer and memoirist Pete Kalu and poet and playwright Amanda Dalton.

Zoë Howe has produced acclaimed biographies of The Slits, Poly Styrene, the Jesus & Mary Chain, Wilko Johnson, Stevie Nicks, Lee Brilleaux and others. Zoë was part of the team behind award-winning documentary Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché, and she has made radio programmes for Absolute Radio, Resonance FM and Soho Radio amongst others. Zoë is a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow in residence at UCLH. Her latest book Visions, Dreams & Rumours : A Portrait of Stevie Nicks is forthcoming from Omnibus Press.

Pete Kalu ’s latest novel is One Drop (Andersen Press 2023). His forthcoming memoir/essay collection is Act Normal (Hope Road/Peepal Tree 2025). He was part of a team that created the story architecture for the RPG Game Simulacrum Funk / Welcome to the Bloods longlisted for a New Digital Media prize in 2023. He received a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship Award in 2024.

Amanda Dalton is a poet, playwright and essayist. Her poetry collections How To Disappear, Stray and Fantastic Voyage (2024) are published by Bloodaxe Books. Poetry pamphlets include an experimental poetry ‘sketchbook,’ 30 Poems In Thirty Days (Arc 2021) and Notes on Water (smith|doorstop 2022). For theatre and BBC Radio 4 and 3 she writes original drama, essays and adaptations. She is a visiting lecturer at Manchester University and MMU’s Writing School, and an RLF Fellow.

This event is free to attend but please register your interest here.