Shute Festival – Fairy Tellers and Folk Tales

With NICHOLAS JUBBER AND LISA SCHNEIDAU

Click here for tickets

Nicholas Jubber and Lisa Schneidau will be in conversation with Festival co-director, Bijan Omrani about the history, stories and people behind our fairy and folk tales.
​
Nicholas Jubber is the author of five non-fiction books, including The Prester Quest (winner of the Dolman Travel Book Award) and Epic Continent (shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book Award). He has travelled around the Middle East, Central Asia, North and East Africa and Europe, and written about his experiences for publications including the Guardian, Daily Mail, Irish Times and BBC Online.

Jubber’s latest book, The Fairy Tellers, explors the lives of seven tellers of traditional tales. It swings from a Neapolitan soldier-of-fortune who compiled Europe’s first integral fairy tale collection, to the woman who wrote ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and a Russian folklorist who became involved in a plot to assassinate the Tsar. Travelling from Kashmir to Scandinavia, this new history of fairy tales offers a fresh, international interpretation of a beloved genre. It has been described as ‘riveting’ by the Financial Times, ‘captivating’ by BBC History and ‘fascinating’ by the New European.

Lisa Schneidau is an author, storyteller and environmentalist based on Dartmoor. She seeks out, and shares, traditional stories about the land and our complex relationship with it. Lisa’s earlier books include Woodland Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland and Botanical Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland. Lisa trained as an ecologist and has worked in British nature conservation for over twenty-five years, in roles as diverse as farm advisor, lobbyist and conservation director.
​
Lisa Schneidau’s latest work, River Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland, takes a dive into the rivers, lakes, ponds and wetlands of Britain and Ireland, at a time when our rivers are in real trouble. Expect traditional tales of river gods, monsters and fairy folk, laced with a good dose of human error and a splash of irreverent humour!