Festival forged in kitchen has the ‘perfect’ recipe

THE Henley Literary Festival moves to 10 days this year which puts it among the biggest events of its kind.

Now in its 19th year, it is just a day shorter than the famous Hay festival and a day more than Cheltenham festival.

It will host a total of 139 events and its authors are set to include the likes of TV and radio presenter Alexander Armstrong, actors Tony Robinson, Joanna Page and Hugh Bonneville and Rev Richard Coles.

Talks by Joanna Lumley, Graham Norton, Michael Palin, John Cleese, Sarah Vine and Lady Hale have already sold out.

The festival has come along way from when its founder Sue Ryan launched the first iteration in 2007.

It had been organised around Mrs Ryan’s kitchen table at her home in Peppard with a group of like-minded enthusiasts. Back then, the festival ran for three days and had 39 events.

The technical set-up was minimal, with just a handheld microphone and, with no digitised booking system, tickets were bought from the Bell Bookshop and Henley Festival office — with cash.

Mrs Ryan, a former journalist, described those days as “completely chaotic.”

The idea first came to her having been inspired by the short-lived Henley Food Festival which was organised by Jonathan Hobbs, of Hobbs of Henley, and Simon Cromack, the former landlord of the Baskerville pub.

Mrs Ryan recalled: “There was a queue all the way around the block for these food authors and I thought, well, if you can get these sorts of numbers for cookery writers, why not other authors?

“I had always loved literary festivals, so I thought that it was a good idea to do it in the town after the food festival.”

Following a 40-year-long career in Fleet Street, including 18 years at the Daily Telegraph, where she finished as managing editor, Mrs Ryan said she was looking for something new.

“I wanted to work but I didn’t really want to go back to national newspapers,” she said. “Rather than climb the greasy pole again, I thought I would do something in Henley.

“I had been living here for 30 years and commuting into London and I hadn’t done much in the town. I wanted to do nice things and the world of journalism is very similar to the world of books.”

Mrs Ryan initially appealed to Mr Hobbs for help and he submitted an application to the town council for the festival to use the town hall. After this was reported in the Henley Standard, the idea drew interest from then River & Rowing Museum chief executive, Paul Mainds, among others, and a group soon formed and met at Mrs Ryan’s house.

She recalled: “A few of us got around the kitchen table and talked about it. We said, ‘If there’s some money, which we hope there will be, we were paying for your time at the end of it’. And that’s what we did.”

Mrs Ryan was joined in hashing out ideas by business manager Geoff Pitcher, designer Simon Hayne and marketing expert Kursha Woodgate.

The festival’s volunteer committee included Jonathan Hobbs, Pam Morris, and Andy Trotman.

Also involved from the beginning was Mrs Ryan’s husband Jon, a former sports editor of the Daily Mail, their children, Tom, a communications consultant, and Harriet, who later took over as the event’s director.

Almost all of the authors for the first year were arranged through personal connections, rather than going through a publicist, and included Sir John Mortimer, Jeremy Paxman, Boris Johnson, who all lived locally, Julia Donaldson, Gyles Brandreth and former England cricket captain Mike Atherton.

“Getting all the writers was actually the easy job,” Mrs Ryan recalled. “Then I realised we needed to sort the logistics. We were very tiny, so we had venues offer to support us for free but we didn’t really have any infrastructure."

Mrs Ryan managed to secure investment from the Co-op Bank, the festival’s first-ever sponsor. She said: “We sold the tickets at the Bell Bookshop and the Henley Festival office and, because they didn’t want to mix the businesses up, it was only cash. At the end of the first year, we realised we didn’t even have a database of customers.”

In its first year, 3,200 tickets were sold. In contrast, on the first day of sales this year, 10,000 tickets were sold.

But the revenue was just enough to allow the festival to wash its face financially and the team agreed to repeat another three-day festival in 2008.

“For us, the solution was in the numbers,” Mrs Ryan said. “That’s why we grew it, because a lot of the costs are the same, even if you do it for another day.”

In 2009, the festival expanded to five days and then up to seven in 2012. From 2018 to 2024, this was increased to nine days. In 2020 the festival ran online due to the coronavirus pandemic.

When the festival returned in 2021 a 500-seater marquee was purpose-built in the grounds of Phyllis Court, providing the festival with a space 200 seats larger than Henley’s biggest venue, the Christ Church Centre in Reading Road.

Looking back on the festival’s beginning to where it is today Mrs Ryan said it was “extraordinary”.

She has been non-exec for at least 10 years and credits much of the festival’s expansion to the hard work and talent of her daughter Harriet Reed-Ryan.

“To be honest, I never imagined it would be this big or this brilliant,” Mrs Ryan said. “A lot of people brought it to this stage and particularly in the last eight to 10 years, Harriet has put a lot of infrastructure in.

“It has made the festival popular with the authors because they are treated well and everything works like clockwork.”

Mrs Ryan said that one of her favourite memories over the years has been a talk in 2021 from Dame Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green, two of the scientists behind the Oxford-AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine.

She said: “They came into the marquee for one of the first events after the lockdown and everyone just stood on their feet and cheered.

“Then, when they were talking, you could hear a pin drop. There have been a lot of those moments which have just been spine-tingling.”

She also counted meeting poet Roger McGough among one of her favourite highlights after first enjoying his work while a student at Bath University.

Mrs Ryan said that the strength of the festival was its setting. “Literary festivals work best if they’re somewhere very special,” she said. “Hay works because it’s right in the countryside.

“I think Henley is the perfect location. It’s beautiful, it’s by the river, it’s not far from London for the authors to come. The Henley crowd are intelligent, they’re curious and they buy books.”

Henley Literary Festival will run from October 3 to 12, For more information and to buy tickets, visit www.henley
literaryfestival.co.uk