Foto van Richmond se biblioteek: https://www.litnet.co.za/richmond-bookbedonnerd-2019-n-dosyn-feeste-n-dosyn-indrukke/; foto van Darryl David: Menán van Heerden
- Darryl David is the organiser of numerous book festivals in South Africa. This year he delivered the keynote address at the biannual conference for the International Organisation of Book Towns of New Zealand – at the national Book Town in Featherston, which is an hour’s drive from Wellington. Below he writes about his experience and about why he was inspired to organise this year’s Madibaland @ Bookbedonnerd Literary Festival 2024.
What an incredible difference a year makes! Last year, we were contemplating the closure of BookBedonnerd due to a lack of funding. However, in stepped one Angie Butler, just a normal festivalgoer, who put down her own money to save BookBedonnerd, because she couldn’t bear to see the festival die.
However, besides Angie, I feel I must pay tribute to New Zealand’s national Book Town in Featherston, which is an hour’s drive from Wellington. Earlier this year, I was pleasantly surprised to receive an invitation from Featherston to be the keynote speaker at the biannual conference for the International Organisation of Book Towns which they were hosting.
Up until that moment, Peter Baker and I had been considering riding off into the sunset. In fact, you might recall that we sent out a newsletter announcing that BookBedonnerd would not take place in 2023. I think the completion of my memoir BookBedonnerd in record- breaking time was fuelled in large part by the realisation that the last chapter of Book Town Richmond was imminent. However, then the hand of God, first in the form of Angie Butler and then the invitation from Featherston.
And today I want to credit Peter Biggs and his team for putting the wind back in our sails for Madibaland @ Bookbedonnerd Literary Festival 2024. What a wonderful man Peter Biggs turned out to be. Kind, warm, charming, eloquent. Spending a week in the company of the Kiwi Peter, his wife Mary Biggs, Mayor Martin Connoly and Book Town Featherston administrator Yvonne Way proved to be just the antidote needed to motivate me to curate a programme second to none for this year’s festival in Richmond.
The writers Anna Funder, George Lockyer, Oliver Lewis and Jonathan Slaght – I discovered all of their books in the numerous bookshops in Featherston and decided there and then that I had to have them. And then, miraculously the Sri Lankan Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka agreed to speak in person this year at Book Town Richmond.
But the one thing for which I must credit Peter Biggs – or Biggsy, as everyone calls him – is that he showed me the art of how to make a Book Town work optimally. Sure, I know how to make a Book Town tick, but it was Biggsy’s people skills that I knew I had to learn if we were to grow Book Town Richmond. It is no secret that the governing party of South Africa and Peter Baker and I do not sit around the same fire. But in Featherston, I witnessed first-hand how, if you want a Book Town to succeed, you have to be able to work with local and national government.
I have always maintained that in Wigtown, Scotland’s Book Town, I experienced the greatest book festival ever. But after having seen Featherston, I can safely say that they are the greatest administrators of a Book Town.
On the first night, I noticed how they invited virtually every role player in Featherston to welcome all the delegates from the world’s different Book Towns to New Zealand. Firstly, I saw how Mayor Martin Connoly transformed into a volunteer during the conference. And how Peter Biggs invited some of the important members of the Maori community. We were introduced to Ian Gould, the man who started the Book Town phenomenon in Featherston, and to every bookshop owner in town and many a volunteer of Featherston – they were all on hand to make sure that this august event got started on the right note. I always thought Peter Baker was suave, and that the palm of his hand was sculpted by the gods with a wine glass uppermost on their minds. But when I saw Biggsy – wow, what a showman. From that first evening, I knew that Biggsy and I would get on like the old friends Peter Baker and I have become.
On the second day, my admiration for what Biggsy and his team had achieved began to grow. We were taken on a tour of literally every bookshop in the town. And the first thing I noticed was the bold signage announcing that each bookshop was a member of Book Town Featherston. And then the QR code outside each bookshop.
It was this touch that truly impressed me. What they have done is to create not only a bookshop route in Featherston, but a route taking you to the best bookshops in surrounding towns as well. This, I learned, was made possible only because of their close working relationship with different spheres of government, who provided the requisite investment in the town. In Featherston, I could see that their leaders do not just pay lip service to the concept of a Book Town and pose for the obligatory ribbon-cutting photo shoot. No, their government officials take pride in Featherston. They want to make sure it succeeds. But that does not happen overnight. That happens because of the social etiquette, the soft skills of Book Town Featherston’s chairman, Peter Biggs. I know it is he who creates the working relationship with government, and not the other way around. I don’t have to ask. I know it from seeing the man in action.
So much thought went into Featherston – nowhere more so than creating a children’s play park in memory of one of Featherston’s and New Zealand’s greatest children’s book authors, Joy Cowley, right next to a children’s bookshop. I am not sure whether this happened by sheer coincidence, but I think it happened by design.
But the thing that impressed me the most was the book-themed benches in town. For years, I have told Peter Baker that we should have book-themed benches in Richmond. But when you can barely afford to host a book festival, these ideas fall by the wayside.
However, when government works hand in glove with the “imagineers”, then things of such beauty for a bibliophile are made possible. And not just an ordinary bench, but a bench with huge, locomotive-type wheels, to tie in with the town’s history of locomotives used to transport timber, which forms the backbone of this region. (If you are ever lucky enough to visit Featherston, do pop into the Fell Locomotive Museum.) If I look as though I am thrilled to be sitting on that bench, it’s because Featherston was a dream experience for me. They truly have the best run Book Town that I have seen.
And then, it was to get better. They actually have an entire event to launch their programme. And this is no low-key event, mind you. The town hall was packed. And then ticket sales go live, and book lovers scramble for tickets to sessions of the most beloved writers in New Zealand. And I suppose what this allows Biggsy and his team to do is to plan a second session for any writer whose talk should sell out in the first week.
To illustrate what a wonderful sense of humour Biggsy has, let me share a lovely anecdote with you. At this event, he publicly welcomed me to Featherston. But because he knew it was my birthday the next day, he asked me to come onto the stage and got the entire hall to sing happy birthday for me. But the best was yet to come. He then proceeded to present me with a beautifully wrapped gift, which he insisted I open in full view of everyone. And as I tore away at the gift wrap, lo and behold, it was a New Zealand rugby shirt.
I wore that shirt to the game I attended at the DHL Stadium in Cape Town two months ago when the All Blacks played the Springboks. Not because I support the All Blacks, but to honour the memory of Peter Biggs and Featherston.
In this kind gesture, Peter Biggs inadvertently taught me to embrace the enemy. Not that I hated New Zealand rugby players – I have always had a soft spot for the Kiwis. But more importantly, he inadvertently taught me to embrace my enemies if it would be for the greater good of Book Town Richmond. Not just through a New Zealand rugby shirt, but in how he always kept his composure when those around him made unreasonable demands of him. Biggsy made me want to be a better man, a better ambassador for Book Town Richmond. And so, this year, you would have noticed that we tried to bring the hospitality community on board to a far greater extent than before.
Inspired by how Featherston works hand in glove with local schools, we have tried to partner to a far greater degree with primary schools. High schools remain a problem because this is the exam period in South Africa.
On my tour of the region, all Book Town delegates were taken to a working sheep farm. And it dawned on me that in the Karoo, we have more sheep than people. And yet, in 16 years, we had never thought of an excursion to a sheep farm around Richmond.
And so, for 2025, I really want to work more closely with Annatjie Reynolds, Book Town Richmond’s most famous food personality, and visit her farm. I have decided to follow the custom of the Maoris and welcome everyone to Book Town Richmond nose to nose. To say to them that we are all the same, we breathe the same air. (Please don’t let Ox Nché read my newsletter – we don’t want him going all soft on the Kiwi front-rowers.)
All these ideas, I have to credit Biggsy and his team for. By visiting New Zealand, I realised that despite all the challenges we face in South Africa, Book Town Richmond is a shining light among Book Towns of the world. And I feel ashamed that I even contemplated closing the book on possibly the greatest fairytale in the history of book culture in South Africa.
All thanks to New Zealand and their Book Town in Featherston. I have returned all energised. It was like Oros for the soul. I’m about to unleash “the bomb squad” in the build-up to our 20th anniversary.
On a more serious note, though, thank you to Biggsy, Mary and Yvonne for hosting me in Featherston. If there are any kind benefactors out there willing to pay for the flights of Peter and Mary Biggs to South Africa, I would love to bring them out to experience our Madibaland @ BookBedonnerd World Literary Festival.
And Angie Butler, when you are back in the UK and you happen to be seated next to a well-heeled lord – I think it would be wonderful if Book Town Richmond, the only Book Town on the African continent, could host the 2027 International Organisation of Book Towns conference to celebrate our 20th anniversary – just saying!
Forever BookBedonnerd!
Also read:
BookBedonnerd@Madibaland World Literary Festival 2024: an interview with Darryl David
Books on the Bay Festival 2024: an interview with Darryl David
Mr BookFestivals talks about his autobiography, BookBedonnerd | Etienne van Heerden Veldsoirée 2023