LITERARY
FESTIVAL

Author, historian and storyteller Tony Ferguson appeared at the Chalfont St Giles & Jordans Literary Festival, joining a programme of local and visiting writers across a weekend of talks, readings and conversation in the heart of the Chilterns.

Tony's session drew on the research behind Andy Symington: Tyrone's Most Wanted Man — seven years of archive work, correspondence and family testimony assembled into the story of one man who served in three armies across three conflicts. The talk moved from the Somme to the Irish War of Independence, and returned throughout to the question that drives all of the work: what do the records leave out, and who gets written out of the telling?

The audience session that followed covered the practicalities of researching a century-old life — the archives that help, the ones that mislead, and the long business of turning a box of documents into a narrative a reader will stay with.

Chalfont St Giles & Jordans Literary Festival, Buckinghamshire