Past event

Wilderness Festival, 2023

Date:
5-6 August 2023

Letters Live returned to the gorgeous Oxfordshire countryside for our 5th appearance at Wilderness Festival in August 2023.

 

Headlining the festival’s Talks and Debates programme, we will brought a top secret cast of exceptional readers, to breathe life into some of the greatest correspondence ever written. Read on to see which incredible letters our talented performers including Claire Foy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Taron Egerton, Louise Brealey, Noma Dumezweni, Emma Corrin and Dolly Alderton read to a packed audience in the Atrium.

 

Through this show we supported Choose Love who are the charity partner of the festival and close friends of Letters Live. We are proud to be able to support their vital work, and have done since 2016. See more on Choose Love here.

 

 

Saturday 5th August 2023

 

Claire Foy

 

Alphabetti Spaghetti

Mrs J. Blackford to Viz

 

Not a line from you on my Birthday!

Jane Carlyle to Thomas Carlyle

 

 

Benedict Cumberbatch

 

It would be easier and pleasanter to drown myself

George Bernard Shaw to Various

 

I am left in quite the quandary!

Joe Lycett to Mark Carne

 

 

Sanjeev Bhaskar

 

I write you from the regions of hell

Robert Burns Mrs Riddel

 

Nothing else matters

Peter Thompson to Clare Venables

 

 

Louise Brealey

 

Life isn’t a World Wrestling Federation Smackdown

K.A. Applegate to her readers

 

We hear that you have found a new Red Ape

Virginia Woolf to her sister

 

 

Jason Isaacs

 

An idiot of the 33rd degree

Mark Twain to Salesman

 

Short gap for love-making

Humphry House to Madeliene

 

 

Noma Dumezweni

 

Dear Us

Toni Morrison to Black women

 

Give women the vote

Bertha Brewster to Daily Telegraph

 

 

 

Ferdinand Kingsley

 

Good-day, little rascal, pussy-pussy, little turned-up nose

Mozart to his wife

 

Gandhi was a great spiritual leader…

Jerry Emery to Guardian

 

 

Dolly Alderton

 

I’m allowed to be a woman who ages

Dolly Alderton A reader

 

I am sure you will agree

Edith Sitwell to Mrs Almer

 

 

Jordan Stephens

 

The answer is a resounding and permanent NO

Whitey to TV production company

 

Do they not understand?

Mr Drayton to The Journal

 

 

Emma Corrin

 

Like a tree in full bearing

Charlotte Bronte to W.S. Williams

 

 

Taron Egerton

 

I have had my eye on you

Simon Fallowfield to Mary Foster

 

Be proud

Elton John to himself

 

 

Rob Rinder

 

We all make mistakes

Sherrif Anwar to Julie and Brian

Sunday 6th August 2023
Jordan Stephens

 

Vegetable people

E. Mullion to Viz

 

The rooms about us will grow cold and drab

Dirk Bogarde to Kathleen Tynan

 

 

Benedict Cumberbatch

 

How can you live like this?

Oliver Beale to Richard Branson

 

 

Claire Foy

 

Enough is Enough

Marguerite Louise D’Orleans to Cosimo III De Medici

 

 

Emma Corrin

 

I love you—the way you always are

Zelda Fitzgerald to  F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

We are in a climate emergency

Anne Taylor Guardian

 

 

John Lloyd (Voice of God)

 

I will end with a cordial invitation

Auberon Waugh to Lionel Grigson

 

 

Louise Brealey

 

I want nobody but you for my lover

Katherine Mansfield to John Murry

 

 

Jason Isaacs

 

I’m getting too old for illness

Bruce Robinson to Richard E. Grant

 

It will be sunny one day

Stephen Fry to Crystal

 

 

Claire Foy + Louise Brealey

 

The Stones are dirty and sloppy and they repugnate me

Kathy and Pam

 

 

Noma Dumezweni

 

You write the worst letters

Anais Nin to Henry Miller

 

 

Ferdinand Kingsley

 

Yours in science

Harvey Rowe to Scott Williams

 

My thoughts are with two remarkable women

Philip Woolcock to Telegraph

 

 

Sinead Cusack

 

Shine, constantly and steadily

Caitlin Moran to Lizzie Moran

 

My pink cactus is probably going to flower

Adèle Eugénie Sidonie to Colette’s Husband

 

 

Taron Egerton

 

I’m going to mope about you in the bath

Dylan Thomas to Caitlin Macnamara

 

 

Claire Foy + Noma Dumezweni + Louise Brealey + Emma Corrin

 

Batman is still and will continue to be a perfect physical specimen

Various to Batman