My Top Picks from the Bloomsbury Festival 2010

Later next month is the annual Bloomsbury Festival, where they lay on a really quite considerable number of events packed into a single weekend, many of which look very appealing.

Sadly, the website that accompanies the event, while looking as visually appealing as many of the events are intellectually appealing – is fundamentally flawed in that other websites can’t link directly to a specific event on their listings guide.

While not exclusive to the Festival website, such design flaws do make managing an events listing guide such as mine quite difficult as I like to link directly to the most suitable page on a website, rather than just to the home page and expect you to hunt down the information yourself.

That annoyance out of the way, I have trawled through the list of events and the following are my personal pick of what is happening.

Sat, 23rd October

10:30am Secret Tour of Charles Holden’s Senate House

A unique opportunity to explore some of the secret spaces of Charles’s Holden’s Art Deco building, Senate House. Just turn up, but limited numbers allowed on the tour.

2pm The Building of Bloomsbury

Guided walk exploring the role that Bloomsbury played in the reform of education and culture in 19th-century London.

3pm Secret Bloomsbury

A guided tour that will uncover the Bloomsbury that nobody knows, where we will encounter spies, sorcerers and scientists in the heart of London

4:15pm Silent Dickens by Candlelight

Atmospheric candle-lit screenings of silent film adaptations of a selection of Charles Dickens’s works in the museum based in a former home of his.

7pm Sci-fi Ancient Egypt in the Petrie Museum

A self-guided trail around the museum with a glass of wine learning about Egyptian links to science fiction. This is a repeat of an earlier event, which I attended and found most enjoyable.

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There are also some more guided tours on Sunday that are repeats of tours that took place on the Saturday, but you are more likely to find me across the river at The October Plenty harvest festival instead.