Annie Freud will open this year’s Shute Festival programme with an event featuring her recently published poetry collection, Hiddensee, on February 11.
The festival, now entering its sixth year, has a sparkling line-up of speakers. As last year, its entire programme will be spread out from February to December, all online and free.
Last year brought considerable challenges.
Samantha Knights, co-director, said: “We faced a stark choice of cancelling our programme or going online. We had very little in our bank account but we also realised that if we did go online we needed to make it free to all and could only ask for donations.
“Would it work? Our existing internet was so poor it couldn’t sustain any online webinar. So we upgraded our modem and trialled an event in April – Human Rights in a Covid-19 climate.”

Midweek Herald: Shute Festival co-director Samantha KnightsShute Festival co-director Samantha Knights (Image: Bijan Omrani)
More than 100 people registered for the event, from Shute, the surrounding area and all over the UK – and a few from Miami.
This was the first event. The festival’s last of 2020 – Philippe Sands speaking about The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive – had an audience including people in Mexico, New York, Kiev, Vienna and Geneva.
Samantha said: “So at least for the time being Shute Festival Online looks as if it is here to stay. We now have a global audience we don’t want to lose. Despite not having ticket sales, our Shute Festival audience has been incredibly supportive in terms of donations, which has kept us afloat and allowed us to pay our writer speakers.”
Shute Festival 2021 will be entirely online and free to all. All of 2020’s events are still available on replay. Details can be found at www.shutefest.org.uk