LAUNCH OF THE ESSEX BOOK FESTIVAL

Thursday 4 March. The annual Essex Book Festival seems to get better every year. Today's launch of the Eleventh Festival was superb. As a Patron, I feel lucky that we had the Dave Monk programme and the BBC Essex team broadcasting live to their regular listeners. Such fun and, dare I say, useful for my mob of freelance journalists and photographers who turned up. With more than 500 reading groups in the county and dozens of writing circles, Essex folk are well served. Here are a few views and you can see what a great morning we had. Wonderful to chat with Penelope Lively, Barbara Erskine, Francis Wheen and many more talented writers and of course we will be meeting many more novelists, journalists and other well known personalities over the next month at different venues around the county.