Martyn Bedford - Writer

I’m looking forward to appearing at the Ilkley Literature Festival later this week . . . and not just because the venue is walking distance from my house. I’ve done quite a few events at ILF down the years – my debut was way back in 1996, alongside Stan Barstow at the Craiglands Hotel – but this will be my first time on stage at St Margaret’s Hall (although I was a frequent visitor there with my daughters, when they were little, for parents-and-tots sessions.)

It’s especially exciting to be appearing at the festival alongside two writers as renowned as Maggie Gee and Jacob Ross for what promises to be a lively evening of political and literary debate. The three of us will be reading extracts from, and discussing, our short stories, which have been included in Protest: Stories of Resistance, the latest anthology by Comma Press. Maggie’s story revolves around the night-cleaners’ strike in Hoxton, London, in the early 1970s; Jacob’s focuses on the New Cross Fire and Brixton riots a decade later, while mine is centred on the so-called Battle of Orgreave during the 1984-85 miners’ strike.

For the anthology, Comma paired twenty writers with expert consultants – social and political historians and academics – each of whom has written an afterword which sets the fiction in its historical context. For my story, “Withen”, I collaborated with Prof. David Waddington of Sheffield Hallam University, who was present as an academic observer on that infamous day when riot police broke up a mass picket outside the coking plant at Orgreave, South Yorkshire.

Other authors whose stories appear in the anthology include Sara Maitland, Kit de Waal, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Alexei Sayle, David Constantine and Courttia Newland, with protest topics ranging across seven centuries, from the Peasants’ Revolt to Greenham Common, the Aldermaston March to the Diggers, the Suffragettes to the Anti-Iraq War demo.

The anthology has already received glowing reviews and I’m flattered that my story has been mentioned in despatches:

“Many of the stories explore the long-term legacy of the events upon its characters: perhaps none more so than Martyn Bedford’s skilful, sensitive depiction of estrangement caused by the divisiveness of the 1980s mining strikes.
Bethany Creamer, disclaimermag.com

Martyn Bedford’s “Withen” uses flashback to devastating effect to lay out the impact on a single family of Thatcher’s pit closures: the ending of this story is one of the most chilling we can recall in this or any collection.
Bookmunch

“Protest Lit”, event 92 at this year’s festival, is at St Margaret’s Hall, Queen’s Road, Ilkley, from 7.30-8.30pm, on Friday October 6th. Tickets priced £7 (£5 concessions) can be obtained via the Ilkley Literature Festival website – click here – or simply pay at the door.