Morpeth Book Festival postponed following rail strikes announcement

The event was due to run over three days from Friday, March 31 at Morpeth Rugby Club’s clubhouse in Mitford Road and in the town’s newly refurbished library.

But organisers have said that the announcement of strike action by the RMT union on Thursday, March 30 and Saturday, April 1, has made it impossible for several key authors to make travel plans to reach Morpeth from across the UK - some as far afield as London, Scotland and Cornwall.

A couple of other key participants in the event have also had to withdraw for personal reasons.

Seventeen authors – from multi-award winners such as Mari Hannah, LJ Ross, Gervase Phinn and Dan Jackson to renowned Morpeth writers Bridget Gubbins and Jane Ions – had been lined up to talk about, and read from, their works.

The three-day festival was due to be jointly staged by Greater Morpeth Development Trust and the Northumberland County Library Service.

Frank Rescigno, the trust’s director of arts and culture, said: “We felt we had little option other than to reschedule the festival once we knew some of our key authors would be unable to travel to Morpeth because of the train strikes.

“It is heartbreaking because we have been working on what we thought was a fantastic programme with so many popular authors, since the initial festival proved such a success 12 months ago.

“We agonised over the decision because we knew so many local people were keen to attend what we thought would be a great weekend.

“At the end of the day, however, we decided the only option open to us was to reschedule the festival and we are already looking at dates when this might be possible.

“We can only apologise that we are unable to go ahead with the event due to circumstances beyond our control.”

Many other leading local and regional authors were due to attend the popular event, and a whole day devoted to children’s books and writers was also planned.