CVHF Artist in Residence
Here’s Will Topley, CVHF Artist in Residence who will be with us all week capturing the Festival atmosphere on canvas. Here he is painting some vintage Rolls Royces in the sunshine.
23rd–29th June 2025 - Broad Chalke, Salisbury
Here’s Will Topley, CVHF Artist in Residence who will be with us all week capturing the Festival atmosphere on canvas. Here he is painting some vintage Rolls Royces in the sunshine.
Ahead of today’s Intelligence Squared Debate, debating Scotland’s upcoming referendum on the country’s independence, CVHF has conducted an initial poll to see what our festival goers think about one the biggest constitutional issues in the United Kingdom’s history.
This morning on the CVHF site, we asked 50 people to vote either YES, NO or DON’T KNOW. Here are the results:
YES: 16%
NO: 64%
DON’T KNOW: 20%
Check our website for results from the actual debate this afternoon and click here for more information on this event.
Co-founder of Chalke Valley History Festival, James Heneage, looks ahead to the action-packed weekend at this year’s festival, picking out some of the most eye-catching highlights from the extensive programme of speakers and Living History displays.
Acclaimed broadcaster, journalist and writer Charles Glass talks about all things Syria, reflecting with Xander Drury on how the conflict has descended into such global crisis whilst also affording some thoughts on what is still to come in the future.
Veteran war correspondent and reporter Kate Adie talks on Day One at CVHF 2014, discussing with Xander Drury her glittering career in journalism as well as her latest book ‘Fighting on the Homefront: The Legacy of Women in World War One’.
Auschwitz survivor Freddie Knoller shares with Xander Drury his amazing story of survival. Knoller fought in the French Resistance before being betrayed after a failed love affair and was arrested by the Gestapo. Tortured, he was eventually sent to Auschwitz but survived both that and the Death March of January 1945. Here Knoller reveals how it was his optimistic outlook that pulled him through such unprecedented toils.
As the action-packed weekend at this year’s festival begins to come into sight, Helen Castor and BBC Radio 4’s Making History are calling on YOU to join in the debate when Historiansʼ Question Time returns to the Chalke Valley History Festival this Sunday.
What would you like to ask the panel?
Send us your questions for David Reynolds, Jon Snow, Andrea Wulf and Suzannah Lipscomb to making.history@bbc.co.uk
Click here for more information on how to secure tickets for this event.
Today it has been announced that British historian and author Antony Beevor is the winner of the prestigious 2014 Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.
The Pritzker Literature Award, which includes a medallion, citation, and $100,000 honorarium, recognizes and honours the contributions of a living author for a body of work dedicated to enriching the understanding of military history.
“Winning this award is, for me, the greatest honor imaginable—partly because of the reputation of the prize, but also because on the panel of judges are some of the historians that I admire most in the world,”
Beevor – one of the patrons at the Chalke Valley History Festival – said.
“It may be for lifetime achievement, which has a retrospective air in some ways, but I think the wonderful idea is that it is the greatest carrot imaginable to push you forward and keep you writing.”
Beevor is speaking at CVHF on Thursday evening about D-Day.
Click here if you want tickets to this event as they are going fast!
Xander Drury interviews leading historian and broadcaster Dan Snow on the opening day of Chalke Valley History Festival 2014, speaking on what makes history such an important and special subject as well as sharing his thoughts on D-Day, the World Cup and Twitter.
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