Nottingham Festival of Words has gone to press...

As we write, our programme is being printed. It's not happened until now because some of the fantastic international events we are bringing you didn't get confirmed funding until a week ago and we've been working our socks off since then to get the final programme completed. So it is an appropriate time to give a big high five to our designer at Silbercow and printers at Russell Press who have been exceptionally friendly, patient and responsive to our increasingly hysterical demands. Sorry, I meant urgent demands.

Russell Press themselves have an interesting history, being founded by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation in 1968 which seems a spectacularly relevant coincidence to some of our international programme, especially an event called Faultlines (14 October) which will be chaired by English Pen and features writers from conflict-ridden and dangerous parts of the world.

Tickets for this, and other events, will be on sale via the Nottingham Playhouse Box Office very soon.

The only exception to this are the tickets for Ali Smith in conversation with Jon McGregor on Friday 17 October at Nottingham Lakeside Arts - tickets are already on sale via the Lakeside Arts Box Office. Ali Smith's book, How to be Both, has today been announced on to the Man Booker shortlist - we are very excited to be welcoming her along.

With a month to go, it's party time!
We'd like to invite you to help us please - and be amongst the first to hear what's planned. We will be holding a programme launch on Thursday 18 September at 6pm at Nottingham Writers' Studio.

All welcome - on condition you're prepared to take away some posters and programmes to spread the word far, wide and quickly!

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'Not as dumb as he looks' - Muhammad Ali on Bertrand Russell

In his autobiography The Greatest: My Own Story, Muhammad Ali recounts how Bertrand Russell got in contact with him, and their ensuing correspondence:

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For days I was talking to people from a whole new world. People who were not even interested in sports, especially prizefighting. One in particular I will never forget: a remarkable man, seventy years older than me but with a fresh outlook which seemed fairer than that of any white man I had ever met in America.
My brother Rahaman had handed me the phone, saying, ‘Operator says a Mr. Bertrand Russell is calling Mr. Muhammad Ali.’ I took it and heard the crisp accent of an Englishman: ‘Is this Muhammad Ali?’ When I said it was, he asked if I had been quoted correctly.
I acknowledged that I had been, but wondered out loud, ‘Why does everyone want to know what I think about Viet Nam? I’m no politician, no leader. I’m just an athlete.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is a war more barbaric than others, and because a mystique is built up around a cham…

Nuclear Posture Review: Two letters of protest from Japan

The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation received copies of the following letters, dated 6 February 2018, from the Japan Council against A and H Bombs. The letters, written in response to the publication of the US Nuclear Posture Review, are addressed to President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. We ask that as many people and organisations as possible circulate these letters as an act of solidarity with anti-nuclear campaigners in "Japan, the A-bombed country".

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To President Donald Trump United States of America 6 February 2018
Letter of Protest against the US Nuclear Posture Review
We, of the people of Japan, the A-bombed country, strongly protest against your nuclear policy formulated in the newly released ‘Nuclear Posture Review’, which brings the US much closer to the actual use of nuclear weapons by modernizing your nuclear arsenals and developing new nuclear weapons.
Trying to justify that nuclear weapons are necessary for security, the Nuclear Post…

Permanent Peoples' Tribunal on Turkey and the Kurds

PRESS RELEASE
PERMANENT PEOPLES’ TRIBUNAL ON TURKEY AND THE KURDS
Session on alleged violations of international law and international humanitarian law by the Turkish Republic and its officials in their relations with the Kurdish people and their organisations.
15-16 MARCH 2018 BOURSE DU TRAVAIL - PARIS INFO / registration : tribunal-turkey-kurds.org
Press conference On Tuesday 13th March 2018 from 2-4pm at la Maison du Barreau 2 rue de Harlay 75001 Paris with the participation of
HEVAL ARSLAN, journalist (moderator) GIANNI TOGNONI, General Secretary of People’s Permanent Tribunal CHRISTIAN CHARRIÈRE-BOURNAZEL, Former President of the Paris Bar Council BASILE ADER, Vice-president of the Paris Bar Council TONY SIMPSON, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation ANTOINE COMTE, lawyer of the families of the three Kurdish militants assassinated in Paris in 2013 JAN FERMON, Lawyer and Secretary General of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (Belgium) PAUL MOLAC, French deputee
The session of the Tribunal on Tu…

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