Stone Will Answer is not only a brilliant contemplation of the spiritual and historical power of stone, but a riveting travelogue through Norway's wilderness. Fans of Raynor Winn, like myself, will love Searle's lengthy and challenging journey through a semi-isolated natural world. Ian Bostridge Interviewed by Suzi Feay Song and Self: A Singer’s Reflections on Music and Performance Lincoln College: Oakeshott Room 2:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this event The Oxford Literary Festival has in my mind become the leading literary festival of the year. The organisation, the roster of speakers, the ambience and the sheer quality of it all is superb. May it now go from strength to strength each year stretching its ambition more and more. I believe it will. Searle’s rationale for her journey occupies several lengthy passages. It would help her become “embedded” in Orkney, a place “so inexplicable, so extraneous to me that it would be something of mine and mine only” “The combination of journey and stone had secrets to tell me.” There is speculation as to whether the soul’s weight can be calculable, and whether a 40kg stone might “feel like a perfect balance. Like health. Like freedom”. Giles Sparrow Introduced by Martin Rees Phaenomena: Doppelmayr’s Celestial Atlas Weston Lecture Theatre 2:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this event

Roy Strong Interviewed by Richard Barber The Stuart Image: An Introduction to English Portraiture 1603 to 1649 Oxford Martin School: Lecture Theatre 2:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this eventAt the age of twenty-six, artist and Cathedral stonemason Beatrice Searle crossed the North Sea and walked 500 miles along a medieval pilgrim path through Southern Norway, taking with her a 40-kilogram Orcadian stone. Fascinated with the mysterious footprint stones of the ancient world, Beatrice follows pathways forged by travellers, saints and kings in an astonishing feat of human endurance.

Caught by the River began as an idea, a vision and a daydream shared between friends one languid bankside spring afternoon. How can a stone be a boat? The chance discovery in a book, given to her by a stonemasonry tutor, of ‘a monochrome photograph of a knobbly and scratched stone boulder, containing two carved footprints’ spurs her on to investigate the phenomena of ‘footprint stones’. These are typically associated with saints and kings. The one in the photograph was the one that St Magnus, the former Magnus Erlendsson, twelfth-century Earl of Orkney, reputedly sailed across the Pentland Firth, his footprints magically remaining on its surface. If surfing saints seem slightly more interesting and relatable than the ones traditionally associated with gruesome endings then you are in good company as they are too for Searle, who sets out to find it, uncovering a treasure trove of folklore, as well as connections between boats and stones, as she does so.

Stone does answer, in its own irregular ways and through its unlikely combination of oppositions. It is both the purpose of travel as well as anchor. It is both weight and lightness, surface and depth, stillness and motion. It is sometimes said that stonemasons have a ‘feel’ for stone. This is something that comes from practice, hours spent working it into specific useful shapes. What is less well known is that this is a two-way street: the stone works on you. Searle has taken this relationship out into the wild, tested it in extreme conditions and come to know, unknow and re-learn her stone, which has forced similar processes upon herself. As she concludes, ‘I had thought it was an act of generosity to bring the stone; in the end it was our encounters with those on the path that revealed that I had been seeking and making real my own foundation myths’. Beatrice has recently become a stone mason and after finding out about the myths of footprint stones - stones carved with foot prints on them, which are said to have magical properties to transport saints and kings - she decides to carve her own. The stone she divines is hers weighs 40 kilos. Once done, she then takes it from Orkney where it was found and carved, across the sea and on a 500 km pilgrim trail across Norway. Beatrice Searle and Ellie Evelyn Orrell Chaired by David Isaac The Power of Art: Stone Will Answer and An Indigo Summer Weston Lecture Theatre 4:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this event Our servers are getting hit pretty hard right now. To continue shopping, enter the characters as they are shown Searle is an excellent storyteller... [and Stone Will Answer] make[s] for gripping reading... Above all, this is the story [of] a young woman's astonishing feat of endurance." Herald

Adam Brookes Interviewed by Rana Mitter Fragile Cargo: China’s Wartime Race to Save the Treasures of the Forbidden City Lincoln College: Oakeshott Room 4:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this eventI came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions. She visits Orkney, chooses a stone, carves footprints on it and sets off for Trondheim in Norway dragging it behind her, inviting people she meets along the way on the ancient Gudbrandsdalen pilgrim path to stand in the footprints and experience what they will. At the age of twenty-six, stonemason and artist Beatrice Searle embarked on an expedition like no other. Pulling along a 40-kilo stone from the West coast of Orkney, she crossed the North sea and walked 500-miles on a mediaeval pilgrim path to Nidaros Cathedral in Norway. Ruth Clarke and Annie McDermott Chaired by Polly Barton Translation Slam Oxford Martin School: Lecture Theatre 4:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this event Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.