FISHERMAN’S Friends will headline Launceston’s Charles Causley Centenary Festival.

This year marks the Centenary of Charles Causley’s birth and Launceston, the town where he was born and lived for most of his life, will host its eighth Charles Causley Festival as part of the year-long celebrations which are taking place throughout the South West and further afield.

Each year the festival has reflected the general breadth of Causley’s broad interests in the arts and highlights of past festivals have included Andrew Motion, Carol Ann Duffy, Brian Patten and Lemn Sissay.

This year’s festival will be very special.

Most of the events will take place between Thursday, June 1 and Sunday, June 5, with some special pre- and post-festival events.

On Sunday, May 14 David Tovey will be opening his garden and house at Broadwoodwidger — with his outstanding collection of paintings for the Newlyn and St Ives schools — for the festival, and the newsreader and broadcaster George Alagiah is coming to Launceston Town Hall on Saturday, June 10 to talk about his life and work.

The festival weekend will kick off with a concert by the original buoy band Fisherman’s Friends on Thursday, June 1 at Launceston Town Hall. This will be a popular event, and tickets are already selling fast.

Other music events include Keith James’ Duende — a very special evening with a Spanish flavour of the poetry of Frederico Garcia Lorca and others set to music — beat poet Jeff Cloves and singer songwriter Tony Poole, and Jim Causley performing his settings of some of Charles Causley’s children’s poems.

Murray Lachlan Young, poet, author and broadcaster, will be the headline act on Saturday.

His ‘Cautionary Tales for Children’ performance mixes stories with a touch of panto, whilst his evening show for adults is summed up by Pretenders rock star Chrissy Hynde label for him of ‘a Rock ‘n Roll poet’. It will be a lively set!

Other events include many talks and workshops from some old favourites and some new: author Michael Jecks, best known for the Templar series of medieval murder stories, the longest-running crime series by any living author, John Lawrence (illustrator of Causley’s Collected Poems for Children) who will be with Gaby Morgan (editor at Macmillan’s Children’s Books), Rory Waterman (who compares Causley’s work with that of Philip Larkin and RS Thomas), Polly Gregson (talking about Daphne Du Maurier and Arthur Quiller-Couch), Simon Parker, Luke Thompson (on his father, the wonderful EV Thompson), Barry Newport, Victoria Field, Philip Gross, Laurence Green (on how a nineteenth-century child killer crept into a Causley poem) and puppetry from Little Trebiggan, to mention just a few.

Festival chairman Spencer Magill is very excited about this year’s festival. “This is the most ambitious programme yet. The committee has worked very hard to put together a wide range of high quality events, and we are involving several local organisations. We are very grateful to the support we have received from Launceston Town Council, Launceston Rotary Club, Launceston U3A, many local businesses and FEAST.”

In addition to all these events, there will be art and patchwork exhibitions, films, walks, trips, a food festival in the Town Square and a flower festival in St Mary’s Church.

The brochure will come out around Easter, but there are details on the festival website www.charlescausleyfestival.co.uk and tickets for some events are already on sale through the links on the website or the CRBO website www.crbo.co.uk or from Launceston Tourist Information Centre 01566 772321.