Peter Florence is a British festival
director,
notable for founding
the
Hay Festival
with his
parents,
Norman
and Rhoda
Florence
. FYI the first festival
was financed with winnings from a
poker game.
Peter
was educated at Ipswich
School, Jesus College, Cambridge, and the University of Paris and
has an MA in Modern and Medieval Literatures. He holds honorary
doctorates from
four
universities.
He has replicated the success of Hay
in numerous cities around the world,
launching similar festivals in Mantua, Segovia, the
Alhambra Palace, Cartagena, Nairobi, Zacatecas, Thiruvananthapuram,
Dhaka, Xalapa, Belfast and Paraty.
He is the co-editor of the Oxtales and Oxtravels anthologies with
Mark Ellingham of Profile Books, in partnership with
Oxfam
and has written for
the Index on
Censorship
, The
Guardian
, The
Telegraph
, The
Spectator
and numerous other
publications.
"Florence chaired the jury of
the 2019 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and controversially defied
the foundation’s 1993-established rules to award the prize to two
authors. Bernardine Evaristo - the first black woman to be awarded
the prize - shared the prize with Margaret Atwood
." ( unfortunately, I failed to ask him about
this).
He and his wife Becky Shaw
have four sons. They live in Herefordshire
. Peter was awarded an MBE in 2005 for
services to Arts and Culture
and a CBE in 2018 for services to Literature and
Charity
.