26/10/2026
Felicity Goodall: The life of Suffolk writer & naturalist Mea Allen @ Southwold Literary Festival
Southwold Arts Centre, St Edmund's Hall, Southwold, IP18 6JP
Friday 13th November 2026 2.00pm
Felicity Goodall is a former journalist who worked on regional newspapers before spending several years as a freelance foreign correspondent in Norway. She has also worked in radio & television, most recently as a BBC Radio 4 producer. She made the first programme about the life of Anne Lister, Gentleman Jack of Halifax broadcast in 1993 & produced such programmes as “Poetry Please!” & “A Good Read”. She has written 6 books of non-fiction. These include, “We Will Not Go to War”, based on interviews with men & women who took a stand against conscription, & “Exodus Burma: The British Escape Through the Jungles of Death 1942”, which told the story of half a million people who walked from Burma to India when the Japanese invaded.
“Seeking Mea Allan – Fleet Street’s Forgotten Pioneer”, published by The History Press in July this year, is her first biography. Mea Allan was a star reporter on Britain's biggest-selling daily paper, the first woman on a Fleet Street news desk & to be permanently accredited to the British Army as a war correspondent, & the only woman to report from newly liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp & cover the subsequent trials. She was once so famous that her name was used to advertise Horlicks – & yet she has all but disappeared from history. “Seeking Mea Allan” interweaves past & present as we travel from London to Glasgow, from Paris to Hamburg & beyond, to answer the questions that still linger: was Mea written out of history because of her sexuality? Or was something more subtle at work?
Southwold Literary Festival
Friday 13th - Sunday 15th November @ Southwold Arts Centre
Inspired by the success of “Slaughter in Southwold” Southwold Library, Southwold Arts Centre and Southwold Books launched “Southwold Literary Festival” in November 2023. The 2026 Festival features an amazing mix of fiction and non-fiction authors speaking about a fascinating range of subjects.
Tickets are £7 a talk, £18 Friday Day Ticket, £30 Saturday or Sunday Day Ticket, £78 for the whole weekend
Tickets can be booked at Southwold Library, either in person, by phone 01502 442817 or by visiting www.ticketsource.co.uk/southwoldlibrary or at Southwold Arts Centre, either in person, by phone 01502 722572 or by visiting www.southwoldartscentre.co.uk.
