Literary Word's up for second year

The Word, London's first literary festival which was held in March last year, was frankly something of a flop. It failed to attract the expected audiences and it closed with debts of more than £50,000. Some writers waited a long time to be paid. However, Peter Florence, the festival's director, is undaunted. The London Festival of Literature 2000, aka The Word 2000, returns at the end of this month with a full programme, based this time at the Globe on Bankside - "the sexiest and most modern arts corner in the world".

Mr Florence admits that last year he got it wrong. There were 172 venues, 350 events, no central focus, and serious problems with ticketing and marketing. However, he believes that this time around the problems have been fixed.

The Globe will host the majority of events but there will also be some in the suburbs, one of the successes of last year. Meera Syal will be in Croydon, Colin Dexter in Hillingdon and PD James in Enfield. "There's a real hunger in suburban London for really good products in any medium," said Mr Florence, from Islington.

This year The Word is concentrating on London itself. There are events addressing "Turning Points In London's History", ranging from the Stephen Lawrence case to the Great Fire of London and the Blitz. The lives of London writers - Chaucer, Shakespeare, Pepys and Thackeray - will be discussed. And there is a selection of "new generation 21st century authors, playwrights and screenwriters" which includes Zadie Smith, Diran Adebayo, Patrick Marber and Amy Jenkins.

Rather fewer international stars are being imported this year: the strand called "North American Classics" offers only three big names in Jay McInerney, Margaret Atwood and Arthur Miller.

Almost inevitably Andrew Motion has contributed, with a libretto for Haydn's quartet, The Seven Last Words. And there are appearances by all those reliable performers who have honed their skills at innumerable past festivals: Roy Strong, Fay Weldon, Julian Barnes, JG Ballard, John Mortimer, Melvyn Bragg, John Julius Norwich, Michael Holroyd and Simon Jenkins among them.

Initiatives are to be welcomed of course. But it is not obvious that London actually needs a literary festival, precisely because as the centre of writing and publishing, it is one non-stop literary festival. Year round, there are excellent events in the bookshops and elsewhere. Waterstone's programme for September includes Muriel Spark, JG Ballard, Martin Bell, Michael Heseltine, and Margaret Drabble, for example, mostly priced at only £2, refundable against purchase of the writer's book.

There are moreover already other London literary festivals: the avant-garde Clerkenwell, for example, and the Poetry International. Following hard on the heels of The Word 2000 and only a brief walk away, the new Southwark Literature Festival runs from 26 October to 3 November - and it, too, offers talks about Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the Blitz, and a lecture on Keats by Andrew Motion. Andrew Sinclair has devised a work called Cries Of London to be performed with music and audience participation, and there will be a debate about the translation of the Bible with PD James, John Mortimer, AN Wilson, Karen Armstrong and Julia Neuberger.

However, Mr Florence said: "London is a fertile breeding ground and an infinitely challenging subject. The way writers from Chaucer, Pepys, Thackeray and Shakespeare to Zadie Smith and Jake Arnott have spun their stories round the city has changed the city itself and our perception of it. New York is like it is in the movies. London is a more literary entity."

That's true. Whether it follows that London is as suitable for a festival as Cheltenham, Edinburgh or Hay-on-Wye is another question entirely. They may much more easily foster a sense of community and event than London ever can. But if anybody can give London a literary festival, it is surely the irrepressible Mr Florence, who also has organising Hay to his credit. He says The Word 2000 will break even if 35,000 tickets are sold. "That's fewer than a full house at Highbury," he points out. That's football, though.