The Sunday Times has pulled out of its sponsorship of the Oxford Literary Festival after almost a decade of backing the springtime event. The paper apparently got annoyed earlier this year when The Times, now under editor John Witherow (formerly of the Sunday Times), sent newsroom reporters to cover the festival — thus scooping the Sunday paper, which in previous years had been the only one there.
To avoid more in-fighting it has been agreed that both the Times and Sunday Times will jointly sponsor next year’s Cheltenham Literary Festival, which in recent years has just been backed by the daily.
But what of Oxford’s fought-over literary jamboree? A spokesman for the festival assures me that it will still be going ahead as planned in March next year. Although he declined to comment on whether the festival was looking to make an alliance with another paper, he pointed out that “we have about 40 other corporate sponsors and partners”— including Amazon, the Ashmolean and the Folio Society.
