Peter Kenrick Florence CBE [1] (born 4 October 1964) is a British festival director, most notable for founding the Hay Festival with his father and mother, Norman Florence and Rhoda Lewis, funding the first festival with winnings from a poker game. [2]
Peter Florence 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 The Open University, Queen Mary University of London, Worcester University [3] and The University of Glamorgan, and is a Fellow of Hereford College of Arts, The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and the British-American Project, and an Honorary Fellow of Bangor University and of Cardiff University.
He was made a "Colombiano de Corazon" by President Álvaro Uribe for his work in Colombia.
As well as the Hay Festival, Florence founded similar festivals around the world 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. He is a Friend of Oxfam.
He has written for a number of publications including Index on Censorship, [4] The Guardian, [5] The Telegraph and The Spectator.
A number of his interviews with writers appear in the Hay Festival's 30th-anniversary book Hay Festival Conversations.
He is a trustee of the Baillie Gifford Prize. He is a member of the Board of The Deborah Rogers Foundation. He was a governor of Fairfield High School in Peterchurch, Herefordshire, and a trustee of Hay Castle Trust.
He is a member of the European Festivals Association EFFE Jury. [6]
He is an honorary fellow of The Royal Society of Literature. [7]
Florence chaired the jury of the 2019 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and notably 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.
In late July 2021 Florence resigned as director of the Hay Festival following an independent investigation that upheld a complaint of bullying against Florence. He had been suspended in October 2020. Florence commented "I consider that my role had become untenable due to the conduct of the board and its insistence on holding a disciplinary hearing in my absence whilst I was off sick after a breakdown." [8]
Florence and his wife Becky Shaw have four sons. They live in Herefordshire. [9] He is cousin to Trevor Jones the South African composer.[ citation needed ]
Florence was awarded an MBE in 2005 for services to Arts and Culture. [10]
He was awarded a CBE in 2018 for services to Literature and Charity. [1]
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The Hay Festival of Literature & Arts, better known as the Hay Festival, is an annual literature festival held in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales, for 10 days from May to June. Devised by Norman, Rhoda and Peter Florence in 1988, the festival was described by Bill Clinton in 2001 as "The Woodstock of the mind". Tony Benn said: "In my mind it's replaced Christmas".
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