Stella Rimington
ONE OF the headline makers of the 2011 Lowdham Book Festival, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson, has been called away to report from overseas and has had to pull out from the event on Tuesday 21 June.
In his place, the festival has secured another well-known author, the former head of MI5 Stella Rimington. Lowdham Book Festival organiser Jane Streeter has confirmed that tickets for the John Simpson evening, which had been the first 2011 book festival event to sell out, will be valid for this replacement. Any returned tickets will be refunded in full, and a waiting list is open for those seeking tickets for Stella Rimington.
Stella Rimington attended Nottingham High School for Girls in the early 1950s, and is best known as the first female director-general of MI5 and the first DG to be publicly identified. She held the post from 1992-96, and wrote a memoir called Open Secret 
published in 2001. Her first novel At Risk was published in 2004, and introduced the world to her secret agent heroine Liz Carlyle. This character, widely thought to be at least partly autobiographical, returns in Rimington’s sixth novel, Rip Tide, to be published in July 2011.
An evening with Stella Rimington will be held as part of the Lowdham Book Festival on Tuesday 21 June 2011, 7pm-9pm, at Caythorpe Cricket Club.