The second-ever Morpeth Book Festival which was due to be held over three days in March and April has been postponed due to a planned rail strike.
Organisers say that they are looking for new dates for the festival, which was due to be opened by North East author Mari Hannah, later in the year. The rail strike has made it "impossible" that authors who were due to travel from London, Scotland and Cornwall can make it to Morpeth.
Other key participants in the events have also withdrawn from the literary festival, which was due to be staged by the Greater Morpeth Development Trust and the Northumberland County Library Service over the weekend beginning on March 31. And Frank Rescigno, the Trust's Director of Arts & Culture, said that there was little other option to reschedule the festival once the train strike was confirmed.
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He said: "It is heart-breaking because we have been working on what we thought was a fantastic programme with so many popular authors, since the initial festival proved such a success 12 months ago. We agonised over the decision because we knew so many local people were keen to attend what we thought would be a great weekend.
"At the end of the day, however, we decided the only option open to us was to reschedule the festival and we are already looking at dates when this might be possible. We can only apologise that we are unable to go ahead with the event due to circumstances beyond our control."
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