Peter Florence


Peter Kenrick Florence, CBE FRSL, is a British festival director, most notable for founding the Hay Festival with his father and mother, Norman Florence and Rhoda Florence, funding the first festival with winnings from a poker game.

Education and career

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, 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 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, The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Spectator.
A number of his interviews with writers appear in the Hay Festival's 30th-anniversary book .
He is a trustee of the . He is a member of the Board of . He was a governor of Fairfield High School in Peterchurch, Herefordshire, and a trustee of .
He is a member of the EFFE Jury.
He is an honorary fellow of .
Florence chaired the jury of the 2019 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and controversially 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.

Personal life

Florence and his wife Becky Shaw have four sons. They live in Herefordshire. He is cousin to Trevor Jones

Honours

Florence was awarded an MBE in 2005 for services to Arts and Culture
He was awarded a CBE in 2018 for services to Literature and Charity