Writer, artist and stonemason Beatrice Searle and artist and designer Ellie Orrell reflect on their work and the transformative and healing power of art and craft. Every literary festival stays in an author’s mind for slightly individual reasons. I shall remember the Oxford festival for: Fascinated with the mysterious footprint stones of the ancient world, Beatrice follows pathways forged by travellers, saints and kings in an astonishing feat of human endurance. A stimulating and rewarding on-stage conversation; a lively informed and tolerant audience; privileged access to the great treasures of the Bodleian, and finally, wonderfully interesting dinner companions to help me conclude the best day I have enjoyed at any festival – anywhere.

She takes us all further, from ideas of faith in place into seeking for knowing, a travelling in the field... with her subject, evening the condition, and so showing her workings out on a mother of a walk in circling the mattering of life. Taking life, taking a stone. Returning life. Turning stones. Mattering.

The night in Oxford was the most beautiful event I have ever done. Not just the spectacular setting (of the Sheldonian), but an unforgettable evening. That, at least, was the theory. Shortly after disembarking in Bergen, Searle experienced the first of many episodes of self-doubt that would dog her journey. None of the passing tourists seemed remotely interested in her stone and suddenly she found herself standing alone in the pouring rain, wondering what on earth she was doing there. It was a dispiriting moment yet oddly, it was at this point that Searle’s story came alive. I thoroughly appreciate hearing her sharing this story and all the peculiar intricacies of a peculiarly intricate path. Her journey has been inspired by the stories she is told of Magnus Erlendsson, the Patron Saint of Orkney, by her stonemasonry college tutor, and a mason’s banker mark found on stones in both Lincoln Cathedral, where Beatrice is an apprentice, and Nidaros Domkirke (Trondheim Cathedral), which starts a conversation between the masons at each. Stone Will Answer is not only a brilliant contemplation of the spiritual and historical power of stone, but a riveting travelogue through Norway's wilderness. Fans of Raynor Winn, like myself, will love Searle's lengthy and challenging journey through a semi-isolated natural world.

Searle wanted to learn the “lessons” stone had to teach her but it’s the human spirit that emerges triumphant in this sparky blend of memoir and travelogue. There is the kindness of strangers she meets on the pilgrim path: fellow travellers who share food, mend trolley-wheels and add their footsteps to the Orkney Boat’s story. There is wisdom to be gleaned from the stories Searle tells about her fellow stonemasons: highly skilled craftspeople who repair and preserve the fabric of ancient buildings using techniques that have remained unchanged for 800 years.

At the age of twenty-six, stonemason and artist Beatrice Searle embarked on an expedition like no other. Pulling along a 40-kilo stone from the West coast of Orkney, she crossed the North sea and walked 500-miles on a mediaeval pilgrim path to Nidaros Cathedral in Norway. She visits Orkney, chooses a stone, carves footprints on it and sets off for Trondheim in Norway dragging it behind her, inviting people she meets along the way on the ancient Gudbrandsdalen pilgrim path to stand in the footprints and experience what they will. At the age of twenty-six, artist and Cathedral stonemason Beatrice Searle crossed the North Sea and walked 500 miles along a medieval pilgrim path through Southern Norway, taking with her a 40-kilogram Orcadian stone. It was a privilege for me to visit the festival to receive the Bodley Medal. As an incidental blessing I saw Oxford at its most mysterious and atmospheric. It was a day of piercing cold and as I walked through the twilight from the Sheldonian to Christ Church, the streets were empty and the whole city was shutting itself away. Christ Church was silent except for the footfall of unseen persons around corners and the sounds of evensong creeping from behind closed doors. For the first time I understood thoroughly the power of college ghost stories.

It may sound a bit unlikely, but it is a story everyone can relate to because it unfolds as a metaphor for life, in which the hardest journeys can be the most rewarding. I heard the author speaking on Radio 4 and I was impressed by how thoughtful, reflective and honest she was about the unusual Pilgrimage journey she had made with her stone. This inspired me to buy her book and I'm glad that I did.Searle is as much artist-adventurer as she is stonemason and it is the journey she undertakes from Orkney to Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway, that forms the basis of the book. This is no ordinary journey, however, as not only does she walk (and travel by boat) but takes a forty-kilogram stone with her which she pulls upon a custom-built trolley. This is no ordinary stone either but a ‘stippled, leopard-surfaced lozenge’ of Orcadian siltstone, ‘beamy in the hips like a true Yole, Orkney’s traditional clinker-built fishing boat’. The analogy with boats runs deep throughout the book, for the stone itself, into which she cuts two footprint depressions, is itself a kind of boat, the Orkney Boat. Weaving between the joyful trusting determination of a singular intelligent and interested little girl, in her adulthood she draws her into this story so tenderly, whilst walking into the landscape of facing the peculiar monolithic impressions we live amongst. Storied impressions and whom we feel compelled to wield in the titanic efforts of believing in being human. As we learn with her what it takes, and all it takes along the way, to become a master of stone. Roy Strong Interviewed by Richard Barber The Stuart Image: An Introduction to English Portraiture 1603 to 1649 Oxford Martin School: Lecture Theatre 2:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this event

I came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions. A story of determination and soul-searching... Compellingly narrated, entertaining and thought-provoking... treat yourself to a copy of this book and enjoy the journey Natural Stone Specialist The Oxford Literary Festival has in my mind become the leading literary festival of the year. The organisation, the roster of speakers, the ambience and the sheer quality of it all is superb. May it now go from strength to strength each year stretching its ambition more and more. I believe it will.

I say that we are taking this stone to Trondheim. I continue to tell her the story of Magnus and ancient Kings. This book is a description of madness in all the best ways. Madness fuelled by self-discovery, a deep and driving inner need and the light of creativity, art and inspiration. It is also a treatise on human relationships, to places and to other people; and the meaning these relationships will always hold in a person's life, even when severed. I cannot recommend this book enough, and encourage anyone with a love for art, nature, history, and philosophy to give it a read. How can a stone be a boat? The chance discovery in a book, given to her by a stonemasonry tutor, of ‘a monochrome photograph of a knobbly and scratched stone boulder, containing two carved footprints’ spurs her on to investigate the phenomena of ‘footprint stones’. These are typically associated with saints and kings. The one in the photograph was the one that St Magnus, the former Magnus Erlendsson, twelfth-century Earl of Orkney, reputedly sailed across the Pentland Firth, his footprints magically remaining on its surface. If surfing saints seem slightly more interesting and relatable than the ones traditionally associated with gruesome endings then you are in good company as they are too for Searle, who sets out to find it, uncovering a treasure trove of folklore, as well as connections between boats and stones, as she does so. Stone does answer, in its own irregular ways and through its unlikely combination of oppositions. It is both the purpose of travel as well as anchor. It is both weight and lightness, surface and depth, stillness and motion. It is sometimes said that stonemasons have a ‘feel’ for stone. This is something that comes from practice, hours spent working it into specific useful shapes. What is less well known is that this is a two-way street: the stone works on you. Searle has taken this relationship out into the wild, tested it in extreme conditions and come to know, unknow and re-learn her stone, which has forced similar processes upon herself. As she concludes, ‘I had thought it was an act of generosity to bring the stone; in the end it was our encounters with those on the path that revealed that I had been seeking and making real my own foundation myths’.