• Help Our Local Schools

    We have set up new ways for local folk and businesses to support the Festival and fund its expanding year-round literacy projects in local schools. For just £100 you can be a Supporter or, if you fancy becoming a Sponsor, there are now three packages to choose from, each of which comes with a range…

  • Tyranny in Weimar

    Historian Katja Hoyer delivers a gripping story of life during the rise and reign of Hitler in her newbook Weimar – Life on the Edge of Catastrophe. Her portrait of this German city through its inhabitants in the years 1919-1933 will be a must whenshe appears at this year’s Festival for anyone with an interest…

  • Pick of the month

    A speaker at this year’s Festival is one of seven authors included in Waterstones’ Books of the Month of May. Historian and TV presenter Dan Cruickshank combines architecture and social history in The English House: A History in Eight Buildings with stories of the lives of their first occupants. The book, one of two listed…

  • Life in the past Lane

    Historian and social media sensation Dr Jess Venner, who is a speaker at this year’s Festival, was delighted to be invited to speak on Sky News recently about the launch of her debut book The Lost Voices of Pompeii, and the rise of AI history content. Her passion is making ancient history accessible, and she…

  • Event for Friends

    Festival Friends are in for a thrilling night with cosy crime writer Jayne Chard who is to be guest speaker at a Friends-only event on Thursday 9 July. Jayne is also an award-winning film and TV drama producer, with the BBC series Silent Witness among her credits. Her latest book The Body that Floats is…

  • Writers at the ready

    Entries for this year’s international competitions are now open, and there is hot competition for the £5,000 pot of prizes on offer. Writers have three months in which to hone their skills at poetry and storytelling in three categories before the competitions close at midnight on 31 June. These are Open Poetry, Short Story and…

  • Lyse in line for award

    Lyse Doucet – a sellout speaker at last year’s Festival – is on a shortlist of six authors for the Waterstones Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2026 with her book The Finest Hotel in Kabul. The hotel in question is the Hotel Inter-Continental, which opened in Afghanistan in 1969 as a glamorous beacon of hope for…

  • Writers under wraps

    No names can be revealed just yet, but behind the scenes the Festival booking team is sending out invitations and signing up authors for this year’s event which takes place from 16-24 October. As usual the 2026 Festival will feature speakers discussing numerous topics from the arts to the sciences, from history to politics, and…

  • Sponsor the Festival

    We are hugely grateful to our principal sponsor Chubb Bulleid, along with our other regular sponsors, for their continued support of the Festival. Their help enables the Festival to grow and to expand its cultural and educational work in the community that includes a year-round programme of literary activities in local schools and colleges. There…

  • Top marks

    The Festival’s Education Team brings quite a buzz to book learning with its year-round projects in local schools. These include numerous book donations to school libraries, funding Coram Beanstalk reading helpers in seven local schools, and even organising weekly poems on a postcard being sent to schools by poet A.F. Harrold. This year the team…