News

We are very sad to report that, in view of the new Covid restrictions announced for London, Gina Miller has decided it would be imprudent to travel to Wells. She will now be speaking to the Festival ‘virtually’, and we are confident that her talk will be as inspirational and entertaining as originally planned for Friday…

The countdown to the first event of the Festival has begun and with it a last-minute change to the programme which might make you shudder with fear, especially if you are a novelist! Elly Griffiths, who was due to be discussing dangerous women in crime with fellow author Lucy Atkins, will be appearing completely alone…

Several Festival events have already sold out, but don’t despair! You haven’t missed seeing the sell-out speakers because this year we will be live-streaming every single event. Which means you can enjoy it at home at the same time as our audience in Cedars Hall. Of course you might still prefer to come to the…

You may have been concerned that our Festival in October would be affected by the Government’s most recent announcement on social gatherings. Please be assured that this is not the case. Our plans regarding putting on our 28th Festival remain the same and we will continue to adhere to the regulations that ensure venues such…

Tickets for our 28th Festival have been on sale for a very short time and yet events are already beginning to sell out. Luckily, there are 33 events lined up over the nine days. So you still have plenty to choose from: events of such great variety that a week in Wells will feel more…

As August closes, our Festival programme opens: full details will be posted here on the website on Monday 31 August, and our brochure will be hitting the streets at around the same time. Friends of the Festival qualify for Priority Booking, so if you haven’t considered joining before, now is definitely a good time to…

If you have been hankering after a taste of the High Life recently, we have some great news: it’s coming to Wells in October! Those glamorous and interesting lives that other people seem to enjoy…what are they really like behind the scenes? This year’s Festival allows us to have an intriguing peek – in a…

After an extremely tough year, we can reassure you of some bright spots ahead. Still committed to putting on a Festival in October, whilst adhering to government guidelines and advice, we have an excellent programme planned. And to illustrate our commitment to 2020 we have several ‘anniversary’ events to reveal. Most relevant to Somerset will…

After a bumper crop of entries from all over the world, our International Competitions have now closed for this year. But they will be back in 2021. Almost twice as many entries have arrived this year as we received in 2019 and the quality looks excellent. Our judges are in for a challenging few weeks!…

This year’s record-breaking International Competitions (most ever entries, biggest prize-money) have been leading the way for our 2020 Festival by attracting more entries from more countries than ever before. And with October not far away, our plans for the Festival itself look set to copy that pattern by also making our superb programme more widely…