• Competition Winners

    The winners of the 2026 International Competitions have now been announced following an exciting afternoon of Poetry Readings and Prize Giving during the Festival. Entrants from around the world competed in four categories of poetry and storytelling for prizes totalling £5,000. Everyone who reached the shortlist received an explanation from the judges as to why…

  • Thanks To Our Photo Team

    Many thanks to our new team of photographers who have been covering all the events across the nine days of the Festival. The team includes two students, Ella Sargent (left) and Annabelle Brown (right), who volunteered their services alongside long-standing committee member Susan Knight. Between them they have amassed a memorable selection of shots capturing…

  • Festival Fun for Year 6

    Helen Rutter, children’s author and comedian, will have brought laughter and learning to more than 1,000 local youngsters from local schools by the end of this year’s Festival. At each of her four sessions, she entertained her young audiences with tales of how and why she had written her books, and introduced them to the…

  • Unravelling Fragile Minds

    Dr Gavin Francis, who is speaking at the Festival on Thursday, has just been shortlisted for the prestigious Saltires – Scotland’s National Book Awards – in the non-fiction category. Tickets are still available for his session tomorrow (Thursday 22 October) for his talk at 6pm. In his latest book The Unfragile Mind, the doctor draws…

  • Women Take to the BBC

    Four of our fascinating female speakers who are appearing at this year’s Festival are currently featured on BBC Radio Sounds. Catch novelist Louisa Young in Radio 3’s Private Passions – available until 15 October – where you clan listen to her tracklist of music. Family is at the heart of her work, and her first…

  • Repertoire Of Rice

    Foodies will get the chance to explore delicious rice-based recipes with Malaysian-born chef Ping Coombes at the Festival’s Saturday morning cookery slot. In her new book called simply Rice, Ping – who is a TV MasterChef Champion of Champions, and who now lives locally – sets rice at the heart of the table with dishes…

  • Andrea On Award List

    Multi award-winning Andrea Wulf is now on the shortlist for the Baillie Gifford 2026 Prize, joining five other authors in line for the top prize of £50,000. Andrea was previously longlisted for the award in 2008 and has now received a second recognition for The Traveller. This is a biography which traces the life of…

  • Curiosity of the Mind

    More than a quarter of young people in the UK now suffer a mental disorder, while one in four adults are prescribed psychiatric medication. But Gavin Francis, a doctor and award-winning writer, says the huge expansion in mental health labelling reveals nothing of the experience of those seeking help. In The Unfragile Mind: Making Sense…

  • A Call To Action

    We live in an age of extremes with populist leaders setting the agenda and autocracies on the march. Meanwhile the liberal establishment is a bewildered blob, devoid of new ideas or fresh solutions. So says global business columnist Adrian Wooldridge who has issued a powerful call to action in his latest book Centrists of the…

  • Feats Of Memory

    Memoirist Blake Morrison, an enthusiastic lifelong reader of other people’s lives, brings a delightful compendium of musings of narrative non-fiction to the Festival. His latest book On Memoir: An A-Z of Life Writing is a treasure trove of thoughtful literary exploration and amusing observations. From AI to ethics, politics to sex, he explores the challenges…