Highlights include outstanding novelists Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan, Mick Herron of Slow Horses fame, Katie Piper, John Cleese marking 50 years since Fawlty Towers was on our TV screens and Larry Lamb of Gavin & Stacey fame. Join them this November for their twice-yearly celebration of the written word.
Zadie Smith makes a welcome return to discuss her thrilling collection of essays Dead and Alive; Former First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon joins us in a sure to be riveting conversation with fellow Scot and Festival Honorary Patron Ali Smith; Mick Herron makes his much awaited debut at the festival with the next instalment in his Slough House series.
An unmissable and continent-spanning conversation will take place between international barrister Philippe Sands and Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez; veteran news presenter and broadcaster John Suchet, shares his passion for the music of Beethoven in his deeply personal book In Search of Beethoven.
Emerging from the Cambridge Footlights, John Cleese makes his first appearance at the festival to celebrate 50 years of Fawlty Towers; their always enlightening Cambridge Series welcomes two eminent academics.
Fellow and Associate Professor of Downing College Bonnie Lander Johnson discusses how we became so disconnected from nature and offers some hope in her book Vanishing Landscapes; and, with too many accolades to mention, Partha Dasgupta is the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics and a Fellow of St. John’s College and will share his latest book On Natural Capital in which he makes the case for bringing economics and ecology together to save the natural world and thereby save ourselves.
Natalie Haynes continues to stand up for the Classics with her latest show, No Friend to this House, which gloriously reimagines the myth of Medea.
Other confirmed writers include beloved poet Wendy Cope with her Collected Works; BBC's Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet discussing The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A people’s history of Afghanistan.
Scientist Tim Gregory on Going Nuclear, which makes the case for nuclear power to tackle our climate and energy crisis.
Inspirational Katie Piper empowers us to reimagine aging; former President of the Supreme Court, Lady Hale joins once more to give an entertaining top-to-bottom tour of the legal system; Cambridge cook, writer and journalist Bee Wilson shares her latest, The Heart Shaped Tin, which will resonate with all of us; Ukrainian food writer and chef Olia Hercules shares her latest book Strong Roots: A Ukrainian Family Story of War, Exile and Hope; and local writer Megan Hunter has done it again with another exceptional novel, Days of Light.
