ABOUT US
The FESTIVAL
Chipping Campden Literature Festival was founded in 2010 by Vicky Bennett, and since that time has become renowned for presenting a series of thought provoking, original, and wide-ranging events featuring some of the world's greatest writers. From 2024 onwards she was joined by her husband Charlie as Co-Director.
What some of our authors say about us:
"Inspiring writers, enthusiastic audiences and a beautiful setting are the ingredients that make the Chipping Campden Literature Festival one of the best in the land" Loyd Grossman
"The Chipping Campden hosts looked after me so well, and the audience was wonderfully engaged. A great experience" Gillian Slovo
"However gruelling an author’s touring schedule, a chance to appear at Chipping Campden is a reliable treat" Patrick Gale
"A glorious festival – one of the loveliest in the UK"
Peter Frankopan
"I have always relished coming to the Chipping Campden Literature Festival because of the beauty of the location and the informed and alert nature of both the audience and the interviewers"
Michael Billington
"One of my favourite Literature Festivals. The audience for my talk was so engaged and the location and atmosphere wonderful" Jane Martinson
“It’s always a joy to speak to the well informed and enthusiastic audiences of the Chipping Campden Literary Festival - and in such beautiful surroundings too!”
Professor Sir Stanley Wells
"One of the most delightful of all literary festivals - such a pleasure to talk about my book to such an appreciative audience in the loveliest of Cotswold villages" Rupert Christiansen
OUR PROGRAMME
Over the years the number of events has increased to produce a programme that, as well as best selling novelist, features recently published authors of widely reviewed non-fiction – history, politics, science, gender, race, theatre, music, religion, and the natural world – including literary memoir and biography.
OUR AIMS
By offering a variety of entertaining and informative live events the aim is to celebrate the art of writing, the joy of reading, the beauty of books…
… and sharing of ideas.
Plus film, poetry, and performance.
OUR OFFER TO STUDENTS
Free tickets are available for state school students.
OUR CHARITABLE STATUS
Chipping Campden Literature Festival is part of the Chipping Campden Music Festival, a charity delivering an annual programme of internationally acclaimed classical music and a year-round educational programme.
OUR AUDIENCE
As well as appealing to the local community and the nearby towns in Worcestershire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire including Shakespeare’s Stratford-Upon-Avon, both the Music and Literature Festival attract overseas and national audiences to their beautiful, historic, Arts & Crafts Cotswold market town famous for its wool.
oI'lyou to amazing pla)ces
OUR VENUES
Our main daytime venue is, as always, the delightful and popular Montrose Suite in the Cotswold House Hotel where at past festivals we have had many sell out events. This is an 80 seater venue so to be certain of getting tickets it's worth considering becoming a Patron or Friend of the Festival to enjoy priority booking. For all events in the Montrose Suite seating is unreserved.
Our venue in 2025 for all day Monday May 5th and Saturday May 10th, is the state of the art Cidermill Theatre based on the Chipping Campden School site.
For all events in Cidermill theatre you will be able to select your own seats.
In May 2023 at the Cidermill theatre, we sold out for Dame Monica Mason speaking about The Royal Ballet School whose students demonstrated barre work and a section from Stravinsky's The Firebird to add a performance element to author Rupert Christiansen's discussion on Diaghilev's Empire.
The photo shows Royal Ballet School students performing in the Cidermill theatre.
photo copyright RBS
In May 2024 at the Cidermill theatre, our biggest selling book event was Killer in The Kremlin & The China Nexus: a discussion moderated by Baroness Helena Kennedy, KC exploring the scale of the human rights crisis within Russia and China with authors John Sweeney, Benedict Rogers, and Marina Litvinenko. Photo Credit Poppy Queenan student at Chipping Campden School
OUR AUTHORS
Chipping Campden Literature Festival writers in order of first appearance (many authors return again and again) include:
William Boyd, Patrick Gale, Michael Arditti, Samantha Harvey, Angela France, Sue Gee, Joanna Ezekiel, Amanda Craig, Adam Foulds, Helen Dunmore, Robert Sackville-West, Barbara Trapido, Jeremy Lewis, Gerard Noel, Philip Gross, Alison Brackenbury, Carole Angier, Justine Cartwright, Angela Thirlwell, Mario Petrucci, Rachel Billington, Claire Tomalin, Georgina Harding, James Runcie, David Whitehouse, Paula Byrne, Alan Rusbridger, Jonathan Bate, John Mullan, Selina Hastings, Edward Skidelsky, George Monbiot, Rick Stroud, Peter J Conradi, Alison Moore, Val Bourne, Peter J Smith, Martin Stannard, Kate Williams, Max Hastings, Helen McCarthy, Miranda Seymour, Peter Lantos, Lisa Appignanesi, David Crystal, James Evans, Tim Butcher, Jane Robinson, Peter Gaunt, Ursula Buchan, Rosamund Bartlett, Shirley Williams, Elizabeth Day, Paul Henry, David Boyd Haycock, Frank Furedi, Richard Overy, Owen
Sheers, Lyndall Gordon, Roma Tearne, Jennifer Worth, Oggy Boytchev, Shaun Attwood, Denis MacShane, Maggie Gee, Jules Pretty, Stephen Jarvis, Peter Stanford, Robert Tombs, Peter Hennessy, Roger McGough, Susan Tomes, Pru Leith, Peter Frankopan, Roger Crowley, Janina Ramirez, Lizzie Ostrom, Dinah Jefferies, Vanessa Nicolson, Anna Keay, Caroline Stanford, Andrew Lownie, Anna Pavord, David Wilkinson, A C Grayling, Roger Scruton, Francis Beckett, Andy Beckett, Stanley Wells, Paul Edmondson, Michael Billington, Hugh Purcell, Jane Corry, Sophie Hannah, George Manginis, Philippe Sands, Andrew Martin, M C Beaton, Annie Gray, Adrian Tinniswood, Federico Varese, Jasvinder Sanghera, Craig Murray, Diana Darke, Mark Billingham,
Richard Holloway, Martyn Percy, Gregory Woods, Catherine Hickley, David Owen, Luke Harding, John Crace, David Randall, Steven Isserlis, John Carey, Rory Clements, Fiona Sampson, Kathryn Harkup, Ronald Hutton, Marion Rankin, Peter Fiennes, Susan Owens, John Sutherland, Caroline
Shelton, Henry Hemming, Laura Purcell, Stuart Turton, Phyllis Richardson, Carol Drinkwater, Harriet Walter, Deborah Cartmell, Peter Hart, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Adrian Tinniswood, Jessica Douglas-Home, Ed Vulliamy, Nadine Akkerman, Paul Willets, Isabella Tree, Melissa Harrison, Henry Porter, Vanessa Berridge, Sophie Ratcliffe, Bella Mackie, Jacqueline Riding, Elisabeth Schimpfossl, Paul Mander, Mike O’Mahony, Timothy Radcliffe, Terry Waite, Peter Sutton, Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott, Gill Bennett, Alan Johnson, Sarah Churchwell, Jenni Murray, Laura Tunbridge, John Holmes, Naoko Abe, Richard Fortey, Peter Marren, Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Michael Henderson, Helena Attlee, Caroline Montague, Paul Mason, Ian Dunt,
Sophie Flynn, Claire Nelson, Rachel Clarke, Marina Warner, Lennie Goodings, Helen Taylor, Victoria Preston, Gwen Adshead, Owen Eastwood, Iain MacGregor, Sathnam Sanghera, Dan Hicks, Corinne Fowler, Justine Picardie, Loyd Grossman, Cicely Havely, Clover Stroud, Richard Beard, Robert Verkaik, Tim Brighouse & Mick Waters, Kate Hughes, Alison MacLeod, Lara Feigal, Charlotte Higgins, Simon Potter, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Duncan Minshull, Sally Bayley, Anna Whitehouse, Thomas Harding, Zoe Playdon, Finn Mackay, Julian Hayes, Patrick Mackie, Rupert Christiansen, Stephen Walsh, Vicki Ambery-Smith, John Goodall, Suleika Dawson, Tom Bullough, Jackie Morris, Nick Wallis, Kit de Waal, Richard Vinen, David Haslam, Gary Gerstle, Guy Shrubsole, Keiron Pim, Anne Youngson, Sally Hayden, Christopher Jamison, Hannah Critchlow, Jane Griffiths, David Hepworth, Jake Fiennes, Sarah Langford, Will Hutton, Paterson Joseph, Farah Karim-Cooper, Dominic Dromgoole, Jane Martinson, Benedict Rogers & John Sweeney & Helena Kennedy KC & Marina Litvinenko, Paul Caruana Galizia, Stuart Maconie, Daniel Finkelstein, Katy Bevan & Charlotte Abrahams, India Knight, Helen Lederer, Helena Kelly, Wendy Hitchmough, Peter Apps & Gillian Slovo, Alexandra Harris, Harry Freedman, James Kaplan, Will Van Der Hart, Chris Stokel-Walker, Sue Leigh & Alice Mumford, Eleanor Catton, Oliver Soden, Tim Smedley, Mike Brearley, Larisa Brown, John Bowers KC, Alison Weir
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