Friday 10 April  & Saturday 11 April   We are very excited to be mounting our second fully professional 'In House' production. This time with Noel Coward's great play.

Monday 4 May 10.30am   Gordon Corera, shares with Alan Rusbridger,  the remarkable story of how an introverted archivist for the KGB, Vasili Mitrokhin, determined to expose the truth about the dark forces that had subverted Russia, forces still at work in the country today.

Monday  4 May 12 Noon   award-winning classicist Edith Hall  discusses with Lindsay Mackie how Homer's Iliad, both documents the environmental practices of the ancient Greeks and betrays an awareness of the dangers posed by the destruction of the natural landscape. 

Monday 4 May  2pm  Matthew Cobb, Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester, and Tim Coulson, Professor of Zoology at Oxford University in discussion: Crick was a restless, relentless thinker, as fascinated by Beat poetry and psychedelics as the genetic meaning of life and the inner workings of the brain.  

 Monday 4 May  3.30pm  Justine Picardie, in conversation with Sue Cook,  presents her cinematic, vivid story of soft power and couture:  exquisitely hidden history of the Crown and how it survived a tumultuous era as the women of the House of Windsor's sartorial decisions projected power and perpetuity, diplomacy and even defiance plus little-known lives of the couturiers behind the clothes, Hardy Amies, Edward Molyneux and Norman Hartnell.

Monday 4 May 5pm  William Boyd is author of sixteen highly acclaimed, bestselling novels and five collections of stories, translated into over thirty languages, and a writer for stage and screen. Any Human Heart (long listed for the Booker Prize) was adapted into a TV series with Channel 4.

Monday 4 May 7pm   To celebrate Tate Britain’s recent definitive exhibition of two pivotal British artists in the 250th year of their births, historian and curator Nicola Moorby, in discussion with Meg Sanders, uncovers the layers of fiction that have embellished and disguised the greatest achievements of JMW Turner and John Constable

Tuesday  5 May 10am  James Fox, art historian and multi-award-winning broadcaster, takes us the length of Britain to seek out the last great craftspeople: blacksmiths and wheelwrights, cutlers and coopers, bellfounders and watchmakers. A glimpse not only our past but a way of life that is not yet lost and might still shape our future.

Tuesday  5 May 12 Noon  After a two course lunch with a glass of wine, Carol Drinkwater, multi-award winning actress, writer and film-maker, discusses her life, writing and latest novel One Summer in Provence 

Tuesday  5 May 6pm  Paula Byrne, returns to our festival for the fifth time, to discuss with academic, biographer, literary critic, broadcaster, and scholar Jonathan Bate her latest novel of dazzling ingenuity: How Jane Austen the most famous romance writer of all time, fell in love for the first time. 

Tuesday 5 May 7.30pm  Newsreel footage of WWII National Gallery lunchtime concerts illustrates this discussion between Jessica Duchen and Charlie Bennett on the transformation of Myra Hess DBE from rebellious young woman into an inimitably powerful national heroine and international superstar. 

Wednesday  6 May 10am   David Wilkins presents newly published memoir: June 1940 21-year-old Raymond Bailey captured at the Battle of St Valery escapes across Europe and over the Pyrenees to British Gibraltar, home in time for Christmas.

Wednesday 6 May 11.30am  Justin Marozzi presents lives of slaves ranging from agricultural labour and domestic toil to elite concubinage, guardianship of sacred spaces, political leadership and even military command. 

Wednesday 6 May 2pm  Frances Wilson follows the clues, riddles and instructions Muriel Spark planted in her writing for posterity to show how Spark's experiences of the 1940s and 1950s became, alchemically reduced, the material of her art.

Wednesday 6 May 3.30pm   Sarah Dennis discusses being an independent bookshop owner with Marigold Atkey, publisher at Daunt Publishing. Fatima Bhutto zooms in with her most powerful book yet

Wednesday 6 May 6pm  Jonathan Freedland discusses with Alan Rusbridger what kind of person does it take to risk everything and stand up to tyranny? In Berlin 1943 high-society anti-Nazi dissenters meet for a tea party one late summer afternoon. Sitting around the table someone is poised to betray them all to the Gestapo. 

Wednesday 6 May 7.30pm  Jacqueline Riding and Meg Sanders discuss how Chaplin’s work and outlook were always shaped by the world he came from. Illustrated by pianist Meg Morley's accompaniment of three silent Chaplin shorts.

Thursday 7 May 10am   Emily Hauser uncovers the real heroes of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: Helen of Troy, Briseis, Cassandra and Aphrodite, Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso and Penelope.

Thursday 7 May 11.30am  Rahul Bery and Charlotte Whittle discuss their latest translations with Meg Sanders and end with a Slam! 

Thursday 7 May 2pm  Michael J Warren demonstrates how from buzzards in Oxfordshire to cranes in Kent – once common birds left their mark in British place names.  

Thursday 7 May 3.30pm  Adam Weymouth follows the path across the Alps to north of Verona travelled in 2011 by a GPS tracked young wolf named Slavc: the call to rewild in Europe meets the urge to preserve culture.

Thursday 7  May 7pm  Stephen Bourne discusses  the pioneers of Black British theatre with Peter Smith: beginning in 1825 when Ira Aldridge played Othello and ending with  twentieth century trailblazers such as Paul Robeson & Cleo Laine. Followed by Live Jazz from Nik Payton & Friends 

Friday 8 May 10am  David Gushee  in conversation with Craig Bishop argues that Christians should stand up to those at the forefront of Americans storming the Capitol in 2021 claiming to act in the name of Jesus Christ and his supposed representative on earth, Donald Trump

Friday 8 May 12 Noon  Gwen Adshead talks to Meg Sanders about her work with patients struggling in the wake of a range of distressing and painful life events.

Friday 8  May 2pm  At our open mic (without a mic) poet and performer Chris Tutton reads from his eighth collection and members of the audience are invited to share one of their own poems.

Friday 8 May 6pm   Jonathan Wilson  considers the matches and goals, the players and coaches, the tales of scandal and genius, and the haggling and skulduggery of the bidding process.

Friday 8 May 7.30pm  Anna Whitehouse AKA MOTHER PUKKA and trailblazing Sunday Times best selling author discusses her latest novel with Danni McCabe: Alexandra's lost her job, her husband barely acknowledges her existence and her daughter hates her. The only place she truly feels seen is online. 

Saturday 9 May 10.30am  The pioneering London barrister advocates for those who have no voice: for rivers, forests and endangered species. 

Saturday 9  May 12 noon  Philip Stephens,  in conversation with Alan Rusbridger, evokes the tumultuous history of the relationship between Britain and Ireland from the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1922 to the present day.

Saturday 9  May 2pm  Antony Beevor discusses  with Caroline Sanderson how Rasputin, a barely literate moujhik from Siberia, and a devoted monarchist, through his uncanny seduction of the imperial household contributed more than any other individual to the collapse of the greatest autocracy in the world.

Saturday 9  May 3.30pm  Simon Jenkins discusses with Alan Rusbridger how the global powerhouse that is the United States came to be dominated by English speakers and how it has grappled with the stark contradictions between its ideals of liberty and the grim reality of genocide and slavery

Saturday 9  May 5pm  Rowley Leigh discusses his life with Charlie Bennett: from working with the Roux brothers at Le Gavroche in 1979, becoming head chef of their Le Poulbot restaurant  in 1984, running  Kensington Place for many years, and leaving there to open Le Café Anglais. 

Saturday 9 May 7pm  The festival closes with a ‘Tour de France’ Fine Wine Tasting  in the unique and historic setting of the beautifully restored Barn at Grevel House, the oldest house in Chipping Campden.