Now in its eighth year, the festival is a unique forum for lively discussion, thought-provoking ideas, and political debate. Last year, Katherine Rundell said ‘the speakers are spectacular, they are such a range of brilliant and original thinkers’, while Marlon James described the festival as having ‘the foremost names … a lot of those really big and really important conversations happen here’.

The 2023 programme featured: Zadie Smith, Tom Holland, Mary Beard, Maggie O’Farrell, Peter Frankopan, Marlon James, Simon Schama, General David Petraeus, Katherine Rundell, Alex Younger, Emily Maitlis, Daniel Finkelstein, Tristram Hunt, Nick Laird, David Lammy, Justine Picardie and Tom Crewe.

Cliveden Literary Festival is run by a committee of authors and historians – Andrew Roberts, Natalie Livingstone, Catherine Ostler and Simon Sebag Montefiore – drawing on Cliveden House’s unique history as a literary salon frequented by writers and thinkers including Alexander Pope, Alfred Lord Tennyson, George Bernard Shaw, Jonathan Swift and Sir Winston Churchill.

Tickets will go on sale in July 2024. Please sign up to the Cliveden Literary Festival newsletter and follow on Twitter and Instagram to be notified when tickets go on sale.

Visitors to Cliveden Literary Festival will also have the opportunity to explore the beautiful National Trust gardens and enjoy scenic walks down to the River Thames.

Cliveden House, operated by the Iconic Luxury Hotel group, has been awarded a Forbes Travel Guide Star Award, and Condé Nast Johansens Award for Excellence.