Top names join impressive Petworth Festival Literary Week line-up

Festival director Stewart Collins promised a programme to “appeal as broadly as is possible by bringing in absolutely top authors writing on subjects as wide-ranging as sport, politics, biography, history, the natural world and environment, poetry and the whole world of the novelist.”

Highlights include:

- Novelists: Robert Harris, Kate Mosse, Nicci French, Gill Hornby and Ben Okri with other events also featuring both local and debut authors.

- Historians: Andrew Roberts, Simon Sebag Montefiori, Ben Macintyre and Al Murray.

- Politics: Times Radio’s Carol Walker, MPs Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Mitchell, and Boris Johnson’s biographer Andrew Gimson.

- Autobiography: events featuring Hugh Bonneville, Antiques Roadshow stalwart Ronnie Archer-Morgan and jewellery designer Theo Fennell.

- Environmental: talks focusing on ‘the year the world went mad’ by Mark Woolhouse; Rewilding the Sea (Charles Clover) and on who will survive the climate crisis (Rebecca Nesbit).

The festival runs in various Petworth venues between Thursday, October 27 and Sunday, November 6.

The opening days feature:

Thursday, October 27: 7.30pm Book Group/Elizabeth Buchan. Two Women in Rome. An intimate book-group style evening with the best-selling novelist.

Friday, October 28: 12pm Carole Walker, Lobby Life. The Times Radio journalist reveals all about Parliament's secretive system; 4pm Ben Okri, The Last Gift of the Master Artists, a talk about Nigeria before the arrival of the slavers; 7.30pm Jeremy Hunt, Zero. The former Health Secretary talks about eliminating unnecessary deaths in the NHS.

Saturday, October 29: 10.30am Charlotte Sebag-Montefiore, Sussex Riddles for Children. A brain teasing set of riddles all about dinosaurs; 12pm Andrew Roberts. The Chief. The life of the greatest press magnate in history, Alfred Harmsworth; 4pm Andrew Mitchell, Beyond a Fringe. Tales from the parliamentary jungle from the Conservative MP; 7.30pm Robin Hanbury-Tenison, Taming the Four Horsemen.

Sunday, October 30: 10.30am The Children’s Laureate in Petworth – Joseph Coelho. Kind Words. The Waterstone's Children's Laureate; 2.30pm Baking Off! with Chetna Makan & Edd Kimber; 5pm Simon Sebag Montefiore, The World. A new history of humanity; 7.30pm Hugh Bonneville, Playing Under the Piano. The actor talks about his new memoir.

Monday, October 31: 12pm Ronnie Archer-Morgan. Would it Surprise You to Know. The Antiques Roadshow regular talks about his life; 3pm Theo Fennell, I Fear For This Boy: 7.30pm Kate Mosse, Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries. A thousand remarkable women are explored in Kate’s new book