Oxford Literary Festival 2025 has announced its impressive line-up for this year with 260 events and more than 350 authors, so get in quick. The great and the good will be descending on Oxford from March 29-April 6, with a stunning programme offering something for everyone. So whether you want to hear about philosophy, news, politics, current events, climate change and science or dive into the worlds of crime fiction, gardening, food, children’s events, poetry, history, farming, entertainment and music, with some of the biggest names in the business, now’s the time. Here are our top picks chronologically:
Dame Joanna Lumley, For the Love of Life, Friday, 31 January, 6.30pm, Sheldonian Theatre. Think of this as a warm-up to the main event, as one of Britain’s best-known actresses talks about her love of life, of animals, the natural world, and her animal welfare campaigning. Lumley is in conversation with Philip Lymbery, author and chief executive of Compassion in World Farming, as they discuss what needs to be done to save all life on this planet, solutions for positive change, stories of healing, inspiring reasons for hope and whether industrial animal agriculture warnings are being heeded. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/january-31/for-the-love-of-life
Ferran Adrià : elBulli Today: Preserving the Legacy and Spirit of the World’s Greatest Restaurant, Saturday March 29, 12 noon, Sheldonian Theatre. One of the world’s greatest chefs talks about his life, his elBulli restaurant (named the world’s best restaurant multiple times), and preserving the legacy of his groundbreaking cuisine. When elBulli closed in 2011, Adria and his business partner Juli Soler founded the elBullifoundation. Its work includes the 30-plus-volume Bullipedia fine dining encyclopaedia. while Adrià has created a course on science and cuisine with Harvard University. He is also author of more than 60 books and audiovisual content on elBulli’s work and set up elBullibooks publishing house. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/march-29/elbulli-today-preserving-the-legacy-and-spirit-of-the-worlds-greatest-restaurant
Dragon Tales, Cressida Cowell, Saturday, March 29, 2pm, Sheldonian Theatre. Age 7+. Meet the multi-million-copy selling, award-winning author and former children’s laureate, creator of the How to Train Your Dragon (turned into a Dreamworks film), The Wizards of Once and the Which Way to Anywhere series. Cowell will introduce her newest book Dragon Tales: Short Story Collection and give a sneak peek of How to Train your Dragon School, the brand-new spin off series publishing in May, ahead of a new film in June. Cowell will also talk about her inspiration and give writing and drawing tips. Bring along your own sketch book if you’d like her to take a look in the signing queue. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/march-29/dragon-tales
Miriam Margolyes, Saturday, March 29, 4pm, Sheldonian Theatre The award-winning actress was born in Oxford, educated at Oxford High and now returns to Oxford to deliver this year’s Peter Roberts Memorial Lecture to discuss her support for animal welfare. Interviewed by chief executive of Compassion in World Farming, Philip Lymbery, she will then take questions from the audience. Well known as Professor Sprout in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, as well as winning a BAFTA as best supporting actress for The Age of Innocence, Margolyes has also presented numerous TV documentaries, toured herone-woman show Dickens’ Women and written two memoirs, This Much is True and Oh Miriam. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/march-29/compassion-for-all-life-the-peter-roberts-memorial-lecture
Jonathan Coe talks to Val McDermid. Saturday March 29, 6pm, Sheldonian Theatre. The award-winning novelist discusses his latest novel, The Proof of my Innocence, a blisteringly funny political critique wrapped up in a murder mystery, around a sinister think tank founded in Cambridge in the 1980s. Britain has a new prime minister who will only last seven weeks and Chris takes his investigation to a conference in the Cotswolds where events take a sinister turn and a murder enquiry is soon in progress. Coe will also consider the art of crime writing with famous crime writer Val McDermid. Coe is the bestselling author of 15 novels translated into 22 languages and a film of Mr Wilder & Me is currently in development. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/march-29/the-val-mcdermid-interview-the-proof-of-my-innocence
Alexander Armstrong Sunday, 30 March, 10am, Sheldonian Theatre. Age 9+. Go on an interactive quest with the actor, comedian, television presenter and singer as he introduces Evenfall: The Golden Linnet, his debut children’s book bursting with ancient magic, secret societies, and fearsome foes. In this adventure-packed event, you will solve riddles and puzzles, create the perfect villain, and discover Armstrong’s top tips to write your own thrilling adventures. At the end, discover if you have what it takes to become part of Evenfall’s ancient secret society, the Order of the Evening. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/march-30/evenfall-the-golden-linnet
Lionel Shriver, Mania: What if Calling Someone Stupid was Illegal, Sunday March 30, 10am. Trinity College, Levene Building: Auditorium. The bestselling novelist and journalist discusses her latest novel, Mania, that imagines a world in which intellectual meritocracy is a heresy. Set in a future not too distant to our own in which the Mental Parity Movement holds sway. The worst thing you can do is call someone stupid. Everyone is equally clever and you cannot discriminate on the basis of intelligence. Exams and grades are discarded, children are expelled for use of the ‘s’ word and you don’t need a qualification to be a doctor. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/march-30/mania-what-if-calling-someone-stupid-was-illegal
Joseph Coelho, Goodnight, Starry Night: Bedtime Poems Inspired by Works of Art, Sunday, 30 March. 12 noon. Weston Lecture Theatre. Age 4-7. Former-Children’s Laureate and award-winning author reads some cosy poems perfect for exploring sleep. Developed with consultant art psychotherapist Mary Rose Brady, and affected by Van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night, David Hockney’s Sleeping Dogs, Vivian Maier’s Woman with Baby and Faith Ringgold’s quilted artwork. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/march-30/goodnight-starry-night-bedtime-poems-inspired-by-works-of-art
Wendy Cope: Collected Poems: A Celebration of a Lifetime’s Work, Wednesday, 2 April, 4pm. Sheldonian Theatre. One of the UK’s wittiest and best-loved poets talks about her writing and life to mark the publication of her collected poems. Cope’s first collection of poems, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, published in 1986 saw her become both a bestseller and a celebrated poet. She has since published four further volumes of poetry and reached a new audience when her poem, Orange, went viral. Her most recent collection of new poems is Anecdotal Evidence. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/april-2/collected-poems-a-celebration-of-a-lifetimes-work
Sir Don McCullin, Thursday, 3 April, 6pm. Sheldonian Theatre. The outstanding British photojournalist talks about his life and work in conversation with Bodley’s Librarian Richard Ovenden, and receives the Bodley Medal for outstanding contribution to photography and journalism. McCullin has left a trail of iconic 20th-century images, ranging from the construction of the Berlin Wall to the Falklands War. His photography at the Sunday Times Magazine in the 1960s turned him into a hero. When the Beatles wanted new photographs, they turned to McCullin, as did Francis Bacon when he desired a portrait. He chronicled his own life in his autobiography Unreasonable Behaviour. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/april-3/the-bodley-lecture-and-award-of-the-bodley-medal-life-and-work
Adam Frost, For the Love of Plants, Friday, 4 April, 2pm. Sheldonian Theatre. The BBC Gardeners’ World presenter reflects on the plants that have shaped him and takes questions from the audience. Frost’s garden is well known to millions of viewers of the BBC’s longstanding weekly gardening programme. He regularly presents from his home plot when he stands in for Monty Don, is an award-winning garden designer and holder of seven gold medals from the Chelsea Flower Show. He describes his design and planting choices in his new book, For the Love of Plants, and explains how they draw on years of experience and personal memories. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/april-4/for-the-love-of-plants
Harriet Walter, She Speaks: What Shakespeare’s Women Might have Said, Sunday, 6 April, 4pm. Sheldonian Theatre. Known for her recent roles in Succession and Killing Eve and as a Shakespearean actor, Walter imagines what some of 30 of the Bard’s great women characters might have been thinking in her book She Speaks. Set in verse, sonnets and prose, she lets Gertrude give Hamlet the unvarnished truth, Lady Macbeth show how she would have been a savvy king and the witches enjoy a good old rap. Her interview will be interspersed with readings from the book. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/april-6/she-speaks-what-shakespeares-women-might-have-said
The Siege, Ben Macintyre, Thursday, 3 April, 2pm. Sheldonian Theatre. The journalist and multi-million-selling author tells the story of the siege of London’s Iranian Embassy in 1980 and the remarkable rescue by the SAS. Macintyre draws on unpublished materials, interviews with the SAS and testimony from hostages, negotiators and intelligence officers to tell the full story of the six-day siege when six heavily armed gunmen burst into the building and took 26 hostages. Macintyre is the bestselling author of books including Colditz, Agent Sonya, SAS: Rogue Heroes, The Spy and the Traitor, Agent Zigzag, Operation Mincemeat and A Spy Among Friends. Several of his books have been made into films and he is a columnist and associate editor at The Times. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/april-3/the-siege
John Suchet, In Search of Beethoven, Friday, 4 April 2025, 4pm, Department for Continuing Education: Lecture Theatre. Classic FM presenter and former well-known journalist and newscaster John Suchet weaves together the story of his own life and that of Beethoven as new information throws light on the composer’s life. A well known authority on Beethoven, he looks into the composer’s health and ancestry, charting the composer’s story from his early time in Bonn to life in Vienna. Although not easy to reconcile Beethoven’s genius with a deeply flawed individual, Suchet says the music has been a companion through his best and worst times. In Search of Beethoven is his eighth book on the composer. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/april-04/in-search-of-beethoven
Richard Coles, Murder Under The Mistletoe, Saturday, 5 April, 10am. Sheldonian Theatre. The writer, broadcaster and Anglican priest talks to Triona Adams about his life and latest novella in which Canon Clement and Detective Sergeant Neil Vanloo aim to solve another crime and catch the Christmas killer. Coles, one half of successful 1980s band the Communards, went on to become a Church of England priest, well-known writer, broadcaster, TV star, winner of Christmas Masterchef and a contestant in the 2017’s Strictly Come Dancing. His Canon Clement mysteries are all bestsellers as was his book The Madness of Grief, written in the aftermath of the death of his partner, Rev David Coles. https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-events/2025/april-5/murder-under-the-mistletoe
The Oxford Literary Festival runs from March 29-April 6. For further info on these and the myriad of further events and authors go to https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org
