About us

About Us 

Marlborough LitFest marked its 14th year in 2023 with a full programme of live events for adults and outreach activities for children and families – our most successful festival yet. Read more about our 2023 festival round-up here and a review of this year’s children’s festival here

As ever, these included sessions in the Town Hall and other local venues. We also brought authors to meet children from local primary schools in Marlborough and Pewsey and linked with other local partners in the town such as the Jubilee Centre.  

Marlborough LitFest remains a charity run by a small committee of volunteers. Over the festival weekend, nearly 100 local people help to steward events and run the café.  The Litfest is lucky: it has as its home a town with a strong literary heritage and a great independent bookseller, the White Horse Bookshop.  

As for everyone, the last few years have been challenging but not without their high points. Back in 2019 we celebrated the tenth anniversary of LitFest in style with an array of new and less-established writers as well as big names such as Ben Okri, Cressida Cowell, Joanne Harris, David Baddiel and Robert Harris.  

Wiltshire Life AwardThen came Covid in 2020.  Despite this we managed to bring three children’s authors to 600 local children via Zoom.  We began a new partnership with Bath Spa University to launch our Love Books Competition.  Local resident and renowned actor Sir Simon Russell Beale became our first patron. And we won a Wiltshire Life Award in the Arts, Music & Culture Groups category.

In 2021 we embarked upon on a new adventure with a ‘hybrid’ festival – mainly live events but with the addition of livestreaming from the Town Hall and a few entirely virtual events which we invited our audience to watch either online or on a Big Screen.  This was thanks to a new partnership with StreamWorks, a video creative agency based in Swindon, and our livestream sponsor Hiscox insurance.  We are also very grateful to our new lead sponsor Sarah Raven, the online garden store, whose headquarters is in Marlborough, who came on board in June 2021.  The outcome was a success with people delighted to see authors in person or watch them in the comfort of their own homes. 

Our history

Back in 2009, the town had a jazz festival and a rich, well-established musical life, but little on offer to celebrate the legacy of writers linked to the town like Siegfried Sassoon, John Betjeman and William Golding.  Why was Marlborough without its own literary festival?

The idea was initiated by Nick Fogg and author Mavis Cheek who then lived near Marlborough. A small committee started planning as early as February 2009 and the first LitFest took place in September 2010. The aim was to be first and foremost about good writing; authors rather than celebrities would be at the heart of the festival.  We were keen to hear young, new voices as well as established writers, some based locally, and we were clear that we should always pay them a fee.

ALCS logoWe had financial help from ALCS (Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society) who gave us a grant, Brewin Dolphin and Hiscox Insurance agreed to sponsor us, and Marlborough College arranged our poetry event. These organisations continued their support and, with new local sponsors and donors, have helped the festival grow to its present size and reputation.

The first LitFest consisted of 15 events spread mainly between the Town Hall and The Merchant’s House in the High Street.  Margaret Drabble opened it, poet Don Paterson and children’s author Cressida Cowell, a former student at the college, were among those who took part.  The following year it expanded to 23 events including the first debut authors. We began to add things – a tour of Libanus Press, Poetry in the Pub, creative writing workshops.  In 2012 William Golding Ltd sponsored the first Golding Speaker and enabled us to invite major literary figures to Marlborough including Howard Jacobson, Lionel Shriver, Rose Tremain and Ben Okri.  2012 saw the first event for local primary schoolchildren, since when nearly 4,500 children of all ages have benefited from free author talks.

In its tenth year, Marlborough Litfest had nearly 40 diverse sessions, many of them sell-outs, and an even bigger outreach programme. A festival should be much more than its showcase events. It’s about sowing seeds so that a love of reading takes root in more unexpected quarters. We marked the town’s link with Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children 100 years ago, by encouraging children to respond to a picture book about child refugees. We expanded our children’s events to Calne, helped school libraries to buy extra books and worked with the Friends of Erlestoke to support the creation of book bags for prisoners’ children.