Chiswick Renews Claim to Be 'Britain's Most Literary Location'

Host of W4 locals feature on this year's Book Festival programme

Residents past and present make up many of the speakers

September 10, 2024

As befits an area which has been described as possibly being Britain’s most literary location, this year’s Chiswick Book Festival, which begins this week, has a programme packed with W4-based authors.

Festival speakers include former and current residents of W4 such as Clare Balding, James O’Brien, Al Murray, Adrian Chiles, Rebecca Frayn, Dharshini David, Peter Oborne, Michael Billington and others.

The line up represents a doubling down on the claim about the postcode’s literary pedigree that was first made in the Observer five years ago.

The Festival launches this Wednesday (11 September) with the Local Authors’ Showcase, at which 24 mainly local writers are given two minutes each to ‘sell’ their books at the George IV pub. They include debut novels from Channel 5’s political editor Andy Bell and T.C.S. Miller, a young Chiswick bookseller, and the memoirs of Larry Dann, star of The Bill who began his career in Oh What A Lovely War. The full line-up and running order can be read here.

The director of the Chiswick Book Festival Torin Douglas said, “You don’t have to live in Chiswick to speak here – and every year our wonderful programme director Jo James brings us a wide range of top writers. This year they include Robert Hardman, Polly Toynbee, Rob Biddulph, Daisy Goodwin, Ben Macintyre, Bill Wyman, Paulus The Cabaret Geek, John Torode and Lisa Faulkner, as well as our Chiswick residents.

“But when we set up the Festival 16 years ago, we wanted to encourage local writers and highlight Chiswick’s great literary heritage – as we have done with our sell-out ‘Pinter on Screen’ season at The Chiswick Cinema, introduced by Harold Pinter’s biographer Michael Billington with actors Maxwell Caulfield, Rupert Everett and Jeremy Irons, in the presence of Lady Antonia Fraser.

“We were delighted that this remarkable heritage was acknowledged, first in the Observer five years ago and then last year by the Wall Street Journal in an article headed: ‘Don’t skip Chiswick – a lush paradise that inspired Van Gogh, W.B. Yeats and more’.” 

Last year, the Festival published a new edition of its Chiswick Writers Trail map, featuring 36 notable poets, playwright and novelists who lived in Chiswick. It has now added 85 authors to its chronological Timeline of Chiswick Writers and Books, which lists almost 500 writers who have lived in Chiswick and written a book. 

Those new to the timeline include Jonathan Sayer (The Play that Goes Wrong); Nicki Chapman (Tell Me What You Want); Rachel Cockerell (Melting Point); Liz Vercoe (Where to Live in London); Laura Sebastian (Ash Princess); Jessie Childs (The Siege of Loyalty House); James Rodgers (Assignment Moscow); Isabella Hammad (The Parisian); Helena Coggan (The Catalyst); Larry Dann (Oh What a Lovely Memoir); Mary Hockaday (Kafka: Love & Courage); Oliver Soden (Masquerade: The Lives of Noel Coward); Fiona Brattle (The Model’s Handbook); Molly Arbuthnott (Oscar The Ferry Cat); Corina Stanescu (Rawry’s Missing Tooth); 

Bryony Gordon (Mad Woman); Asia Mackay (Killing It); Henry White (Little Bad Man); Helen Sedgwick (The Growing Season); Magdalena Bak-Maier (The Get Productive Grid); Jerramy Fine (The Regal Rules for Girls); Emma Forrest (Busy Being Free); Alec Marsh(Rule Britannia); Tim Marshall (The Geopolitics of Space); Eve Harris (The Marrying of Chani Kaufman); Beverley Turner (The Pits); Alan Connor (The Joy of Quiz); Sara Lodge (Inventing Edward Lear); Kate Colquhoun (A Thing in Disguise); Jutta Wagner (The Family Kitchen Garden); Simon Gompertz (The Limb of Satan); Lucy Cufflin (Lucy’s Food); Jeremy Levy (The Oxford Handbook of Dialysis); Emma Bache (Reading Between the Lines); Diane Chandler (Only Human); 

Andy Bell (Sovereign Territory); Rob Sprackling (Born Again Ben); Dexter Dias (The Ten Types of Human); Julian Borger (I Seek a Kind Person); Lesley Thomson (The Detective’s Daughter); Jon Elkon (Soho Warrior); Emma Henderson (The Valentine House); Chris Lethbridge (The King’s Engraver); Deborah Cadbury (Chocolate Wars); Simon Prentis (Speech: How Language Made Us Human).

These only include those authors for whom the organisers have been able to find the years of their birth. The total number of authors listed has risen to 487. These are split into separate listings for fiction and non-fiction. If you are listed there and would like to tell them your year of birth – or if you know of anyone not listed who has lived in Chiswick and written a book –email admin@chiswickbookfestival.net.

The Festival, which is a non-profit-making community event that raises money for charities: St Michael & All Angels Church, which hosts the Festival, and three reading charities – Read for Good, Koestler Arts and Read Easy Ealing, runs until 18 September taking place in venues around  including St Michael & All Angels Church & Parish Hall, Chiswick House & Gardens, ArtsEd, Chiswick Library, The Chiswick Cinema, The Theatre at the Tabard, Hogarth’s House, the George IV Boston Room, Chiswick Catholic Centre and St Nicholas Church.

The 16th Chiswick Book Festival will take place from 11- 18 September. For tickets, programme details and updates, visit the festival’s web site.