PASSION will be high on the agenda at this year’s Chipping Campden Literature Festival with a packed programme of demonstrations, illustrated talks and literary lunches to look forward to.

The festival, which runs from Tuesday to Sunday, May 1-6, will have a whole host of speakers including Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger who has a home in Blockley.

This year’s theme ‘All for Love’ will focus on how people experience passion not only for others, but for ideas, causes, activities and achievements.

Highlights include biographer and journalist Claire Tomalin, who will explore the British love affair with biography; Michèle Roberts, who will read from her new novel Ignorance; and filmmaker and novelist James Runcie, who will introduce the first in his crime series, The Shadow of Death.

Local speakers will include Chipping Campden artist and illustrator, Caroline Green, who will read from her storybook Oscar and the Suitcase and Paula Byrne who will talk about her latest biography The Real Jane Austen.

Vicky Bennett, one of the directors, said: “Our aim is to have something for everyone within the community and to involve local businesses as well as organisations.”

During the festival, some of the finest works of The Essex House Press Collection – a private printing press set up by the Guild of Handicraft – will be on display at Court Barn Museum.

Tickets will be available from April at Jaffé & Neale in the High Street, Chipping Campden.

For further information, call 01386 841222 or e-mail vicky@campdenlitfest.co.uk.