Anthony Horowitz speaks at two festival events this year

Welcome to the Oxford Literary Festival

Welcome to the 22nd Oxford Literary Festival. More than 100 events are already available for booking through this website. Many more will be added over the next few weeks. Please enjoy browsing through the site. More information about the festival is also available via the links below.
December 2017

Title partner

International radio partner

Festival cultural partner

Festival ideas partner

Worcester College: Festival college partner

Supporters of the Irish programme

Festival London hotel partner

Festival on-site and online bookseller

The festival hotel

Festival green room sponsor

Sponsor of Gibraltar Lecture

Broadcast media partner

Lincoln College

St Cross College

St John's College

The Queen's College

Exeter College

Keble College

Regional media partner

Local radio partner

Festival Digital Strategy & Web Design

Alumni Office

Oxford University Images

K T Bruce Photography

Festival information:

Often as an author, I only occasionally get to meet the public who buy and read my books. The Oxford Literary Festival was a special opportunity for me and certainly one of the highlights of my career – it was an honour I will never forget.

The Oxford festival is the most elegant and atmospheric of literary festivals. It’s a pleasure to both attend and perform there.

I came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions.

I loved the whole atmosphere of the Oxford Literary Festival. From breakfast, alongside some of the attendees, who were talking books with each other a mile a minute, to the public event at The Sheldonian where everyone was lively and engaged – I felt I had arrived in a kind of literary heaven.

A stimulating and rewarding on-stage conversation; a lively informed and tolerant audience; privileged access to the great treasures of the Bodleian, and finally, wonderfully interesting dinner companions to help me conclude the best day I have enjoyed at any festival – anywhere.

Every literary festival stays in an author’s mind for slightly individual reasons. I shall remember the Oxford festival for: - the size of the audience: at the top end of the range - their intelligence – this makes a huge difference for a speaker. In the Oxford audience I encountered many experts in the field my book covered and even one of the ambassadors I’d quoted - the beauty and the grace of the place itself – incomparable - the willingness of my hearers to buy books afterwards; I’ve never sold more.

For me it has been a joyous privilege to participate in the Oxford Literary Festival over so many years. Is it now the most famous festival in the UK?

The Oxford Literary Festival is intellectual Viagra.

FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival partners & sponsors