Festival hub

Festival cultural partner

The Weston Library’s Blackwell Hall is to be turned into a festival hub for Oxford Literary Festival again this year and it will include a festival bookshop.

Blackwell's will be selling all the books for this year's festival, helping to turn the hub into the go-to place if you're coming to events.

You'll be able to find out what's going on, buy and read the books and relax and enjoy a coffee and a snack. You can also visit the free Bodleian John le Carré, Jane Austen and Pets and their People exhibitions in the Weston Library (see below for details). 

Blackwell Hall, on Broad Street opposite the Sheldonian Theatre, is the main visitor hall of the Weston Library, part of Bodleian Libraries.

Oxford Literary Festival ticket holders can get 10% off in store at the Bodleian Libraries gift shops. Show your ticket to claim your discount. (Exclusions apply, not to be used in conjunction with any other offers. Ask in store for details.)

Blackwell Hall opening hours

These are the opening hours of the Benugo Café, festival hub and Bodleian exhibitions during the Oxford Literary Festival. 

Saturday 21 March 9am-6pm

Sunday 22 March 9am-4pm

Monday 23 March to Saturday 5 April 9am-6pm

Sunday 29 March 9am-4pm

Festival information desk

The festival information desk will be situated opposite you as you enter Blackwell Hall. Note: there will be no box office in Blackwell Hall this year. Last-minute tickets can be bought at the door of events subject to availability. Card purchases only. Tickets can also be purchased online or by telephone on 0333 666 3366 right up until the last minute before an event.

Café and toilets

The Weston Library café serves a delicious selection of hot and cold drinks, freshly-made soups, salads, sandwiches, cakes and pastries. Toilets are situated next to the café.

Free exhibitions

John le Carré: Tradecraft, Treasury, Weston Library, Free admission

Discover the enduring legacy of one of the greatest writers of the past century. Tradecraft draws upon the vast archive of John le Carré, otherwise known as David Cornwell. Held at the Bodleian Libraries, this material – much of which is displayed for the first time – spans Cornwell’s entire life and career, from his time as a student at Lincoln College, Oxford, to drafts penned in his final weeks. This exhibition offers unique insights into the working methods of the writer who shaped the modern spy novel.

Pets and their People (from March 11),  ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library , Free admission

We have been domesticating animals for over ten thousand years. But why do we want tame wolves in our homes or wild cats on our laps? This exhibition explores the relationship between humans and their pets – or pets and their humans. Pets and their People draws on depictions of pets in stories, imagery and poetry in the Bodleian's collection – from one of the earliest recorded depictions of an assistance dog for the blind to a rare copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that has never been displayed in the UK before

Dancing with Jane Austen, Blackwell Hall, Weston Library

Marking the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, Dancing with Austen explores how important dance was to Austen’s gentry society and its crucial role in her creativity. Dancing moves the plot in all of Jane Austen’s novels. Whether the scene of a private ball or a ticketed assembly, the dance floor measures the course of novels in which readers and characters ‘are all hastening together to perfect felicity’ (Northanger Abbey). 
This display brings together items from the Bodleian's collections and from Jane Austen’s House. See a reconstruction of Austen’s writing space at Chawton Cottage, Hampshire – now Jane Austen’s House – and details from a ball imagined through music, word, and dress.