BBC international editor Jeremy Bowen joins programme

Other new speakers include Tom Holland and Peter Frankopan

BBC international editor Jeremy Bowen joins the festival line-up to talk about his new book on the Middle East and about his life as a foreign correspondent including his most recent travels to the frontline in Ukraine.

Award-winning historians Tom Holland and Peter Frankopan talk about their latest books at this year’s festival. Holland explores how we came to think the way we do in Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, and Frankopan explains how our engagement with the climate is nothing new in history in The Earth Transformed: An Untold History.

Michael Morpurgo joins the children’s programme to talk about his Tales from the Farm, and well-known economist and broadcaster Tim Harford talks about his first children’s book, The Truth Detective.

Meanwhile, a preview event on Monday February 20 features world-leading physicist and international bestselling writer Carlo Rovelli talking about his favourite scientist, Anaximander.

Other new events include former Radio 4 Today presenter Edward Stourton, on his memoirs, former vice-president of the World Bank Ian Goldin on the age of the city, and the investor who famously predicted the 2008 financial crash Jim Mellon.

You can also join one or both of our popular one-day creative writing courses led by professional writers and teachers of creative wring Jem Poster and Sarah Burton.

Course one explores our reasons for writing, and the resources available to the writer of fiction – memory, research and the creative imagination.

Course two highlights the importance of place in writing, addressing such matters as factual research, remembered and imagined spaces and the creation of atmosphere.