Worcester College – a new home of Oxford Literary Festival

Worcester College will be at the centre of a thriving new hub

Worcester College will be at the centre of a thriving new hub for this year’s FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival. mercury-in-Worcester-Provosts-garden

mercury-in-Worcester-Provosts-garden

The 18th-century college will host dozens of events, dinners, tours, a daily café, and an evening bar. And festival-goers will have the opportunity to stay in college rooms, where many festival speakers will also be staying. Festival-goers can:

book a Worcester College room through the festival website

enjoy tea, coffee, wine, cakes, snacks and light lunches in the buttery 10am-5pm every day of the festival

visit the college bar 5pm-10pm

enjoy a tour of the 18th-century library and its important 17th and 18th-century collections. Book through the festival website and box office

attend the many adult and children’s events at the college including appearances by booker winner Ben Okri, Spanish football writer Guillem Balagué and children’s author Derek Landy

take the festival’s one-day The Writer’s Art creative writing course with Louis de Bernières, Joanne Harris and D J Taylor Worcester College was founded in 1714 and incorporates buildings from the medieval Gloucester College. It has magnificent ranges of Georgian buildings and 26 acres of beautiful gardens including woodlands and a lake.

2023

2022

Festival information:

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.

The Oxford Literary Festival is intellectual Viagra.

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.

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.

It was a privilege for me to visit the festival to receive the Bodley Medal. As an incidental blessing I saw Oxford at its most mysterious and atmospheric. It was a day of piercing cold and as I walked through the twilight from the Sheldonian to Christ Church, the streets were empty and the whole city was shutting itself away. Christ Church was silent except for the footfall of unseen persons around corners and the sounds of evensong creeping from behind closed doors. For the first time I understood thoroughly the power of college ghost stories.

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.

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.

The night in Oxford was the most beautiful event I have ever done. Not just the spectacular setting (of the Sheldonian), but an unforgettable evening.

The Oxford Literary Festival sponsors, donors & partners

Festival media partner

Supported by the Delegation of the European Union to the UK

Supporter of the festival's Voices of Europe programme

Festival cultural partner

Festival ideas partner

The Spanish Embassy: supporters of the programme of Spanish literature and culture

The Cervantes Institute, London

Festival on-site and online bookseller

Wines of the Douro Valley

Where learning meets opportunity: education partners of the festival

Five-star hotel partners of The Oxford Collection

Five-star hotel partners of The Oxford Collection

Oxford International Centre for Publishing

Accountants to the festival

Prestige publishing partner. Celebrating 25 years in Europe in 2024

Partner of Oxford Literary Festival

Supporters of the programme of American literature and culture

New College founded 1379

Exeter College: college home of the festival. Founded 1314

Worcester College founded 1714

Lincoln College founded 1427

Trinity College founded 1555

Magdalen College founded 1458

Reuben College founded in 2019

Founded 1884

Brasenose College founded in 1512

Festival Digital Strategy & Web Design

Olive oil from Sicily

Alumni Office

Oxford University Images

Local radio partner