15 September 2011Last updated at 15:32

In Pictures: Woodstock Literary Festival

The Woodstock Literary Festival started on Wednesday and ends on Sunday. It has been held each year in the Oxfordshire town for seven years.

The Mayor of Woodstock, Jill Dunsmore, co-founded the festival with her daughter Sally, who already ran the larger Oxford Literary Festival. She said: “This is more intimate, the audiences are closer to the speaker and we have such a lovely medieval town and the wonderful Blenheim Palace.”

Blenheim Palace, a world heritage site, is an easy walk from the centre of Woodstock. The parkland was designed and created by "Capability” Brown between 1764 and 1774.

The veteran broadcaster Terry Wogan will be hosting a black-tie literary dinner at the palace on Friday evening in Sir John Vanbrugh's Orangery.

There are five other locations in Woodstock where talks are being held. Robin Bayley gave a talk on Thursday at The Oxfordshire Museum about his book The Mango Orchard.

Mr Bayley has spoken at literary festivals around the country and described them as “a kind of interactive Radio 4”. He added: “This is beyond doubt the most beautiful place I’ve been to where I’ve done a literary festival – it’s amazing.”

Woodstock is nine miles outside Oxford and is already a popular tourist destination but during the festival organisers hope an extra 5,000 people will visit.

Rachel Phipps runs the Woodstock bookshop. She said the festival brings a lot of people into the town who otherwise would not have come. She added: “It promotes the town nationally because it’s in a national paper so I think it’s a very good thing.”

Michael Lainchbury came from Kingham near Woodstock wearing his Churchill tie for a talk on the wartime prime minister's family. On Friday he planned to attend a number of events at the palace with his wife including a talk by the former chancellor Alistair Darling.

Oxford

In Pictures: Woodstock Literary Festival

Share this page

Related Stories

Related Internet links

Services

About BBC News