THE line-up for the Chipping Campden International Literature Festival has been announced.

The festival which will take place from Tuesday May 8 until Friday May 12 will follow the theme of fear, horror and superstition to celebrate the bicentenary of the publication of Frankenstein.

Artistic director Vicky Bennett said: “This year we have Dame Harriet Walter discussing her acting career and why she has played male roles in Shakespeare. And 2017 Nobel Prize winner for Literature Kazuo Ishiguro and actor Mark Williams, best known as Father Brown, discuss their passion for book collecting."

Fiona Sampson and Miranda Seymour each present their 2018 biographies: Ms Sampson on the remarkable Mary Shelley teenage author of Frankenstein; and Ms Seymour on the lives of Annabelle Milbanke, mathematician and wife of Lord Byron and of their daughter Ada Lovelace who in the 1830s predicted the dawn of our modern computer age.

Dr Kathryn Harkup uncovers the science behind Frankenstein’s monster and Professor John Sutherland scrutinises the fine and not so fine points of Bram Stoker’s gothic masterpiece, Dracula.

Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions was BBC Radio 2 Book Club choice for Halloween and she examines the enduring popularity of gothic fiction with former BBCTV Crimewatch broadcaster Sue Cook.

Other events include the nightmarish rebuilding of the gothic Houses of Parliament; our fear of ancient woodlands, and the Japanese fear of kasa-obake the umbrella ghost and the umbrella’s role in fiction from Mary Poppins to Howards End; witches; the presence of the ghost in art and literature; and houses in fiction from Walpole’s Strawberry Hill to Waugh’s Brideshead.

The Imperial War Museum’s oral historian Peter Hart will draw on the experiences of both generals and ordinary soldiers in the final crucial eight weeks of WW1, whilst the former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway exploring the many important lessons we can learn from facing death, Gaby Doherty outlining what it was like living in North Kensington before and after the Grenfell Tower fire.

Henry Hemming telling the story of Maxwell Knight, MI5’s greatest spymaster, and social historian, Jane Robinson, marks #Vote100 with Hearts and Minds, her nonfiction account of the suffragists’ Great Pilgrimage. The four-star luxury Cotswold House Hotel is hosting a literary lunch with Sunday Times best selling thriller writer Rory Clements.

His latest novel Nucleus tells of the foiling of the Nazi attempt to discover the secrets of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. For film buffs there’s a screening of the 1975 film adaptation of the Australian gothic novel Picnic at Hanging Rock, now enjoying TV and theatre remakes.

Finally, poetry lovers can rediscover Milton’s Paradise Lost with one of our greatest living academics, Professor John Carey, and enjoy the work of the outstanding lyrical poet and guitarist Paul Henry who entertains with his latest collection The Glass Aisle.

Mr Henry is also running a workshop at which new and experienced poets can develop their writing in a supportive atmosphere. Our Jane Austen event has sold out and there are only a handful of tickets left for the Big Book Group with author and actress Carol Drinkwater. Our programme has attracted several bookings from Europe and the United States as well as from all over the UK.