The Lake District Book Festival arrives with a whoop and a holler in Cumbria for the first time this June. The event is organised by historian and journalist Christopher de Bellaigue and novelist and creative director Charlotte Fairbairn. It takes place in the dreamy setting of Cartmel Racecourse, which sits in the lea of Morecambe Bay and in the shadow of the 13th-century Cartmel Priory.
The Lake District Book Festival Preview
Words by
Sphere Editors
12th May 2026
From 12th to 14th June, the luscious landscape of Cumbria will be taken over by the Lake District Book Festival. SPHERE gives you a preview of the first annual event.
The Lake District Book Festival takes place at Cartmel racecourse. ©Geograph.org.
The Lake District Book Festival is being held at Cartmel Racecourse
Over 40 events will take place over three days in two large tents and the Grandstand building on the racecourse. Film, fiction, food, the fabulous four, politics, travel, memoir. As Christopher de Bellaigue says of the festival brief: "We have gone to exceptional lengths to devise a programme whose strength is its diversity: of viewpoints, life experiences and identities. We haven’t a list of do’s and don’t’s. We have a tone, a character, from the welcome you receive to the food you eat and the exchanges you have in the town square that is Cartmel Racecourse. From that starting point, and from the personalities of Charlotte and myself, stems the warm, friendly, spontaneous atmosphere that we are resolved to create and nurture."
Some Programme Highlights
Lord Michael Heseltine
From Acorns to Oaks: an Urgent Agenda to Rebuild Britain. A conversation with Annabel Heseltine.
Friday 12 June, 1:30 pm Hampsfell Tent
Tarzan, as the red tops knew him, inhabited the highest canopy of British politics, privatising ‘more parts of the public sector than any other minister,’ deposing Margaret Thatcher and inventing levelling up while Boris Johnson was in short trousers. David Cameron consulted him on devolution and industrial policy, but he was dismayed by Brexit. From farming and rural communities to the decline of Britain’s industrial base – "the greatest mass extinction since the dinosaurs" – Lord Heseltine’s interests align uncannily with those of the northwest. He fields questions from his daughter, the environmental journalist Annabel Heseltine.
Matt Frei & Surprise Guest
Around the Cabinet Table
Friday 12 June 12:00 pm Hampsfell Tent
If you could choose a minister from Keir Starmer’s cabinet to come to Cartmel and subject themselves to a grilling from Matt Frei, Channel 4’s inquisitor-in-chief, there is every chance it would be this one. We are not allowed to say anything more...so watch this space. Settle in for an hour of high ideals, tumultuous politics and the fascinating life of a person some believe should be the next prime minister.
Lyse Doucet & Jon Lee Anderson
Channel Four's Lindsey Hilsum discusses working as a foreign correspondent.
The Finest Hotel in Kabul & To Lose a War
Friday 12 June 4:30 pm Hampsfell Tent
The Intercontinental Hotel overlooking Kabul is a flop-house for journalists, aid workers and spooks. It also bears the scars of modern Afghan history, as the BBC’s Lyse Doucet discovered; its bellboys and chefs and the pageants and horrors it has witnessed speak of an indomitable Afghan will. No journalist covered Afghanistan with a clearer eye than Jon Lee Anderson of the New Yorker, from the struggle to expel the Soviets in the 1980s through the US-led invasion of 2001 to the Taliban’s return in 2021. "How does an empire die?" A question for two legendary foreign correspondents in conversation with a third, Lindsey Hilsum of Channel Four.
This event is kindly sponsored by the Aga Khan Foundation.
Candice Carty-Williams
Candice Carty Williams is the author of Queenie. ©Emil Huseynzade.
"We’re growing up, Queenie! We’re in our thirties!"
Saturday 13 June 1:15 pm Hampsfell Tent
Queenie was Candice Carty-Williams’ hit novel about a black south London girl going into self-destruct mode. Consider this encounter with TV producer Charlie Pattinson a sneak preview of the imminent follow-up, Queenie is Working on It. It is, as we can attest, just as good. A burden of childhood trauma and racism. A grandma who makes things better. Better sex than the Hampsfell stage has a right to expect. Yes, when Queenie Jenkins decides to conceive, she acts.
Jane Horrocks
Jane Horrocks, known for playing Bubbles in Absolutely Fabulous
This Creative Life
Saturday 13 June 3:15 pm Hampsfell Tent
Lancastrians Jane Horrocks and Christine Cort were born ten miles apart when Cartmel was part of Lancashire-over-the-Sands. From her moving portrayal of the bulimic Nicola in Mike Leigh’s Life is Sweet, to the nation’s dippiest personal assistant, Bubbles, in Absolutely Fabulous, Jane Horrocks has captured the sadness and silliness of life. Christine Cort was Time Out’s marketing dynamo in the glory days before going on to found the Manchester International Festival, an extraordinary gathering of creativity and optimism. Two daughters of the red rose county return to their roots, a little older, a little wiser, and with tales to tell.
Christopher de Bellaigue
Sebastian Faulks joins Christopher de Bellaigue at the Hampsfell Tent. ©Still Moving.
The Golden Throne
Sunday 14 June 11:30 am Hampsfell Tent
Istanbul, 1538. The greatest Ottoman sultan is at the pinnacle of power and at the mercy of dynastic law: whichever of his sons succeeds him must kill the others, so why not get a head start? So recounts Christopher de Bellaigue, pioneer of a bold new style of eye-witness history that puts you in the room with the swan-necked sultan, his scheming wife Roxelana, a leery Martin Luther and the Emperor Charles V (he patented the Habsburg chin). On stage with de Bellaigue is the novelist Sebastian Faulks. And no, Suleyman’s contemporary Henry VIII doesn’t get a look in. How can we break this gently? In the sixteenth-century contest for world supremacy, Henry didn’t matter.
Christopher Eccleston
Our Friends in the North - celebrating its 30th birthday
Sunday 14 June 4:45 pm Hampsfell Tent
"You want to change the world and you can’t even change your socks!" The thirtieth birthday party of one of the best TV series ever Were you among the Britons who went into hibernation every Monday evening in the spring of 1996? Millions - including the director of the Lake District Book Festival - were captivated by Our Friends in the North, a tale of four Tyneside kids who soared, got burnt and fell in and out of love in the seedy and politically explosive Britain of the late twentieth century. Peter Flannery created, Charlie Pattinson produced and Christopher Eccleston starred. Three decades on they reconvene to talk Soho porn barons, Geordie accents and that put-down. Simon Shaps, ITV’s former director of television, holds the remote.
Full programme can be seen at lakedistrictbookfestival.co.uk .
