AN exciting array of celebrity guests lies in store for visitors to this year’s Wantage Not Just Betjeman Festival.

Highlights of the third annual event are set to include a visit from former Government minister Michael Portillo, a Jane Austen-style afternoon tea and a poetry speaking competition for children and young people.

Tickets for the festival taking place from Saturday to Sunday, October 19 to 27, have just gone on sale, with many of the events expected to sell out quickly.

Festival artistic director Jim Mitchell said: “After the fantastic success of last year’s programme, we’re delighted to be back with an exciting line-up of celebrities and authors including Michael Portillo, Alison Weir, Frances Osborne and John Lloyd.

“The festival will feature literary talks from national and local writers, music and theatrical events, poetry, an afternoon tea with a Jane Austen theme and lectures on a wide range of subjects, including Sir John Betjeman who lived in Wantage for many years.”

The festival’s array of literary, music and theatrical events at venues in and around the town this autumn will include a performance of composer William Walton’s Facade with former BBC newsreader Richard Baker and a visit from author Frances Osborne, wife of Chancellor George Osborne, for Literary Lunch Sunday.

Other guests will include writer, presenter and radio and TV producer John Lloyd, who lives near Wantage and has worked on a host of top shows including Not The Nine O’Clock News, Spitting Image, Blackadder and QI. He has co-authored and edited more than 20 books, the latest of which is Afterliff.

A former headmaster and founder member of the Ledbury Poetry Festival, writer Richard Surman will be giving a talk on Betjeman’s Churches and for fans of crime writing there will be a visit from Peter Tickler, a member of the Crime Writers’ Association, whose crime novels are set in and around Oxford.

Since leaving politics, Mr Portillo has devoted himself to writing and broadcasting, becoming a regular on both BBC1’s sardonic political This Week programme and Radio 4’s The Moral Maze.

He has made radio and television documentaries on a wide range of subjects, including Great British Railway Journeys and Great Continental Railway Journeys for BBC2. In 2008, he chaired the judges of the Man Booker prize, and chaired the Art Fund prize for museums and galleries in 2011. Mrs Osborne is a best-selling author of three books: two biographies and a novel.

Her biography of Idina Sackville, The Bolter, was San Francisco Chronicle’s Book of the Year and a number 1 UK best seller. Lilla’s Feast, the story of her great grandmother, has been translated into six languages and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice.

Her first novel, Park Lane, is set in a London mansion in 1916 and was published in June this year. It is already a Bookseller’s Choice. More information about this year’s festival is available at: www.wantagebetjeman.com where tickets can also be bought online. They are also available at the Vale and Downland Museum in Church Street or by calling Mr Mitchell on 01235 767975.