Last updated 13:53, Thursday, 08 January 2009

A BESTSELLING crime novelist, Val McDermid, and former cabinet minister Kenneth Baker will be among the guests at a Lake District festival later this month.

The Wordsworth Trust’s annual Arts and Book Festival, a three-day celebration of art and literature, will run from Friday January 23 to Sunday January 25, centred at the Wordsworth Hotel, Grasmere.

The arts and book weekend has been running for 20 years but this year’s festival is expected to bring in larger crowds due to its high-profile guests.

Trust director Michael McGregor said: “The festival is one of the ways we bring the arts to life for our audiences. This year’s programme is packed with events that explore different aspects of Romanticism and its legacy.”

The programme will include talks on some of the people who influenced Wordsworth, both personally and through their work, such as Burns, Milton and Walter Scott.

It will include a musical setting of poetry drawn from the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth and Lord Baker will speak about his new book on caricatures of George III.

For the finale, Val McDermid will read from and talk about her 2007 novel The Grave Tattoo which is set around the hunt for an unpublished Wordsworth poem.

Participants will be able to choose to attend single events, or go to daytime or evening sessions – including fine dining – or opt for the full residential experience at the Wordsworth Hotel.

A full programme and details of how to book are available from Andrew Forster on 015394 35544 or at www.wordsworth.org.uk