AMONG the highlights of this year’s Cheltenham Festival of Literature, which runs from October 10-19, is a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Man Booker Prize for which a host of Booker winners will premiere new work on BBC Radio 4.

John Banville, Penelope Lively, Ben Okri, DBC Pierre and Graham Swift will be taking up the challenge.

Kate Adie and Ian Rankin are guest festival directors, the former programming events for the opening weekend, the latter taking to the helm for the second festival weekend.

Kate Adie’s theme for her weekend is political correctness and she will be talking to Clarissa Dickson Wright, known from Two Fat Ladies as one who has little time for political correctness, and to Edward Stourton, author of It’s a PC World, about how language has become a minefield.

Ian Rankin, meanwhile, will be looking back to 1968 for his weekend in charge: “Some of my favourite authors, performers, thinkers and doers look back to notions of censorship, sex and the taboo,” he said.

At the heart of this year’s Cheltenham Literature Festival is an exploration of family, with Richard Madely joining Frank Furedi to take an honest look at the changing role of the father, while novelists Linda Grant, Sadie Jones (author of this month’s Hereford Times Book Group choice, see page 45), Isabel Fonseca and Fay Weldon explore the complex depiction of families in literature and celebrate their richness as a source of inspiration for fiction.

In addition to all the award-winning writers and world-renowned thinkers providing food for thought for the adults, the festival also presents Book It! – the festival for families and young readers, featuring plenty of favourites, from The Gruffalo to Captain Pugwash.

For full festival details and to book, visit cheltenhamfestivals.com l Meanwhile, the previous weekend marks the start of the renowned annual Autumn in Malvern Festival, which this year opens with a concert in Malvern College Great Hall by the European Union Chamber Orchestra. Featuring work by Haydn, Bach, Schubert and Mozart, the concert starts at 8pm.

The month-long programme of artistic events embraces literature, music and art, and this year includes an afternoon with the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, at Ledbury’s Market Theatre, a literary walk around John Masefield’s childhood haunts, and Diana McVeagh on Thomas Hardy and English music.

Throughout the festival an exhibition of the Hereford paintings of Colin Simmonds can be seen at Malvern Library Gallery. Working in oils and pastels, Colin, who lives and works in Stoke Lacy, deploys his unique understanding of atmosphere and colour to interpret the landscape of north Herefordshire.

He has exhibited his work both nationally and internationally throughout a career spanning 40 years. For full details of the Autumn in Malvern Festival 2008, visit malvernfestival.co.uk