Salman Rushdie, Jung Chang, Richard E. Grant and Emily Maitlis were among the speakers at the Cliveden Literary Festival, held in the house above the Thames in October 2025.
The Cliveden Literary Festival, founded in 2017, held its 2025 edition at Cliveden House in Taplow, Berkshire, on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 October 2025.
A mansion has stood at Cliveden since 1666, when the Duke of Buckingham turned two hunting lodges into a house above 400 acres of garden sloping to the Thames. Alexander Pope wrote about it.
Its four founders, all writers and historians, are Andrew Roberts, Natalie Livingstone, Catherine Ostler and Simon Sebag Montefiore. Two parallel strands of sessions ran each day, and the committee chaired several of them.
On Saturday, Roberts chaired Michael Gove and Sarah Vine on the perils of a marriage in politics. Salman Rushdie joined Jonathan Bate and Marina Warner on literacy in the digital age, and Emily Maitlis chaired a Question Time with Wes Streeting. Jung Chang, Tina Brown, Niall Ferguson and Alain de Botton also spoke.
Sunday brought Rushdie again with Rachel Eliza Griffiths, then William Boyd, Elif Shafak, Ian Rankin and Richard E. Grant. The programme marked 250 years of Jane Austen with a reading by Lucy Boynton. Robert Hardman chaired the last session, The Favourite, on how to rise in a royal court.