Julian Barnes, Robert Harris, Michael Connelly and Kemi Badenoch are among the speakers at the Cliveden Literary Festival, in the house above the Thames on 10 and 11 October 2026.
Above the Thames each October, novelists, historians and politicians gather for a weekend built on argument, at Cliveden House on Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 October 2026.
The Duke of Buckingham bought Cliveden in 1666 and turned two hunting lodges into a house above four hundred acres running down to the Thames. Alexander Pope wrote about it and Jonathan Swift stayed in it, and the centuries after made it a salon and the setting for political scandal. A committee of working writers and historians founded a festival there in 2017: Andrew Roberts is president, Natalie Livingstone chairman, Catherine Ostler and Simon Sebag Montefiore vice-chairmen.
The programme puts novelists, historians and politicians in the same rooms and expects them to argue, unlike festivals organised around a publication schedule. Salman Rushdie talked through his career with Ian McEwan on the 2024 bill, and Alex Younger, lately chief of MI6, discussed threats facing the West with Niall Ferguson. Sessions run inside the house and its grounds, where the audience and the speakers share a lawn.
Julian Barnes and Robert Harris are on the bill, so are the American novelists Michael Connelly and Jay McInerney, and Tom Holland and Deborah Lipstadt carry the history; the politics runs through Kemi Badenoch, Michael Gove and Wes Streeting. Roberts and Sebag Montefiore appear across both days, as they have since the year they helped found it.