I am just back from my first ever visit to the Cheltenham Literature Festival where I had the best time.  The whole festival village was amazing and there were three separate festival bookshops – one of them dedicated to children’s books.  I was in heaven.

I was there for a long weekend and in that time managed to fit in ten events.  It was wonderful to find so many fascinating talks – Sarah Dunant’s on the Borgias was especially interesting (and entertaining, as all the best talks should be).

My favourite events were on the Saturday afternoon.  Two talks about children’s books which were brilliant and after which I got to meet Anna James – author of Tilly and the Book Wanderers – and Jessica Townsend – author of Nevermoor.  They were both lovely people (and their books are wonderful too – go and read them!).

To round off the evening we went along to the lit crawl to take part in the quiz.  It had a classics theme which I obviously loved and we managed to come third which made me very proud, especially as we were the smallest team there.  We received some fabulous prizes too, including two books – Frankenstein and La Belle Sauvage – and four tickets to festival events.  I practically danced my way back to the hotel!

One of the best things about any festival is the amount of reading time.  There were plenty of lovely places to sit and my favourite was the Book Stand – a cosy sitting room set up on the band stand.  I spent some very happy hours there with my book and a cup of tea.

It was a brilliant weekend and I would definitely love to visit again.