Across ten extraordinary autumnal days, The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival welcomed the world's greatest writers and thinkers for an international celebration of the written word in all its glorious variety.

The FutureBook award-winning Festival returned from Friday 8 - Sunday 17 October with a vibrant showcase of unique literary experiences - including a record number of 600 events - that connected in-person and virtual audiences with world-leading names and breakthrough voices across the globe.

The Festival launched its major new three-year-theme 'Read The World' with live events, a curated series in partnership with a global network of book festivals featuring Helen Garner, Colson Whitehead, Isabel Allende, Wole Soyinka and Olga Tokarczuk, film screenings, and free drop-in activities providing a passport to a world of ideas.

Harnessing digital technology as part of a drive to create a world in which everyone can explore culture, the Cheltenham Festivals' YouTube channel broadcast 'Today at Cheltenham' daily highlights, with thousands of viewers tuning in for a taster of the programme. Recordings of over 140 events - including Bernardine Evaristo, Ed Milliband and Josh Widdicombe - are now available on demand until 31 December 2021 via the #CheltLitFest Player.

Nicola Tuxworth, head of programming for Cheltenham Literature Festival, said: "The joy on the faces of our festival-goers was wonderful to see as we welcomed them back on site for a gloriously varied programme with more on offer than ever before.

"We hope we've opened the doors to a world in which everyone can explore and create culture. Thank you to our speakers, chairs and publishers, to our members, patrons, funders and partners for their invaluable support, and to our festival team - their creativity, tenacity and vision is limitless. But, above all, thank you to the literary lovers that have joined us in Cheltenham and around the world to enjoy this year's amazing line-up."

Festival Highlights

Olivier award-winning actor Giles Terera presented a fascinating twist on the annual Shakespeare Lecture commissioned by the festival, dazzling the audience with the surprising and enlightening parallels he discovered between the worlds of Shakespeare and rap via the smash-hit musical Hamilton.

The festival's visually striking new venue and programme VOICEBOX explored today's hottest and most important issues. The young festival audience soaked up the atmosphere in a vibrant series of free events, group artworks, stand-up comedy and DJ sets, open mic, drag queen bingo and everything in between, featuring the likes of Raymond Antrobus, Evanna Lynch, Raise the Bar and Dr Alex George alongside the best local talent.

Montpellier Gardens' Festival Village offered more than ever before, including a packed programme of free events for families with The Den, Story Shack and The Wild Wood inspiring a love of reading in children with stories and craft galore. New drop-in Costa Space hosted a variety of famous festival faces - including Graeme Macrae Burnet, Nikesh Shukla and Gwendoline Riley - to share readings and their recent favourite books, plus a 'Cheltenham Writes!' series showcasing local talent.

This year's super-charged family programme invited children and young adults on an unforgettable literary adventure with a bumper non-fiction offering, including special events from guest curators The Week Junior.

Over 7,600 schoolchildren met their literary heroes as Cheltenham Festival's year-round education outreach culminated in Montpellier Gardens for the Literature for Schools programme, following a month of early webinar workshops that brought the storytellers direct to classrooms. Leading authors, illustrators and literacy experts including Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Jake Hope, Onjali Q Rauf and Dr Alison Waller appeared at the inaugural Reading Teachers = Reading Pupils Conference, supporting teachers in bringing books to life in their classroom and invigorating a reading for pleasure culture. A teacher commented: "For all our children it was their first trip in such a long time and for some it was their first trip ever. All loved the experience and hearing them so excited and wanting to talk about books has been so wonderful."

Literary excellence was celebrated with a raft of prize announcements taking place at the festival. In a sold-out Poetry Show, Michael Rosen was revealed as the winner of the CLiPPA 2021 - recognising outstanding poetry published for children - for his anthology On the Move, Poems About Migration. This year's Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence went to the phenomenally successful Italian novelist and one of the most widely read writers in translation Elena Ferrante, and Sarah Winmans' bestselling novel Still Life was presented the inaugural InWords Literary Award, worth £10,000, created by anonymous Life Patrons of Cheltenham Festivals. The six-strong shortlist for the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction was shared by Chair of judges, Andrew Holgate, Literary Editor of The Sunday Times, and the festival welcomed the 2020 T.S. Eliot Prize winning poet Bhanu Kapil and current Chair of Judges Glyn Maxwell at an event to exclusively reveal the shortlisted poets for this year's prize.

Stats from the Festival

Over 95,000 tickets issued

600 events featuring around 1,000 speakers

Over 40,000 people attended events across the vibrant Festival site on Montpellier Gardens and ...around town

Social media reach of 9.5 million

Media reach of 123 million

7,000 drinks served in the Writers' Room by Costa