Jo Brand, Will Self, Alan Bennett, Stuart Maconie, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Melvyn Bragg and Joan Bakewell are among the names appearing at the Ilkley Literature Festival.

Ilkley will be buzzing with authors, poets, broadcasters and performers, with festival events spanning various venues across town.

With 190 events planned, the festival brings writers from around the country to talk about such topics as guerrilla gardening, historical biography, romantic fiction and contemporary poetry.

Kicking off is Ilkley’s Alan Titchmarsh, telling all from his memoirs, swiftly followed by Alan Bennett who will read from his family memoir, A Life Like Other People’s.

Novelist David Peace returns to Yorkshire with his new novel, Occupied City, set in post-Second World War Japan, and Keighley’s Simon Beaufoy, Oscar-winning screenwriter of Slumdog Millionaire, will be making an appearance.

Olympic rower James Cracknell, comic Jo Brand, and writer/broadcasters Stuart Maconie and Joan Bakewell discuss more factual matters with their accounts of trips taken and lives lived.

To coincide with the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth – and 150 years to the day since he visited Ilkley in October, 1859 – the festival will include leading science writers Lewis Wolpert, Christopher Lloyd and Jim Moore. There will also be Darwin reading groups and workshops.

Writers Val McDermid, Sophie Hannah, Peter Robinson, Al Kennedy, Salley Vickers and Jeremy Dyson will discuss their recent novels, and Yasmin AlibhaiBrown, James Martin and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall discuss food writing.

Journalists have a presence at this year’s festival, with Michael Frayn bringing a collection of articles he wrote for the Observer in the Sixties and Seventies in Travels With A Typewriter, David Aaronovitch and Francis Wheen debating conspiracy theories and mass paranoia, and Observer columnist Henry Porter reading from his new political thriller, The Dying Light.

Will Self and Melvyn Bragg both return to Ilkley with collections from their Independent columns and Radio 4 programmes and the Guardian’s Northern editor, Martin Wainwright, finds his True North. Lawyer Michael Mansfield QC, whose cases included the Bloody Sunday Inquiry and the inquest into Princess Diana’s death, will be talking about his work, and BBC journalist Frank Gardner, who was left paralysed from the waist down when he was shot by apparent al Qaida sympathisers in Saudi Arabia, reflects on inspiring journeys around the world.

Labour MP Austin Mitchell and novelist Margaret Drabble are also appearing, as is Australian-born British poet Peter Porter who will run a masterclass in poetry, and award-winning actress Harriet Walter returning for a special Shakespeare evening.

Historical novelist Tracy Chevalier, writer of Girl With The Pearl Earring, will also be at the festival.

* Ilkley Literature Festival runs from October 2 to 18. To book tickets or for more details, visit the website at ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk or ring (01943) 816 714.