THE Wordsworth Trust’s Arts and Book Festival weekend features a cornucopia of workshops, talks, entertainment and readings.

Coming up on January 25-27 at the luxurious Wordsworth Hotel in Grasmere, on the Friday afternoon scholar, lecturer and author Nicholas Roe, will be talking about his radical new book John Keats, A New Life. The book is a fascinating reassessment of Keats’s life from his childhood in London, his circle of brilliant friends and his passion for Fanny Brawne, to his eventual early death from tuberculosis. On the Saturday morning, adventurer and MP for Penrith and The Border, Rory Stewart, chats about travel literature, discussing his book, The Places In Between, his account of his 6,000 mile walk across Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal in the winter of 2001 that led him to form a new charity.

And acclaimed biographer Jenny Uglow discusses her new book The Pinecone: The Story of Sarah Losh, on the Saturday afternoon, bringing to life the story of the Romantic genius behind Wreay Church, near Carlisle.

Meanwhile, Friday night’s Poetry Show borrows the tricks of the theatre to heighten the performances of four talented and inventive poets - John McCullough, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Liane Strauss and Richard O’Brien.

Festival brochures are available on 015394 35544 or by emailing enquiries@wordsworth.org.uk.