No sooner have the sounds of the Marlborough Jazz Festival died away than the details of the town’s first literary festival have emerged.

It will take place from September 24 to 26, sponsored by ALCS, the organisation that protects authors’ rights, and locally based investment brokers Brewin Dolphin.

Best-selling novelist Mavis Cheek, who lives in Aldbourne and is helping to organise the festival, said there will be a host of activities spread over the weekend with at least 16 authors taking part at venues including the town hall, Merchant’s House, Marlborough Library, the Ellis Theatre at Marlborough College and the Theatre on The Hill at St John’s School.

The town hall will be used as an informal café during the festival where poets will read their own work.

Ms Cheek said Marlborough was an appropriate setting for the literary festival because of its past connection with some of Britain’s most famous writers, especially for former Poet Laureate John Betjeman and the war poet Siegfried Sassoon who both attended Marlborough College in the early 1900s and wrote of their love for the town.

Authors taking part in the festival will include Margaret Drabble, Cressida Cowell, Anne Chisholm, Lynn Barber and Rachel Polonsky.

Children’s writer Josh Mowll will discuss the dos and don’ts of writing for children.

There will be a fun activity for children called How to be Pirate at the library on September 25, at 2.30pm, when children are asked to go along dressed as pirates.

Ms Cheek said the Marlborough LitFest would be more about writing than the writers themselves. “One of the most important aspects of this festival is that it puts fine writing at its heart.

“So many festivals have become more about celebrities and their books than about literature that it felt right to redress that imbalance.”