TICKETS are going fast for this Saturday’s Alresford Literary Festival.

Alresford’s Historical and Literary Society is organising the festival on June 4 to celebrate its golden anniversary following its founding in 1966.

To take place at Perins School, the all-day event has a prestigious line-up which includes three leading authors. John Julius Norwich, with his new book on Sicily; Robert Hardy (a great actor and an expert on archery); and Edna O’Brien will talk about themselves and their writings in conversation with John Miller.

Book signings will be held at the end of each session.

Mr Hardy opens the festival in the morning, talking about his long career on stage and screen, and his popular books on the history of the Longbow, which was such a powerful weapon on the battlefield in the hands of the English archers.

It was his first visit to Sicily that inspired Mr Norwich to give up his career in the Foreign Office to become a full-time author, and he will be giving an illustrated talk on his latest book tracing the long and troubled history of that island at the crossroads of so many invasions down the centuries.

Edna O’Brien’s new novel, The Little Red Chairs, has been acclaimed as “her masterpiece” in this country and in the US, and unsurprisingly she has been swamped with requests for appearances in both countries to discuss it. She has been turning them all down, but has generously agreed to make an exception for the Alresford Festival, which she will be gracing in the afternoon.

For the closing event the festival compere will be joined by actress Dolores Willis in his comic recital Great Eccentrics, which includes such diverse figures as writers Tennyson, Noel Coward, Evelyn Waugh and Ogden Nash, actors Ralph Richardson, Richard Burton and Hermione Gingold, and national leaders Gladstone, Churchill and Wellington.

The programme offers a unique and richly fulfilling day for all devotees of history and literature.

Single tickets for each event are priced £10, with all-day tickets £25. They are available from Six West, West Street, or Vic Prior, Orchard House, Arlebury Park Barns, Alresford.