Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's latest novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, has won acclaim around the globe and is currently favourite to win this year's Orange prize for fiction. She explains why she believes it was the book she was meant to write. Although set in the war-torn Nigeria of the 1960s, the novel is as much a love story and a domestic drama, she says.
Doris Lessing's latest work, The Cleft, imagines a society populated only with women until the birth of a male baby shatters their idyllic world. She tells Xan Brooks where the idea came from and why she can't stop writing.
And with generations of children and adults alike still under his spell, Quentin Blake talks about his instantly recognisable illustrations. He helped bring Roald Dahl's weird and wonderful creations to life and has written and drawn his own works for children. He tells Nell Boase what it was like to work with Dahl, and his plans for a museum of illustration.
Throughout the talk you can hear him scribbling furiously - the result: his drawing of a podcast in action.
Plus we hear from some of the children involved in the festival's fringe events.
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