Ruby Wax, Michael Morpurgo and Pussy Riot head to Falmouth

A Pussy Riot founder, the man who kept James Bond alive for a new generation, and one of the best-loved children’s authors in the country. All of them are booked for the same eight days in Falmouth this October.

The Falmouth Book Festival has revealed its 2026 programme, and it runs from Sunday 18 to Sunday 25 October with events at The Poly and Princess Pavilion. Ruby Wax, Michael Morpurgo, Maria Alyokhina of Pussy Riot, Charlie Higson, Luke Harding, Patrick Gale and Esther Freud are among the headline names.

The festival brings together internationally recognised writers, journalists, campaigners, poets and children’s authors for a week of books, ideas and conversation across the town.

📷Ruby Wax. Credit: David Wallis

Ruby Wax opens the festival

Ruby Wax, the writer, performer and mental health campaigner, gets things started at 1pm on Sunday 18 October at Princess Pavilion.

She brings I’m Not as Well as I Thought I Was, described as an unflinchingly honest and characteristically funny account of depression, recovery and keeping your sanity in a chaotic world.

📷Luke Harding

Luke Harding on a world shaped by force

Current affairs and international politics run strongly through the week. Luke Harding, the award-winning Guardian foreign correspondent and author, is at The Poly at 7pm on Monday 19 October.

His book Betrayal: Trump, Putin and the New Age of Conquest looks at a world increasingly shaped by force, fear and imperial ambition as the post-war international order fractures. He brings his experience of Russia, Ukraine and global politics with him.

📷Cathy Rentzenbrink

Agatha Christie, peace and a new James Bond

Cathy Rentzenbrink takes the stage at 7pm on Tuesday 20 October with The Agatha Christie Cure. The festival calls it a warm, witty mixture of memoir and literary investigation, exploring what the Queen of Crime can teach us about grief, resilience and the consoling power of reading.

On Wednesday 21 October, peace activist and environmental thinker Satish Kumar presents Peace Is Possible, a call for peace with each other and with the planet in the face of war, division and the climate emergency.

Then on Thursday 22 October it’s the turn of Charlie Higson. The novelist, actor, comedian and creator of the bestselling Young Bond series comes to Falmouth for an event on the enduring appeal and extraordinary afterlife of James Bond, alongside King Zero, a new Bond adventure asking what the spy means in a dangerous, rapidly changing world.

📷Esther Freud. Credit: Jillian Edelstein

Esther Freud and Patrick Gale on Friday night

Fiction comes from two of the country’s most distinguished novelists, both at The Poly at 7pm on Friday 23 October.

Esther Freud’s new novel, My Sister and Other Lovers, returns to the sisters of Hideous Kinky, drawing on family memory, childhood and the complicated stories we tell about our past.

Patrick Gale brings Love Lane, featuring Harry Cane, a character inspired by his great-grandfather. It explores homecoming, buried sexuality, memory and family secrets.

📷Natasha Carthew

Cornish lives and a naval radical

Saturday 24 October opens at 2pm with Natasha Carthew, the working-class Cornish writer whose memoir Undercurrent and book Rough Edges look at the lives lived beyond the postcard coastline, with a fierce honesty about poverty, place and belonging.

At 4pm the programme turns to the sea. Historian Peter Moore comes with A Dangerous Game, his new biography of Thomas Cochrane, the naval commander, political radical and adventurer who helped inspire Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey.

There’s a direct local link, too. Cochrane called at Falmouth aboard the Unicorn in 1826 on his way to the Mediterranean.

📷Maria Alyokhina

A Pussy Riot founder at The Poly

Saturday night belongs to Maria Alyokhina. The Russian artist, activist and writer, a founding member of Pussy Riot, has become an internationally recognised voice of protest and resistance.

Her 8pm event is built around Political Girl and mixes readings, music and conversation.

📷Luke Thompson

A final Sunday with Michael Morpurgo

The last day starts at noon with Luke Thompson and A Cornish Bestiary, a trip through Cornwall’s wonderfully weird history of beasts, both real and imagined.

At 2pm comes one of the biggest coups of the programme. Michael Morpurgo, one of Britain’s most successful authors, is at Princess Pavilion with his wife Clare to talk about Down Burrow Lane, the story of their marriage, family and fifty years farming in Devon, and of founding the charity Farms for City Children.

📷Emily Cunningham in Antarctica

The ocean, then poetry to finish

Emily Cunningham MBE is at The Poly at 4pm with Our Ocean to Save. The marine biologist and ocean conservationist has spent more than a decade fighting to protect the life beneath the surface, from Cornish waters to Antarctica and the Amazon. In a town like Falmouth, it’s a natural fit.

The festival then closes at 6pm with Joelle Taylor, one of the most acclaimed poets of her generation. Her collection C+nto & Othered Poems won the T.S. Eliot Prize, and her latest, Maryville, came out in 2025.

Children’s authors heading into schools

Children and young readers stay at the centre of the festival. A number of leading children’s writers and illustrators will take part in public events and work directly with pupils in local schools, including Gillian Burke, Rebecca Cobb, Tom Palmer and Clare Welsh.

Philip Marsden is also among the names appearing across the week.

Tickets

Tickets are available through the Falmouth Book Festival 2026 line-up page and from The Poly box office.

“A programme with real range”

Festival director Colin Midson said the aim each year is to bring genuinely exciting writers and speakers to Falmouth while keeping the programme connected to the town itself.

“This year we have major international names alongside brilliant novelists, journalists, poets and children’s writers, and we also have events that speak directly to Falmouth’s maritime character and its relationship with the sea,” he said.

“Having people such as Ruby Wax, Maria Alyokhina and Michael Morpurgo coming to Falmouth is incredibly exciting, and then you add Charlie Higson and James Bond, Luke Harding on international affairs, Patrick Gale and Esther Freud on fiction, Joelle Taylor on poetry, and Peter Moore and Emily Cunningham bringing us back to the sea. It feels like a programme with real range.”

📷Patrick Gale. Credit: Steve Tanner

📷Some of the writers and speakers heading to Falmouth Book Festival 2026