Gill Oliver welcomes the bustling hub of eating, drinking and literary pleasure that is Blackwell’s festival Marquee

At the heart of this year’s Oxford Literary Festival will be a bustling hub where bookworms can chat, eat, drink and have fun.

Based in the Clarendon Quad, next to the Sheldonian, the Blackwell’s Festival Marquee will include a book store, pop-up restaurant and a slew of events, entertainment and author signings.

The restaurant will be run by Jacobs & Field and be a mini-version of the firm’s popular Headington deli, with what co-owner Johnny Pugsley describes as a “British vintage nostalgic feel”.

Jacobs & Field is also known for its Jacob’s Inn pub in Wolvercote and its newly opened Jacobs Chop House in Headington, and the marquee menu will pick-and-mix the best dishes from all three menus.

A wide range of food and drink will be served all day and evening, including coffee, breakfasts, ice-cream, deli boards to share, sandwiches, home-made pork pies, local ales, wine and plenty of fizz.

Zool Verjee, deputy manager of Blackwell’s, pointed out: “We want to get the message across that you don’t have to be a ticket holder to come in to the festival marquee. Because it’s right next to this famous, historical building, people might think they need one but they don’t.

“There will be lots of bijou events that are absolutely free, so come on in, browse and enjoy.” Blackwell’s marquee book stall will stock the full range of all the festival authors who are appearing at the festival.

Zool added: “The festival covers a lot of venues, including Christchurch, Corpus Christi, the Sheldonian, Oxford Martin School, Trinity and the Divinity School, so the marquee will be a one-stop shop where visitors can find any book by any festival author and books will be grouped together by events to make them easier to find.” The festival box office will be just inside the door of the tent, so it will also be possible to buy tickets there for any event.

This year, the Oxford Literary Festival has partnered with the Kolkata Literary Meet, so there will also be a number of events themed around Indian culture.

The marquee, which measures 30m by 12m, has an activity area which will include book signings by many festival authors including Michael Morpurgo, Malorie Blackman, AC Grayling and Jeremy Paxman. Dressed in his trademark multi-coloured coat with a multitude of deep pockets, former journalist, author and history buff Christopher Lloyd will be rolling up to the marquee with his giant What on Earth? wall book to give an entertaining introduction to all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays. Stories and emotions will be acted out and explained using the illustrated wall book, published in collaboration with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust plus a host of wacky props.

The free, hour-long talks are aimed at audiences from ages six to adult and take place at 11am and again at 4pm on Thursday March 27, at 2pm on Friday March 28 and at 11am and 4pm on Saturday March 29.

The Bookshop Band tours bookshops, schools, libraries and festivals around the country, writing and performing songs based on favourite books. The three-piece ensemble, founded almost four years ago, describes its style as acoustic with a touch of contemporary folk and it often belts-out songs while the author is in the same room.

Members are Poppy Pitt on vocals, guitar and harmonium, Beth Porter who looks after vocals, cello and ukulele and Ben Please with vocals, guitar and kalimba.

The three met at a music festival where they were all playing with different bands.

They’ve been featured on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, BBC Radio 5 and 6 and have worked with more than 40 authors including Ian Rankin, Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel and Kate Mosse.

So far, they’ve notched up 60 bookshop and 15 literary festival appearances plus a stint at Glastonbury.

The band will perform three, one-hour events in the evenings of Sunday 23, Monday 24 and Tuesday 25 March from 6.30pm-8pm. They will be free, thanks to sponsorship by Oxford University Press, which is supporting the Bookshop Band through its Oxford World’s Classics imprint.

And in the lead-up to each gig, marquee visitors will be asked to choose which book they would like The Bookshop Band to write a song about, whether that’s Moby Dick, Paradise Lost or any other in the World’s Classics series.

Anyone can vote throughout the festival and the winning title will be announced at the end.

Oxford University Press is also bringing its Very Short Introductions Soap Box Talks back to educate and entertain audiences in the marquee. Experts will give 15-minute introductions to their particular subject, leaving plenty of chance for the audience to interact and participate. Speakers include historian Professor Richard Toye, who will explain why rhetoric is one of the foundations of society, while other subjects covered range from Ancient Greece to the Ice Age.

The VSI events are free and take place up to twice a day, see festival or Blackwell’s blog broadconversation.com.

This year, visitors will also get to hear Blackwell’s booksellers talking about the book they most love and why, so expect passions to run high.

Opening times of the festival marquee will reflect festival timings, visit oxfordliteraryfestival.org for more details.