A LITERARY festival that was lost during Covid returned with great success over the weekend. 

The renewed event, Words by the Water, which started 23 years ago as a small gathering in Keswick, was warmly welcomed as it returned with a special focus on Cumbrian writers.

This year, at the Theatre by the Lake, the festival saw applauded writers grace its stage, including Daisy Dunn, Robin Ince, Kathryn Hughes, M.W Craven and Helen Rebanks.

A crowd-pleaser was a session led by Kerry Irving, and his beloved dogs Harry, Paddy and Tally.

Kerry's event was clearly the highlight of the festival and attracted the longest signing queue of the week.

Among other marquee events, honorary Cumbrian Stuart Maconie also presented a witty as well as insightful talk regarding his book inspired by JB Priestley titled The Full English.

Bookends director and co-organiser of the event, Lucy Matthews, said "It was a lovely busy week celebrating writing, ideas and books and it was wonderful to have a stronger focus on Cumbrian writers and books of Cumbrian interest this year.

"Other highlights included MW Craven chatting with Helen Millican about the latest Poe thriller The Mercy Chair, Polly Toynbee taking time out of a busy pre-election schedule to talk about class in Britain and entertaining talks on dialect and Shakespeare from David and Ben Crystal," she said.

Emphasising on the festival's adaptive nature, Lucy explained that this year's event offered more to the writing community by welcoming writer-hosted workshops by Marie-Elsa Bragg (festival co-president), Kathleen Jones and Katie Hale.

"We had a short space of time in which to plan and promote Words by the Water 2024 and we were really delighted by the response of the audience and the writers this year. Everyone seemed so happy to see the return of the festival!

"We hope we can build on the success of this year and return to the theatre in 2025 with an equally interesting programme and build the audience and reach of the festival further," she said.