Excitement is mounting with Bridport Literary Festival firing up on all cylinders this Sunday.

Expect a packed week full of literary gems, inspiring speakers and searching questions.

This year, we’ve even got a film. Jonathan Coe will be talking about his novel, the brilliant Mr Wilder and Me, before he and the audience settles down to watch Billy Wilder’s Avanti at the Electric Palace on Friday 12 November.

BridLit kicks off at the Palace at 10.30am on Sunday with Tim Bouverie giving an illustrated talk, with music, about his book, Perfect Pitch.

Nearly all of us have the capacity to enjoy classical music but too often we’re put off and need a guide to help us navigate this artistic terrain.  Bouverie draws on his lifelong passion for music and has selected 100 favourite classical pieces from which he will introduce an eclectic selection – audibly – to inspire and comfort. Some are well known, some are idiosyncratic, others just secret gems that need to be brought out into the light.

Other highlights of the week for which you can still get tickets include Patrick Barkham in the Bull Hotel Ballroom on Wednesday 10 November at 4.30 pm, talking about Wild Child. Part memoir, part polemic, Barkham argues for greater access to nature for all children. It’s an inspiration for all parents, grandparents and teachers.

In our new writer slot at BridLit, Natasha Brown’s novel Assembly, follows a black British woman as she prepares to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend’s family estate, set deep in the English countryside.  At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself.

The novel was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Books Are My Bag Fiction Award. She’ll be in conversation with Max Porter in the Bull Ballroom on Tuesday 9 November at 6pm.

Award winning nature writer James Rebanks brings the festival to a close on Saturday 13 November at the Electric Palace at 7pm.

The winner of this year’s Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing for his masterpiece English Pastoral, Rebanks tells of how rural landscapes around the world were brought close to collapse, and the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community and wild things were lost. Yet his elegy from the northern fells of Cumbria is also a song of hope; of how, guided by the past, one farmer began to salvage his tiny corner of England.

For details of all BridLit events, visit the bridlit.com website.