POLITICAL heavyweights Vince Cable, Lord David Owen and former Bank of England governor Mervyn King are three of the big hitters batting for this year’s Hexham Book Festival.

The festival founded by Susie Troup, who first dipped her toe in the water with a one-day event nine years ago, this year boasts a bumper fortnight of literature, laughs, poetry and polemics.

While the headline names include Captain Corelli’s Mandolin author Louis de Bernieres, one time Communards instrumentalist and presenter of Radio 4’s Saturday Live , the Rev. Richard Coles, the high priest of literature, Melvyn Bragg, and rising comedic star Susan Calman, it is some of the more off-beat speakers who make Susie’s own personal shortlist.

One of them is Wilko Johnson, founder of Dr Feelgood, one of Ian Dury’s Blockheads and the executioner in Game of Thrones .

“He’s a really interesting, cool guy of my generation,” said Susie, “so I’m pleased to have him coming.

“He did a farewell tour not so long ago because he had cancer and he was given a definitive ‘you are going to die’ diagnosis, but a fan who also happened to be an oncologist told him after a concert ‘I don’t think you have what they have told you you have’.”

The welcome result is Wilko continues to live life to the full and has written a book – Don’t Leave Me Here – that is the story of his life and the best comeback since Lazarus.

Comedienne Helen Lederer is also on the list (“I saw her in Edinburgh recently and thought she was really funny”), along with renowned garden designer Arne Maynard and authors Melissa Harrison, Max Porter and Marina Lewycka.

And the other coup, after Wilko, Susie is delighted with? Landing an edition of the Radio 4 Book Club with James Naughtie . It would give folk a chance to take part in one of radio’s most popular arts programmes, she said.

Tickets for this year’s Hexham Book Festival, which runs from April 22 till May 4, are available from the Queen’s Hall box office.