Video: Authors and book lovers gather at start of Independent Bath Literature Festival

Authors and book lovers have begun to gather at the start of the Bath Literature Festival, sponsored by The Independent.

The Literature festival has established itself as one of the most respected literary events in the country since its creation in 1995. It is now a firm fixture in the country's literary calendar.

In its seventeen year history the festival has hosted a range of authors including a number of Nobel and Booker Prize winners - for example, Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hilary Mantel and Howard Jacobson; political thinkers from Tony Benn and Tariq Ali to Anna Politkovskaya and Eric Hobsbawm, poets ranging from poets laureate Andrew Motion and Carol Ann Duffy to Wendy Cope and Simon Armitage, and humorists from Garrison Keillor and Terry Pratchett to Steve Bell.

This year is expected to be the biggest ever, and the line-up features Hisham Matar, Ian Kershaw, The Golden Age of Arabic Science, Stella Rimington, Giles Gilbert Scott, Sacred Hearts, Claire Tomalin on Dickens, Alain de Bottom: Religion for Atheists, Tony Parsons and Nadine Gordimer.