Surrender to the power of words in a Cornish castle

Hay, Dartington and Cheltenham all have one. Now Falmouth is the latest town to host a literary festival. Tim Heald finds it's as good an excuse as any to visit this charming port

Falmouth's most plausible literary connection is its oldest. The town is supposed to have been founded in Elizabethan times at the suggestion of Sir Walter Raleigh, that roguish sea-canine adventurer some of whose claims to fame may have been dubious but who wrote one of the greatest of all poetic intimations of mortality.

"Even such is Time, which takes in trust

Our youth, our joys, and all we have,

And pays us but with age and dust;

Who in the dark and silent grave,

When we have wandered all our ways,

Shuts up the story of our days:

And from which earth, and grave, and dust,

The Lord shall raise me up, I trust."

Raleigh first saw the town on returning from a trip to Guyana and found it consisted of a single house and the mansion of the Killigrews called Arwennack. Much of this is still standing opposite a hideous 18th-century obelisk dedicated to Sir Peter Killigrew, not far from the magnificent new multi-million-pound National Maritime Museum Cornwall.

The Killigrews dominated the town for centuries and developed it to such an extent that it became, in 1688, headquarters of Royal Mail Packets, and one of the most important ports in Britain. It remained so until the Mail Packet trade went to Southampton in 1852 when it went into a prolonged period of relative decline.

From a literary point of view no one in Falmouth's history quite lived up to Raleigh. The most famous Falmouth writer since Sir Walter was probably Howard Spring who lived at the White Cottage and set several novels in the town and its surroundings. John Betjeman, who knew a thing or two about Cornwall, said, "More than any town in Britain it resembles Sydney, Australia, with its sudden flashes of water seen through tropic trees."

From a literary point of view, however, Falmouth remained a bit of a backwater, eclipsed by its eastern neighbour, Fowey, which claimed an impressive double whammy with Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch ("Q") and Daphne du Maurier and which for some years has staged an impressive literary festival in a tented village near the hotel which is supposed to have served as the model for Toad Hall in Wind in the Willows. (Kenneth Grahame was married in Fowey church and Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, author of The Prisoner of Zenda, was his best man.)

Now, however, Falmouth is staging a literary comeback. Not only has the Falmouth Bookseller won last year's award, jointly with Foyle's, as best independent bookshop in Britain but also on 12 October the town is putting on its first literary festival in the grounds of Henry VIII's Pendennis Castle overlooking the famous anchorages of the Carrick Roads. George Alagiah, Kate Adie, Beryl Bainbridge, Melvyn Bragg, Louis de Bernières ... and that's only the first two letters of the alphabet. (In fairness the remaining 24 letters aren't quite as strongly represented but even so.)

The event is the brainchild of 32-year-old Kirsten Whiting, who was born in Falmouth and grew up reading her favourite books in the grounds of Pendennis Castle fantasising about what it would be like to have the authors reading them out loud for her benefit. She moved to London 13 years ago, worked in TV, became PA to Michael Palin and is now a headhunter. Her dream was encouraged by the example of Palin's literary festival appearances and, "pulled together with my co-organiser, Andy Bruton, over a bottle of wine and a list scribbled on a napkin". On 12 September it will become a reality.

Since moving to Cornwall in the mid-1990s I have got to know Falmouth a little. I have spoken to writing classes at the excellent art college which is to form part of the basis of a new University of Cornwall; I have been to one-act plays at the theatre in the arts centre; and have been entertained by an exhibition devoted to Eagle magazine in the Art Gallery which contains a famous study of the Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse as well as the expected Munnings and Laura Wright.

Checking the town's continuing renaissance I took the train the other day (change to the branch line at Truro and be prepared for a virtually signless exit at Falmouth Town) and walked five minutes to the still not quite complete Events Square and arcades outside the striking wooden-clad Maritime Museum. I paused for a very good coffee at Café Ice, run by Roskilly's Farm on the Roseland Peninsula. The Museum was staging an exhibition by Sir Terry Frost, the Grand Old Man of Cornish Art who died just last week, which is worth a detour in itself, but the museum was even more stunning than I had been led to expect. I'm not a sailor nor even a particular devotee of things maritime but the museum was not only a mine of esoteric information, it was also aesthetically beautiful in almost every respect - a gallimaufry of boats and bits of boats displayed with extraordinary verve. Don't go to the Festival of Literature without allowing yourself a few hours in the museum.

Afterwards, my wife and I wandered through the town and along a picturesque stretch of coastal path to the Three Mackerels, a seaside restaurant which reminded both of us irresistibly of one of our favourite restaurants, the Star of Greece overlooking the sea south of Adelaide. Same friendly service, flapping canvas over wide decking outside overlooking a gurly sea, same fresh fish, well-chilled wines and local art work.

And so back to the main street and a browse through the seductively jumbly bookshop already full of the works of Bragg and his fellow writers. To be honest there is still a slightly downmarket air to some of central Falmouth and the fine colonnaded Custom House was boarded up with lugubrious notices pinned to the front door.

Nevertheless, you feel that the port, like so much of Cornwall, is on her way back. What's more, hers is not the only literary festival in the county being staged that week. A few miles away on the north coast, St Ives, home of the Cornish Tate, is putting on a rival show. At lunchtime on Thursday 11 September I will be speaking in the St Ives Bistro. Roll up, roll up!

Festive Falmouth

The Falmouth Festival of Literature and Arts takes place from 12 to 14 September. Tickets are available at the Hall for Cornwall Box Office, Back Quay, Truro (01872 262466; www.falmouthfestival.co.uk).

Pendennis Castle (01326 316594; www.english-heritage.org.uk).

The Falmouth Oyster Festival (01326 313553) takes place from 16 to 19 October.

The National Maritime Museum Cornwall, Discovery Quay, Falmouth (01326 313388).

The Three Mackerel Restaurant is at Swanpool Beach, Falmouth (01326 311886; www.members.aol.com/swanpool/threemac.htm).