Another year — another Oxford Literary Festival – and so many fascinating speakers and books to choose from. Let’s start with my hero, the celebrity chef Raymond Blanc. Acknowledged as one of the finest chefs in the world, this remarkable man has remained faithful to Oxfordshire throughout his culinary career despite the fact that the world was and is his oyster.

Raymond Blanc gives us A Taste of My Life, which charts his childhood years when his mother taught him to love good food and his meteoric rise to Le Manoir aux Quat Saisons at Great Milton. This talented Michelin-starred chef writes as he speaks. His enthusiasms are infectious.

Albert Roux, OBE and Legion d’Honneur, is another of the world’s best-loved chefs who will be attending the festival. He will not be highlighting one particular book, but talking of the many he has written over the years.

Roux may have laid down his chef’s hat and retired from the kitchen, but he still has a great deal to offer, as those who meet him will discover.

Carole Drinkwater is not a chef, but she has a connection to food via her latest publication The Olive Tree, which charts her colourful, and often dangerous journey, in search of the routes that olive traders have taken over the centuries. Set in the Mediterranean in the springtime, this is a tale of our time that will appeal to both foodies and travellers.

A Food Lover’s Treasury by Lynda Murphy and Julie Rugg, is all about the references to food that can be found tucked away in many great literary works. It contains some fascinating observations on food prepared and eaten by fictional heroes.

The extracts brought together by the authors are often hilarious and sometimes downright bizarre, but they all demonstrate the power of food to evoke a mood or a scene.

As each of the quotes is fully referenced to enable the reader to source their favoured titbits, this is a book worth seeking out.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s family history is one of constant displacement and repeated relocation. The Settler’s Cookbook is a warm, personal memoir from one of Britain’s most high-profile and vocal immigrants - a mouth-watering exploration of the author’s East African Indian roots through the shared experience of cooking. It tells the history of the Indian migration to the UK, via East Africa.

Yasmin’s family was part of the mass exodus from India to East Africa during the height of British expansion, fleeing famine and lured by the prospect of prosperity under the imperial regime. In 1972, they were one of the many families expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin who moved to the UK, where Yasmin has made her home with an Englishman.

The food she cooks now combines the traditions and tastes of her family’s hybrid history. Here you’ll discover how Shepherd’s Pie is much enhanced by sprinkling in some chilli, Victoria sponge can be wonderfully enlivened by saffron and lime juice, and the addition of ketchup to a curry can be life-changing.

One Dog at a Time, by Pen Farthing, but it also rates highly on my list. It is the remarkable true story of how one man, saved the stray dogs of Afghanistan. It will tear at the heart strings of all dog lovers who recognise the suffering of animals caught up in war.

Royal Marine sergeant Pen Farthing tells of the moment he stumbled across an organised dog fight outside the remote military outpost in Helmand where he was based.

The dogs fled when he stepped in to break up the fight, but one animal found its way to the military compound — and into Pen’s heart.

Soon other dogs were drawn to Pen’s makeshift sanctuary. His gripping account of his efforts to make a difference to these poor creatures, struggling to survive in the most hostile and dangerous environment, is a remarkable true story and one which touched me deeply.

Curling up with a novel which will keep you turning the pages until you reach the end is the perfect way to relax, which is why I must also include Iain Pear’s Stone’s Fall, which must surely rate as his most dazzling and brilliant novel since An Instance of the Fingerpost.

It tells the story of John Stone, financier and armaments manufacturer, a man who is so wealthy that during the years before the First World War he was able to manipulate markets, industries and indeed whole countries and continents.

Another novel that should be saved for a rainy Sunday afternoon is Rachel Hore’s The Glass Painter’s Daughter.

It’s the compelling story of Fran Morrison, a peripatetic musician who is summoned home to London, when her father has a stroke.

On her return she finds herself in charge of the family business, a stained-glass workshop in a historic backwater of Westminster, founded in the Victorian heyday of stained glass-making.

When the vicar of a local church asks Fran and her late father’s assistant to restore a shattered angel window, her research into the window’s origins uncovers a fascinating and moving story from the Victorian past that resonates in her own life. This is a great story, which suggests that if we know where to look, there are angels all around us.

Finally, Don Chapman, former arts critic of the Oxford Mail, will be discussing his magnum opus Oxford Playhouse: High and Low Drama in a University City.

Don tells the story of his favourite theatre, which has been published to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the theatre where he spent much of his professional carre reviewing productions.

Don traces the history of the theatre meticulously — nothing is left out or overlooked. This remarkable book also celebrates a galaxy of actors, including Flora Robson, John Gieldgud, Maggie Smith, Ronnie Barker, Judi Dench and Helena Bonham-Carter.