Capital Crime festival to return to London for second year

Capital Crime will return to London for a second year following the success of the 2019 festival. 

Festival co-founders David Headley and Adam Hamdy announced the event will return to the Grand Connaught Rooms in London and will run from Thursday 1st October 2020 to Saturday 3rd October 2020. 

This year's festival saw more than 600 attendees each day enjoy a packed programme of events with Ian Rankin scooping two awards at the Amazon Publishing Readers’ Awards and a line-up featuring Martina Cole, Lynda La Plante, Ann Cleeves, Mark Billingham, Don Winslow, Robert Glenister, Denise Mina, Abir Mukherjee and Robert Harris. The festival sold just over £14,000 worth of books and the programme featured panels discussing the influence of Agatha Christie, screen adaptations, and crime fiction and feminism. 

Headley said: "We were overwhelmed by the response to the inaugural festival. 600 people attended each day and over £14,000 worth of books were sold during the two days the bookshop was open. We simply had to make Capital Crime an annual fixture, and are excited to announce the dates of the second festival.  We’re already hard at work on the 2020 programme of events and can’t wait to share our plans with readers in the weeks and months to come."

As preparations begin, Capital Crime has conducted an extensive customer service exercise, surveying hundreds of attendees to gather feedback on the 2019 festival and learn lessons for 2020.

Hamdy said: "We’ve seen great anecdotal feedback on social media, but our survey gives us hard numbers from a wide range of attendees. The survey tells us that 100% of attendees enjoyed the festival, 97% will return for 2020, and 96% will recommend the festival to friends. These are astonishing numbers and made it an easy decision to continue Capital Crime as an annual event. There is clearly appetite for a London festival and it seems our strategy of reaching out to readers worked."

Capital Crime festival manager Lizzie Curle added: "The customer response to the festival has been amazing. We meant what we said about this being a readers’ festival and we’re currently poring over all the written comments to see what our attendees suggest to make 2020 even better."

A limited number of discounted early bird tickets have gone on sale today, with weekend passes at £130 and day passes at £70.