Heneage steps back from Chalke Valley History Festival as line-up revealed

The Chalke Valley History Festival (CVHF) has revealed this year's line up featuring authors Kate Mosse and Simon Schama. However, festival organisers confirmed that co-founder James Heneage is no longer involved in the Wiltshire event.

Heneage's stepping back from the festival he founded with Second World War historian James Holland follows a row which erupted last year over the lack of people of colour speaking at the event, which saw historian Rebecca Rideal pull out in protest days before it was due to take place. Of the 148 speakers invited to attend, 32 were women while two were people of colour. Retired Preface founder Trevor Dolby and critic Paul Horsley have now joined as non-executive directors.

Of the names revealed for this year's festival, which will take place over 25th June - 1st July, sponsored by the Daily Mail, a fifth of the 20 are people of colour.

Harvard professor Gordon-Reed will be talking about Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of Imagaination, while its first "CVHF Directors’ Lecture" will be delivered by Professor Ali Ansari, chair of Middle East studies at St Andrew’s University. 

Academics Sarah Churchwell and Pullitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed are signed up to speak along with Mosse, co-founder of the Women's Prize for Fiction. The festival is promising to mark the centenary of the first women being granted the vote, as well as the centenaries of the end of the First World War and the birth of the RAF.

The latter will see a number of static diplays, including from a Spitfire with a Merlin engine. There will also be a "Forties Fever Party" open to all promising period live music and fireworks. 

Authors on the main literary programme include Ben Kane, Dan Jones, Alex Langlands and Helen Castor, while other well-known historians and commentators on the bill are Robert Peston, Tracy Borman, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Dobbs, Fiona Carnarvon, Rana Mitter, Tony Robinson, Nicholas Coleridge, Robin Hanbury-Tenison, Gordon Corera and Charles Spencer. 

There will be a focus on local authors as well with talks on antiquarian and historian John Aubrey, photographer and designer Cecil Beaton, authors Terry Pratchett and William Golding, artist Henry Lamb and former prime minister Anthony Eden. 

Holland commented: "Our programme is still being finalised at the moment, but we are already really excited about this year’s line-up. We are looking forward to a wide range of talks, with lots of different speakers, and tickets go on sale at the end of April."