LABYRINTH author Kate Mosse and New Statesman columnist Will Self are part of a literary feast coming to west London’s Brunel University for a new Hillingdon Literary Festival this weekend.

The free event centres around the university and the London borough of Hillingdon reaching their 50th anniversaries.

Deborah Moggach, who wrote These Foolish Things which was made into the hit movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, will also be speaking at the festival, which starts today, October 16.

Award-winning performance poet Benjamin Zephaniah, a professor at Brunel University, will be co-hosting a children’s poetry party with Joelle Taylor - already fully booked - and performing with local poets in the 16th century Great Barn in Ruislip.

Mr Zephaniah said: “I am so pleased to be hosting these two events for the Hillingdon Literary Festival.

"Both of my events are about making poetry more accessible and giving people space to express themselves.

"This is all about the poets and the audience. I’m just the messenger.”

Booker Prize shortlist nominee Will Self said: “I think the unique aspect of the festival here at Brunel is location, location, location, the very peripheral position of the campus - on the edge of London, on the edge of the intercontinental void known as Heathrow, within a short walk of the main east-west and north-south communications corridors that define contemporary Britain.

“So I’d argue the Hillingdon Literary Festival is unique in bringing a literary focus to contemporaneity.”

The festival is also welcoming dramatist, biographer and New York theatre critic John Lahr, as well as Geoffrey Robertson QC.

Nick Makoha, a poet shortlisted for the Babishai Poetry Award 2015, will end the festival on Sunday, October 18.

The event will also launch Brunel Arts, open to the public for classes, concerts and performances.

Festival director Philip Tew, Professor of English at Brunel University London, said: “We anticipate that the festival will attract people from the Hillingdon community of all ages, as well as readers, and writers and would-be authors from far and wide.”

To register for free tickets, visit www.hillingdonliteraryfestival.com