Rebecca Moore is very, very excited about the Oxford Literary Festival

I remember my very first visit to Oxford, strolling along the High Street by The Queen’s College, the late afternoon sun fading behind me. I was deciding whether to come here to study English literature and, that afternoon as I crossed Magdalen Bridge, I realised how absurd it would be to study elsewhere.

Because strolling through Oxford is like stepping into a novel: limestone buildings promise grandeur, just as tiny cobbled side streets promise dirt and rumour and intrigue lurking beneath the city’s perfect veneer. For someone with a love of literature, an overactive imagination and an unshakeable faith in the power of a well-lit church spire, Oxford is Elysium.

Seemingly, every 10-metre-square is inhabited by a writer in Oxford — we’re positively awash with arty, literary types frantically typing away in cafes, or mournfully sitting beneath a tree on South Park. So it’s a natural choice to host one of the best literary festivals around.

And they will descend on us in droves, you know: artists from across the oceans, poets from all corners of the globe, each of them excitedly followed by a posse of intellectuals, all hoping for one glimpse, one word of wisdom, or one touch from the hand that penned their favourite story.

It’ll be like Woodstock without the drugs. And the shirtless hippies. There’ll just be jugs and jugs of coffee and yards and yards of politeness. Personally, all I really need to know is that Margaret Atwood will be here. This fact is, singlehandedly, the most exciting thing I’ve heard all year. You may think this tragic but I have dutifully hung on her every sardonic word since my school days when The Handmaid’s Tale was thrust into my hands.

She will speak at the formal closing dinner on March 29 at Christ Church’s Great Hall and this goes some way to explain why Oxford is the number one place for a literary festival: the fact that she’ll be speaking in the Great Hall — made famous by another love of mine, Harry Potter — only goes to prove that The Oxford Literary Festival is pretty darn special.

Where else would you find the perfect blend of 21st-century culture and creativity with wood panelling and musky ambience, as candlelight sparkles from your port glass?

I was quite correct on my first day in Oxford that it is akin to stepping inside a novel — a ridiculous and endearing blend of surrealism and imaginative inspiration.

So, am I excited about the literary festival? I’m ecstatic. Just knowing that so many creative brains will inhabit my city walls, surely makes me immediately more cultured.

I once read that researchers conducted studies on the effects of calming, group meditations in high crime areas and results indicated that a large outpouring of positive thought patterns create a more peaceful, law-abiding community. I like to imagine that concentrated bursts of creativity, culture and poetry in areas that are at risk of being overtaken by such frivolities as The Voice and Jack Wills will remind us that we are at heart a city of arty types: with dreamy ideals about the power of words, the beauty of limestone and the need for literature in all our lives.