From politics to the priesthood to just laughing, there's an entertaining line-up in store for book lovers at the Wells Festival of Literature this autumn.

Wes Streeting, Labour MP and Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, will relive his extraordinary journey from poverty to politics in his memoir One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry Up.

The son of teenage parents and with a gangster grandfather, his is a tribute to the love and support of a caring family which set him on his way to a life in politics today.

Other political speakers include campaigner Jolyon Maugham, founder of the Good Law Project which has brought a series of landmark cases against the government, and journalist Polly Toynbee, whose own memoir explores her left-wing rabble-rousing family.

There's also Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong from 1992 until it was handed back to the Chinese in 1997. He kept a diary of the five years he spent preparing for the handover and has now compiled a fascinating memoir. The politics, he said, were 'a snake pit'.

Turning to the priesthood, the Reverend Fergus Butler-Gallie will deliver, not a sermon, but a love letter to the Prayer Book, to funerals, cake tins, lager and to what the Church of England can be at its best.

He says his hilarious book Touching the Cloth is a response to all those who wanted to know why a young man would become a priest in this day and age.

Yet another unlikely source of humour is the world of immunology as seen by Luke O'Neill, a top scientist with both the wit and talent for cutting through the noise.

In his latest work To Boldly Go Where no Book has Gone Before he tells the zigzag story of how we got to this moment in human history, tackling some of the great questions of our age from Artificial Intelligence to climate catastrophe.

Not much to laugh at there, you might think, but it's the way he tells it that has already made him a best-selling science writer.

Equally you may never have thought that maths could be funny. But Marcus du Sautoy can prove you wrong in his exploration of the link between maths and games in his book Around the World in 80 Games.

He looks at the origins of games old and new, from Whist to Wordle, Hopscotch to Scrabble, explores how the simplest games endure, and also how how to invent a good game.

So get on board as you certainly won't be bored by this speaker or any of the novelists, poets or travel writers lined up for the festival from 27 October to 4 November.

Brochures are out now (from 24 July) and are available to pick up in numerous venues in the area. For details of how to book festival events and for further festival information visit www.wellsfestivalofliterature.org.uk