THE first part of the Wordsworth Trust's year begins with a flurry of activity. Running from January 21-23, its international Weekend Arts and Book Festival, held at the Thistle Hotel, is mere yards from the trust's Grasmere home.

The three-day celebration of art and literature features Lord Briggs speaking on the importance of bicentenaries; Michael Rogers talking about Edward Gibbon's great historical work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; plus Anthony Sampson on the importance of English literature in forming the political consciousness of figures such as Nelson Mandela, whose official biography he published two years ago.

Among the poets in attendance will be Wes Williams, waxing about how fairy stories have their origin in renaissance monsters, and Booker Prize-nominated Sarah Hall, now a Wordsworth Trust writer-in-residence.

Other eminent guest speakers include the High Commissioner of the Republic of South Africa, Lindiwe Mabuza, who is also a poet, and offers an account of Poetry in my Life.

Trust director and incurable Romantic, Robert Woof, tells me the trust's popular poetry reading season will run during the summer as well as an exhibition of English watercolours collected by William Spooner, including some of the great works by Cozens, Girtin and Turner, now at the Courtauld Institute.

Robert, though, can hardly contain his excitement, as the moment grows ever closer to the opening the Jerwood Centre in the spring, which will include a celebration of The Prelude as a part of the trust's presentation of the Wordsworth Collections to be housed in the new centre.

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven," recites Robert from Wordsworth's The Prelude, written 200 years ago.

"He was thinking of the French Revolution, but no-one living today who loves English Literature could think that there was a more important event to celebrate than Wordsworth's creation of his greatest poem," adds Robert.

"Of course, the strange thing about the writing of the great autobiography was that Wordsworth delayed its publication until after his death in 1850.

"The result was that none of his great contemporaries, such as Byron, Shelley, Keats and Blake, knew what his achievement had been; it was like a time-bomb that didn't really make its impact until the 20th Century.

"For what Wordsworth arranged to be published after his death was a much-revised version of the poem he had given to Coleridge in 1805."

The Jerwood Centre is set to open a new chapter for the trust and, as well as its existing treasures, it will be home to one of the greatest collections of literature from the Romantic period, which Robert and his team have just landed a £565,500 Heritage Lottery grant to buy.

Among the literary gems are Keats first editions as well as rare tomes by Wordsworth and Coleridge (including first editions of Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads) plus the only complete set of poet Shelley first editions outside the British Library and its American equivalent.

A first edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is also included among the 1,300 books in the collection, which is owned by human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman and his father, and will cost the trust £640,000, with money coming from other private and public sources and a further £18,500 still to be raised.

Robert maintains that Cumbria will have one of the greatest libraries in the world devoted to a subject which is central to that extraordinary moment in history in which Britain played a profound role.

"It was an age of revolution, and the discovery of nature and a new scientific precision; there was a new emphasis upon the human mind and the creative imagination, which manifested itself in literature and in painting and in new social concepts of justice and democracy.

"The modern world began with Romanticism - and no-one was more democratic than Wordsworth, with his claim that he wrote his poetry to show that men who do not wear fine clothes can feel deeply'."

The full residential fee for the book weekend is £280, inclusive of accommodation and meals.

In addition, people can visit the festival as a non-resident.

Further details are available from the Wordsworth Trust on 015394-35544 or online at www.wordsworth.org.uk .