The seminar profiles the UK’s creative ideas and achievements and has been proven to increase the number of quality relationships between the UK and many other countries. It actively builds ties for the UK’s creative and knowledge economy. The event is fully residential.

Participants, who come from many countries, have opportunities to meet and hear a wide range of writers from Britain, as well as take part in discussions about a range of literary trends and issues. In bringing together the insight and experiences of writers and participants in a strongly international context, the Cambridge Seminar offers an unrivalled literary experience. This is an opportunity to take part in one of the most intimate and influential literary events in the world in the relaxed surroundings of a Cambridge University College.

Many people who have attended the seminar in the past have described it as a defining moment in their careers, bringing them up-to-date with new trends in writing today and introducing them to an international network of like-minded people. The event is fully residential and is organised by the British Council Literature Department.

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Downing College

The University of Cambridge is one of the world’s oldest universities and leading academic centres, and a self-governed community of scholars. Cambridge comprises 31 Colleges and over 150 departments, faculties, schools and other institutions. Each college is an independent institution with its own property and income.

Downing college was founded in 1800 under the will of Sir George Downing, 3rd Baronet with the wealth left by his grandfather, Sir George Downing, who served both Cromwell and Charles II and built 10 Downing Street (a door formerly from Number 10 is in use in the college).

The architect William Wilkins, a disciple of the neo-classical architectural style, designed the first wholly campus-based college plan in the world based on a magnificent entrance on Downing Street reaching back to form the largest quadrangle in Cambridge, extending to Lensfield Road. However only limited East and West ranges were initially built, with the plans for a library and chapel on the south face of the college shelved. The third side of the square was only completed in the 1950s with the building of the college chapel. Where the fourth side would have been is now a large paddock (known simply as “The Paddock”), with many trees. Though not fully enclosed, the court formed before the Downing college is perhaps largest in Cambridge or Oxford (a title contested with Trinity College’s Great Court).

The college is renowned for its strong Legal and Medical tradition. Cambridge biochemist Dr Alan Howard, an expert in coronary heart disease and obesity and the inventor of the hugely successful Cambridge Diet, came up to Downing in 1948 to read Natural Sciences and is an Honorary Fellow of the College. He established the Howard Foundation in 1982 to support biomedical research in obesity and nutrition and to construct and maintain buildings at Downing College.