A new exhibition, Making Waves: 40 Years of Ilkley Literature Festival opens to the public on Saturday and runs until December 1 at the Manor House Museum in Ilkley.

It offers a retrospective of the festival, featuring a rare edition of Ted Hughes’s Cave Birds and previously unseen letters from leading writers and poets of the day, as well as historic newspaper cuttings and original photographs.

Third-year students at Leeds College of Art have been working with the festival to create unique illustrations of some of the leading authors who have visited the festival and student Paul Howarth has designed the layout for four seven-foot tall ‘book’ installations which tell the festival story. Curated by artist Val Carman, the exhibition explores the festival’s four decades, set against world events from the end of the Vietnam War to the spread of the internet and mobile phones.

The exhibition will be officially opened at 1pm with a talk by Rachel Feldberg, the festival’s director, about the secrets, successes and personalities of 40 tumultuous years.

Attendance is free but due to limited space it is necessary to reserve a place via alyson. evans@bradford.gov.uk or (01943) 600066.

This will be followed with Ilkley and the Festival – a walk through the festival’s history with local historian Alex Cockshott at 3pm. Tickets at £5 are available from ilkley literaturefestival.org.uk.

The 40th anniversary Festival will see more than 250 events take place across 20 venues, over 17 days from Friday, October 4, to Sunday, October 20.

Further tickets have now been released for BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions presented by Jonathan Dimbleby which will be broadcast live from the Kings Hall on Friday, October 4, from 7.15pm to 8.50pm. Additional tickets for this event are available either online or by phone on (01943) 816714.

For programme and tickets, visit ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk.