THIS year's Autumn in Malvern festival is once again proving a success, said founder Peter Smith as its final events approach.

He said the high point so far was the concert by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. the first ever classical concert at the University of Worcester's new arena.

"But the smaller events have also been very successful," he said. "The tickets often don't go until the last minute, but they do sell out."

The festival continues tonight (Friday) with Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy joining actor Peter Sutton in Poets of the Malvern Hills Country, a sequence of reflections on the Great War in poetry, prose and music, with violin and piano duo Bartosz Woroch and Sam Armstrong performing Elgar's Violin Sonata of 1918.

And tomorrow it's the turn of the Fine Arts Brass Ensemble, with a programme that includes works by Bach, Glinka, Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

The festival final weekend includes Rosie Broadley of the National Portrait Gallery talks about Dame Laura Knight’s lost portraits at Colwall Village Hall on Saturday, October 25.

And it concludes on Sunday, October 26, with Gabriel Woolf and Linda Hart presenting the evocative sequence Behind the Lines, a First World War anthology bringing together poetry and prose written by men and women, young and old, combatants and observers.

For full information about all the festival's events, visit malvernfestival.co.uk