SOME of the biggest names in UK comedy will join literary luminaries and guitar greats at a New Forest festival this summer.

The Curious Arts Festival is back for a second year, on July 17-19 in the stunning Pylewell Park.

The line-up announced today features some of the most talked- about and much-loved stand-ups in the UK, stars of TV and radio including Edinburgh Festival award-winner Mark Watson; prolific award- winning comedian and podcast innovator Richard Herring; laugh-out-loud comedian Lucy Porter, and star of the BBC’s Live at the Apollo Simon Evans, who has a new Radio 4 show on the economy out this summer.

Also appearing will be one of the most exciting new talents in recent years, in demand at the biggest comedy clubs across the UK and a regular BBC radio panellist and increasingly familiar Edinburgh Festival face, Andrew Ryan, and hotly-tipped comedy writer and performer Anna Savory.

Singer of chart-topping punk band Carter USM JB (Jim Bob) Morrison will be in conversation with Simon Evans and discussing his new novel.

Comedy legend David Baddiel will be reading from his first novel for children, The Parent Agency.

The Curious Arts Festival is an inimitably immersive festival experience described by the Evening Standard last year as “charmingly reckless”.

It offers an interactive programme of events for all ages including an Alice in Wonderland tea party, night bat walks, tea leaf reading, fortune telling, garden walks, life drawing and breathing lessons.

For bookworms, a series of tented events are scheduled with top contemporary writers, including David Nicholls, author of One Day and Us; Jojo Moyes, author of ME Before You and The One Plus One, and the author of Before I Go To Sleep SJ Watson talks about his new novel Second Life.

A children’s tent will host art activities and guest author readings with Piers Torday (winner of the 2014 Guardian children’s fiction award), John Burningham and Helen Oxenbury.

Nicky Singer (author of the acclaimed Featherboy) will be running a writing workshop for children aged nine to 12, and the popular Bedtime Stories with author Paul Blezard will be back at 7pm nightly.

Music will come from Roxy Music’s Phil Mazanera, Razorlight frontmen Johnny Borrell and Gus Robertson, John Illsley of Dire Straits, and rising star George the Poet.