SIR Terry Pratchett will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Winchester Writers’ Festival, the Daily Echo can reveal.

The best-selling author who lives near Salisbury, will give the main speech at the festival on June 26.

His talk at Winchester University is titled Why Are You Listening To Me When You Should be at Home Writing?

Barbara Large, director of the writers’ conference, said: “Sir Terry is a master storyteller. He has an incisive wit, is a keen observer of the fantastical and has the profound ability to entertain and inform us with his spectacular inventive comic satire. We’re very much looking forward to welcoming him to the university.”

The Winchester Writers’ Conference, Festival and Bookfair that runs from June 25-27 is now in its 30th year. Following the three-day event there will be a week of writing workshops.

Sir Terry is the creator of the best-selling Discworld series of 37 books and has sold more than 60 million books worldwide with translations into 32 languages. He received an honorary degree from the University of Winchester last October.

In December 2007 he was diagnosed with posterior cortical atrophy, a rare variant of Alzheimer’s disease. BBC2 ran a two-part documentary series in February 2009 based on his illness titled Terry Pratchett: Living with Alzheimer’s.