Hampstead festival HowTheLightGetsIn has announced its first round of headline speakers set to inspire and entertain festivalgoers this September.

The festival will once again bring together Pulitzer Prize winners, Mercury nominees, captains of industry and cutting-edge thinkers when it returns for its fifth time to Kenwood Gardens at Hampstead Heath.

Running from September 23 to 24, the festival will host political commentator Alastair Campbell, writer and politician Rory Stewart, and feminist philosopher and psychologist Carol Gilligan as well as comedian David Baddiel, who are among the first wave of announced guest speakers.

World-renowned physicist Michio Kakyu will also join these pioneering thought leaders. 

Addressing the theme for this year's festival, Dangers, Desires and Destiny, panels and talks will look at what an increasingly dangerous future may hold, and our desire to change this.

More than 150 speakers and comedians will look at what an increasingly dangerous future may hold, and the human desire to change this trajectory across 120 events held in 12 venues.

Expect panels and talks discussing the existential threats of our era, on topics that cover politics, society and international relations in events titled The dream of democracy, The good: righteousness and atrocity, Rationality in the dock and Peace in our time.

Festival founder Hilary Lawson said: “We look not only to philosophers, but to scientists, novelists, and artist. The big questions are present in every field, and new philosophical ideas are as likely to appear in literature, history or science as they are in philosophy.”

Joining the guest speakers, Mercury Prize winner Badly Drawn Boy, pop-punk band Walt Disco, and indie rising star Rainbow Frog Biscuit.

More speakers and music acts are due to be announced at a later date.

Tickets start from £95 and are on sale at howthelightgetsin.org