The actor and his Sherlock co-star, Louise Brealey, will be joined by other celebrities for live readings of letters written by correspondents including Virginia Woolf, Gandhi and Castro

Benedict Cumberbatch is to be reunited with his on-screen love interest Louise Brealey – aka “Molly” from Sherlock – in a new stage project called Letters Live, which will take place in London at the end of this month.

Letters Live was created and developed by the independent publishing house Canongate and is dedicated to the art and ethos of letter writing. For the show, celebrities read “correspondence deserving of a wider audience” in front of a live crowd. Letters include Virginia Woolf’s suicide note, Gandhi’s missive for peace to Hitler, a recipe for drop scones sent by Queen Elizabeth II to President Eisenhower, a telegram from the sinking Titanic, and a letter from Fidel Castro to “my good friend Roosvelt” – complete with misspelt name.

Inspired by Shaun Usher’s anthology and blog; Letters of Note, as well as Simon Garfield’s To The Letter, the events will take place over five nights at the art deco Freemasons’ Hall in Covent Garden. Each show lasts two hours and will feature up to nine performers.

Cumberbatch and Brealey will read individually, as well as together from My Dear Bessie: A Love Story in Letters, an anthology of letters written during the second world war between North Africa-posted RAF man Chris Barker and his former colleague Bessie Moore. Other big names from the stage, screen, music, art and literary worlds are expected to drop in, with Sally Hawkins, Caitlin Moran, Matt Berry, Andrew O’Hagan, and musician Tom Odell already confirmed.

Cumberbatch has been a regular at previous Letters Live events, the first of which took place in December 2013 at the Tabernacle in London. Shows were also held at last year’s Hay festival, as well as at Edinburgh international book festival and the Southbank Centre’s world book night, where Viv Albertine, Russell Brand, Stephen Fry and Andrew Motion were among the stars who read a collection of letters from, among others, Chopin, Charles Bukowski, Ted Hughes, Abraham Lincoln and Elvis Presley.

This year, for the first time, the organisers have teamed up with film and television production company SunnyMarchto make recordings of celebrity readings available for public viewing on the event’s website.

Jamie Byng, publisher at Canongate and one of the directors of Letters Live, said that the idea for the event was formulated after he organised a night around Colin Firth’s The People Speak: Voices That Changed Britain, an anthology of famous speeches. “We did this great event at the Tabernacle [where celebrities read famous speeches] and it was amazing, so we decided to something similar with letters, because they lend themselves every bit as well to live readings as speeches do,” he said.

“To me a joy has been the matching of letters with performers. At the first Letters Live event, Benedict read the Alan Turing letter, and at that time I knew he was going to play him in the film, so it was a nice in-joke.”

Cumberbatch said in a statement: “Letters Live makes us pause and imagine the lives behind the letters read and the circumstances of their origin. The relationship between the audience, reader and writer on a Letters Live night helps deepen our understanding of these inspiring artefacts of the human condition. They are windows into the love, beauty, pain, and humour of their creators and recipients. It’s a privilege to read this most ancient of communications live to an audience.”

Letters Live takes place from 31 March to 4 April and will raise money for literacy charities the Reading Agency, First Story and Ministry of Stories.

