Bath, Edinburgh and the Lake District are each deeply steeped in literary history and are justly proud, while Stratford-upon-Avon could claim to being the single most important literary destination in Britain. But now there is an unlikely new contender. The largely well-heeled London suburb of Chiswick is claiming that a succession of literary residents makes it the top writerly neighbourhood in the country.

Among Chiswick’s line-up, now set out for inspection on a literary timeline, are two winners of the Nobel prize in literature, one Booker prize winner, two Oscar winners and a poet laureate. With the tally of local writers now reaching 250, what started as a Twitter boast is gaining ground. And this weekend, as Chiswick prepares for its literary festival, a challenge has gone out to other suburbs, towns and villages: can you beat Chiswick?

Claimed authors include Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, who wrote The Caretaker in Chiswick; John Osborne, who submitted the manuscript of Look Back In Anger from his Chiswick houseboat; and William Makepeace Thackeray, who set the opening chapter of Vanity Fair in Chiswick Mall, where he went to school. Other residents were the 18th-century satirist Alexander Pope, the Irish poet WB Yeats, the second Nobel laureate on the list, the novelist EM Forster, Father Brown’s creator GK Chesterton, Patrick Hamilton, author of Hangover Square, Dame Iris Murdoch, JG Ballard, Anthony Burgess, Nancy Mitford, Sir John Betjeman, Alain-Fournier and playwright Sir Arthur Wing Pinero. So, with literary names dating back to the 17th century and including the designer and poet William Morris, the original Twitter claim for Chiswick made by Val Bott, a former chairman of the William Hogarth Trust, looks hard to beat.

Qualifications for inclusion are quite broad, with singer Ian Dury and sportsman Daley Thompson making the grade along with the satirist William Hogarth – but all are bona fide according to the director of the Chiswick Book Festival, Torin Douglas. “I knew there were distinguished writers with W4 connections, and famous residents who had written their memoirs, as well as less well-known authors, poets and dramatists. But I never suspected we’d find 250 – or that so many of them would be quite so distinguished.”

Yet there are other likely British candidates for the title. For example, elsewhere in the capital, Hampstead and Highgate may vie with Chiswick for its long history of literary associations, from John Keats to John Le Carré.