Alexander Chancellor: It seemed a little creepy that thousands of people wanted to

My village, Stoke Bruerne in south Northamptonshire, is just getting back to normal after a great influx of visitors for its annual weekend festival called ‘Village at War’. Stoke Bruerne is a small place that sits astride the Grand Union Canal about halfway along its route from London to Birmingham. Its fame, such as it is, rests on its seven locks and the fact that it houses a Canal Museum; and the ‘Village at War’ event was started six years ago by the Friends of the Canal Museum to raise money for that excellent institution. I don’t yet know how well it has done this year, but last year it was attended by more than 12,000 people and raised £20,000.

According to the Village at War’s website, this is Britain’s ‘only wartime vintage themed canal festival’, which is about as rarefied a category as one could imagine. And Stoke Bruerne also seems a strange place in which to hold such an event because its role in the second world war was, to say the least, insignificant.