I’ve been to two of my favourite book festivals recently, Chalke Valley History Festival and Charleston, and the experience has set me thinking about festivals in general. If I could listen to a great writer — any great writer — at a literary festival, I think I would choose Anthony Trollope. He would probably go on and on, just as his books go on and on, but be highly engaging in exactly the same way. Still in the 19th century, I don’t imagine Jane Austen would be much fun at a festival — but I am quite sure she would have the sense not to accept. Sir Walter Scott would lecture one at length about tartan history but his enthusiasm would be contagious. As it is, the rise of the literary festival is a phenomenon of my own day (my first published book appeared 67 years ago). The first one I went to was Hay-on-Wye, when it was quite a modest affair but delightful in its dedication to authors. The pleasure is not purely to do with sales, although that is an undeniable benefit. For me, it’s the contact. I remember looking at the audience at Hay and thinking: ‘These people are all here of their own free will. They are not prisoners marched in, or penned-up schoolchildren. I spend two or three or four years writing a book, not for myself, not for editors, not for critics but for readers — and here they are. At last.’
Of course, at the end of it the book signing may produce critics after all. ‘I was going to buy your book but listening to you it doesn’t sound much fun.’ What? Catholic emancipation not much fun? As delineated by me in The King and the Catholics, it was a riot.
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