The Suffolk Way

I spent last weekend at the Aldeburgh Documentary Festival and it’s an event I can thoroughly recommend. It’s been going for 13 years now, with a programme devised by Craig Brown, and the roll-call of speakers it attracts is hugely impressive. On a blowy wet Suffolk day it’s extraordinary to be able to take refuge in the Aldeburgh Cinema and find, up on the stage in front of you, behind a slightly rickety round table, lit by a standard lamp with a dusty pleated shade that looks as if it came from the sitting-room of someone’s great-aunt (and probably did), Libby Purves and Max Hastings, talking about the challenges of filming war, and showing clips from his films about the disastrous Sudan expedition to relieve Khartoum in 1884/5 (Could lessons be learned from that today … ? Probably not, it would seem) and Hastings’ more recent exploits in the Falklands.