Wild West wind

Accosted by a homeless and hungry young man when passing the Spiegeltent, temporary home to fine dining hereabouts, I paused to listen to the verses he had just composed - writing them as a message on his mobile phone. I was, he said, the first to be willing to pay for the privilege of his personal poetry recital. Truer to the spirit of a festival of literature than most of the events-in-the-tents you pay much more dearly to attend, I reflected.

The tented village seems to have survived the strong winds better than our fence: it blew down in the night, so this morning was spent with extension leads, electric drill and screwdriver to hand. Amazingly, I found in the shed just the right length of wood to patch it up with. Should hold it together for a while, anyway, and may even see us out.

"Truth and uncertainty" - part of yesterday's religion thread - was the title of the only event I have attended since Tuesday, with four believers and one humanist on the stage. "Everybody has been very nice," said one member of the audience given the mike and a chance to comment. Tom McLeish explained why: "Christianity, as St Paul says, is about healing broken relationships."

Four and three

I paid a return visit to Crucible 2 yesterday morning, with Caroline and a friend who has come to stay from London for a couple of days. Through her eyes, we saw Gloucester Cathedral afresh, a glorious backdrop in the sunshine and a safe haven when it was pouring with rain: April seems to have come again.

In the afternoon, we went to a rather ponderous discussion about Bretton Woods and the EU ("not just about the price of fish... It's like riding a bike, you have to keep moving forward"). Two separate books being plugged, both authors afraid to disagree with one another.

The later session was an improvement: "Artists - can they change the world?" Answer: yes provided they move on from the merely passive aggressive. "Climate change," exclaimed the passionate Heather Ackroyd: "How can anyone be making art about anything else?"

This morning, we struck luckier still, with the session on King Lear. Michael Pennington has recently returned from New York after playing the part off Broadway. A questioner wondered if it wasn't a depressing experience, with no redemption or hope for the future. "No, you play the blues and feel better," he said. Inevitably he stole the show, but the two academics were an excellent foil, and all benefitted from the best chairing I've come across yet this year.

Finally today, Crispin Tickell chatted - superficially, I concluded - to James Lovelock about his new book. I thought the title given us by the person making the introductions was "A rough ride to the future". Having heard Lovelock speak before, it sounded appropriate, but in fact it's "guide" not "ride".

Serious food

We benefitted from it being Agnes' birthday yesterday - and her wishing to celebrate elsewhere rather than by taking up the posh lunch tickets we'd bought her. Looking through the programme a while back, she had been full of enthusiasm about Morito coming to our festival: we on the other hand had never heard of Sam and Sam Clark, half of whom were there in the Spiegeltent to promote the inevitable book. Great food, and with it six delicious wines (from Laithwaites) - and also good company on our table, though from the photograph you might not gain that impression.

Before the lunch, I had been to another Times Leader Conference on stage. Much talk around the subject of poor Alan Henning - as David Aaronovitch, to applause, described him, "a modern martyr".

In the evening we drove to Tetbury for our one and only visit to this year's music festival on its final evening. It was a happy choice, as the Dunedin Consort's Bach St John Passion was one of the very best TMF concerts we have experienced - and there have been a good few over the years. A superb performance all round.

Billy Jo-King

It's Festival time again in Cheltenham, and given the shortage of parking spaces the tall statue of King William IV in Montpellier Gardens has been appropriately adorned. I went to two Times events, one more enjoyable than the other.

The Leader Conference - for a third year in succession - took place "live" at Midday, half a dozen journalists discussing what should appear in the three slots in tomorrow's paper. Last year, former Ladies' Coll. Head Enid Castle, in the Q&A towards the end of the hour, suggested a topic that hadn't been canvassed - and they went with it. This year, I put in a bid for tomorrow's feast of St Francis and the opening of the Rome Synod on Monday, but Oliver Kamm had other ideas, and he's apparently the one who writes "religious" leaders, despite being by his own admission "devoutly irreligious".

At this very moment he'll be polishing the third leader on the vital question of Um and Er. Can't wait.

Despite this failure, I found the hour's exchange of ideas entertaining and provocative. Is the suggested reform of human rights legislation just a political gesture?  Does it matter that Milliband's Conference speech was much-derided? (What, for that matter, differentiates Cameron's speech from "the old policy of populism" in Venezuela? And don't pledges of tax cuts undermine austerity?) Should we send the army into Sierra Leone to halt the spread of Ebola? What are the knock on consequences of making cycle helmets compulsory, as in Australia and now Jersey? Should they also take the brakes off cars?

The Times, News in pictures event this afternoon was by comparison low key, the star of the show - photographer Jack Hill - not being a naturally-gifted communicator in words. So his narrow escape last year, from capture at the hands of the Syrian man he thought was a friend, didn't register with me as I know it has done with others - an  appalling ordeal.

More people than ever throng Cheltenham for this year's Festival. No doubt it's no longer PC to say that the world and his wife were there.

On foot, and Benn

"Foot and Benn Disease" is said to have been the illness Labour suffered from in the 'Eighties. Michael Foot was often seen in Cheltenham during the literature festival - I bumped into him, shopping on one occasion. And in 2011, beside Imperial Gardens, Tony Benn was just too late to say that I could not take this photograph.

Benn's death aged 88 - hardly a shock - removes from the scene one of the great characters of late 20th Century political life in Britain, like him or loathe him. I was mainly in the latter camp, except in respect of his stand on the Iraq War. How you long for people in politics today to have the same courage of their convictions!

I set off to walk from Brockworth to Slad yesterday morning, but was so exhausted climbing Cooper's Hill that I decided Sheepscombe would be far enough. In contrast to the 99% dry-under-foot walk on Wednesday, it was heavy and uncertain going as I made my way up through fog from the Cross Hands. Even high up in the Beechwoods National Nature Reserve the paths were muddy, another hazard being the trees that had fallen recently.

Arrival at the Butcher's Arms was delayed by my retracing my steps in a vain effort to recover a lost lens cap. I suppose it must have rolled away off the track through Lord's Wood.

"The Wilson"

Our newly-reopened art gallery and museum has given rise to much comment, especially about its vacuous name. Sarah and I went there to see the Open West 2013 exhibition on Friday evening. I let her guess what "The Wilson" signified. "Harold?" she tried. "Woodrow? Pickett?" In the foyer, I was able to introduce her to Sophie (Wilson), who put her right.

The Open West show itself is in the "old" bit of the gallery, all but a few items that is. It looks quite well there, but not as good as in the early years, at the Summerfield Gallery, in Pittville. My photograph shows co-curator, Lyn Cluer Coleman in conversation before one of the relatively few two-dimensional exhibits. I hope to return to look round the rearranged permanent collection, throughout which some more Open West objects are scattered.

The Literature Festival presented a number of events on artistic themes, besides the Alan Hancox Lecture. Caroline enjoyed Jenny Uglow on Turner, and we both found the Cornelia Parker session later on Friday evening of more interest than we'd imagined it would be: this was largely down to the intelligence and good organization of the interlocutor, art historian Anna Moszynska. Thoughts of pilgrimage and relics (The Maybe) brought Grayson Perry to mind, but Parker seems to lay more emphasis on destruction leading to transfiguration.

We are a long way from Reynolds Stone's trees and waterfalls, the product of a process through which culture grew from nature, rather than being set over against it.

Festival finale

Ten days is ample for a literature festival, it seems to me, before fatigue sets in. The last event I went to was this morning's "Translating China": my photograph shows (from left) writer Anne Witchard, one of the "Misty Poets", Yang Lian, and Xinran, author of "The Good Women of China", translated into 37 languages. I took it at the very end of the session, while Yang Lian's publisher was reading a translation of a piece from "The Third Shore", after the poet had read it in the original.

Hearing a poem in Chinese brought home the immense gulf there exists between our cultures, so much of which is down to language. Xinran expressed one difference succinctly: "Chinese people," she said, "first understand, then think. In the West, though, you think first, then understand."

Translation arose as a side issue earlier in the Festival, in the two (of several) sessions about Proust which I attended. He disapproved violently, we were told by the excellent Cynthia Gamble, of the translation of the title of his great work as Remembrance of things past. Neville Jason was on hand to read from the novel, and - at the second session - from various rather fascinating letters. His voice can be heard for 140 hours if you listen non-stop to the Naxos recording.

The audio publisher, Nicholas Soames (this one thinner than the MP) spoke of involuntary memory as a means of overcoming the tyranny of time. From The Captive, he quoted the passage following Bergotte's death, "They buried him, but all through that night of mourning, in the lighted shop-windows, his books, arranged three by three, kept vigil like angels with outspread wings and seemed, for him who was no more, the symbol of his resurrection." And from the last page of Swann's Way, "Remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a particular moment."

I have struggled through to half way into volume two, and am inclined to think now of the reviewer who described a book - not Proust - as "one of those works which, once you put it down, you just can't pick it up again."

21 and out

The 21st and final Alan Hancox lecture at the Literature Festival was given yesterday morning. "A hugely successful series," John Randle said, by way of introduction: he paid particular thanks to Shelagh, Alan's widow, "a gentle encourager to us all."

The series, as John predicted, ended on a high note, Humphrey Stone giving a most affectionate portrait of his father, whose "life and work were one". We recognize the name, Reynolds Stone less readily than his artistic output: the Royal Arms on our passport, currency notes, the Dolcis logo, the Victory and other postage stamps... Humphrey Stone presented us with illustrations galore, projected onto screens that - because of the wind blowing outside the marquee - jumped around at times, making this member of the audience feel slightly seasick.

We saw also samples of his father's 350 bookplates and 100 memorial slabs. Mostly, they were drawn at a chaotic desk in the drawing room of his Old Rectory, three miles from Chesil Beach. Stone was essentially a miniaturist - "the eye, delighted by a small mouthful, is soon surfeited," he himself said. Pedantic, maybe, but nevertheless Stone was described by Iris Murdoch as "a totally unpretentious being," working with imagination, scholarship and good taste.

Besides lettering, Reynolds Stone's other great love was landscape, the inspiration for his "salad paintings", many featuring waterfalls and trees: in Sylvia Townsend Warner's words, it was "almost as though he was exiled from being a tree itself."

Painters three

Mike Curtis and his merry men are with us this week, painting the outside of our windows etc. We find them a pleasure to have working for us, as witnessed by it being 12 years since they first started coming.

This evening, I have been part of a large audience listening to Nick Hytner at the Literature Festival. The tent was too dark for me to take notes, and anyway he spoke too fast for me to get much down. As before, I enjoyed hearing him talk about working at the National Theatre, but perhaps rather less so than when he was just embarking on his highly successful reign there. My mind swims when I think of the man's capacity for work!

Umbrella post

"Climate change and the art of memory" was an opaque title for what turned out to be the stimulating event I attended last evening, at the Literature Festival.

There was more about memory than art though. Mike Hulme - founder of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research - spoke of us being inducted into the weather from an early age. "Who doesn't remember what it was like on their wedding day?" Weather provides the bookends round which we can safely navigate the rest of our lives, he said: an envelope of stability. So, how might we find a way to embrace weather weirding and the jumbling of seasons?

Greg Garrard, eco-critic, asked how we can widen the discussion of climate change from just the scientific. Shouldn't we be talking about human racism, he asked: the assumption that our future matters above all else. Climate change "dramatically impacts upon our culture." He offered the ambiguous role of children: we are saving the planet for them, yet we might be better off not having any. And ignoring the importance of biodiversity will lead our grandchildren into an age of loneliness. The challenge is so enormous, yet there seems so little each of us can do: the challenge is so urgent, yet the effects of climate change will only be felt over the long term. The huge number of people on Earth "dilutes our agency", and by flying everywhere we treat the world's oceans as if they were so many puddles.

I am not familiar with the work of Maggie Gee, the only "artist" who spoke. Her novels, she told us, are about threatened nature. More people read them, possibly, than the IPCC Report, which - though vital - doesn't begin to engage with our human experience. Perhaps, I reflected, there is a parallel with Richard III. Historians are only now beginning to retrieve his reputation, over which so much water (or worse) was poured by Shakespeare. And maybe Jonathon Porritt is onto something with his new fictional autobiography, now out.

For supper afterwards, Caroline had cooked the mushrooms I picked on the walk earlier, St George's and Chanterelle. I photographed - but didn't pick - these huge ones: they looked iffy. But when I looked them up, I see they were edible - Parasols.

Alassin's Cave

My disposition for acquiring new works of art could be said to be miserly. We have far too many already! So what was I doing buying six yesterday afternoon?

Biking from the Imperial Square literary encampment, up towards the Montpellier ditto, I passed garages, where my eye caught a large canvas propped up. Turning my head, I saw it was effectively an opportunistic advertisement - for someone selling their paintings. "I'm not getting any younger," she told me, "and the children won't thank me if I leave them all for them to get rid of."

Val - for it was she - went to art school late in life, experimenting then and since with many different styles. The three walls of her Cave might be thought reflect the work of half a dozen different artists therefore.

And if you tire of looking at the closely-arranged canvasses, then the floor is worth studying: what's now a garage must have been a Victorian - or earlier - workshop once upon a time.

Cake time

A day late, we celebrated Agnes' birthday yesterday. Nine of us, at lunchtime (Ida had a tea party to attend). Mini made a beautiful cake, adorned with blackberries, and raspberries from the garden. It was warm enough to drink our coffee outside afterwards, but this long Indian Summer must tail off soon surely.

This evening, we have been to a play reading: No, I just don't believe it! (a two-hander by Jean-Claude Grumberg) has been performed in its original French, but not in its English translation. It's about Alzheimer's creeping up - a bit near the knuckle, both for me and (perhaps) the cast. Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour's presence on stage ensured the big tent was packed. The hour-long reading preceded a discussion between the translator, Jonathan Kent and critic Agnès Poirier - a little drawn out, but more thought-provoking in some ways than the play.

More Festival-going

Caroline is rightly indignant with the Cheltenham Festivals continuing to sideline the Gardens' Gallery in Montpellier. Not only do they omit any mention of the Gallery in their brochure, it doesn't even feature on the festival maps, or on the signposts. And the massed bank of festival loos is plonked just next to it, reducing it to worse than Cinderella status. (Postscript: A Festival-goer caught short, spent her penny, and then - noticing the Gallery - went in and spent a further £300.)

Until a month ago, Pascal Lamy headed the World Trade Organization: yesterday afternoon he came to Cheltenham to discuss his forthcoming memoir, "The Geneva Consensus". The Times' Philip Collins kept the discussion nice and general, though without much sympathy for where Lamy was coming from, Collins appearing both less internationalist and more Conservative.

The memoir's title was chosen to juxtapose the author's standpoint with the Washington Consensus, which has come to stand for "Liberalise and God will take care of the rest." Lamy's approach is rather to take care of how trade works - in order for trade to work at all.

He praised Gordon Brown - prescient about the need for global governance - but China's "Don't ask me to do what you haven't done!"sums up the impasse, for instance in reaching a worldwide consensus on carbon reduction. We can't, Lamy maintains, halt globalisation, because technology is its engine - and technology has no reverse gear. It brings people closer to one another, but they still have different cultures. (The Inuits have always killed seals, but Europe expresses its disgust by banning Canadian imports.) Globalisation has formidably shrunk the numbers of the planet's poor, but at the expense of greater inequality.

A stimulating hour! As was my evening session - a genial chat between Mark Lawson and Jonathan Miller. Again, the interviewer gave his subject plenty of rope: with this, he readily reprised the role of enfant terrible, by which he first came to fame. There were a few repetitions, and one or two names escaped him, but otherwise it was hard to think that this was a man in his 80th year.

Until afterwards, that is: beginning my bike ride home, I saw someone in the shadows outside the Writers' Room, puffing at a cigarette. The enfant terrible had morphed into the Picture of Dorian Gray. I turned the bike round, and asked if I could take a photograph. (Nothing ventured...) "I hate being photographed," came the response, but he was willing to chat. "I'm not a Jew, just jewish," I quoted from Beyond the fringe. Was he a believer in the divine? "Certainly not," he said, "and what's more if Jesus came back I would ensure he was brought before the International Criminal Court."

This morning, by contrast, I escaped to Tetbury again, and heard - inter alia - the sublime Sarah Connolly singing Schumann and Duparc. These repeated words of Baudelaire, set by the latter, sum up Tetbury in contrast to grungy, pragmatic, busy, eclectic Cheltenham: "Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté, luxe, calme et volupté."

Used condoms form the detritus after Glastonbury: discarded Times cotton shopping bags after Cheltenham, and statins after Tetbury.

Cheltenham Festival of Literature

Two competing festivals this year, less than 30 miles apart! At least till the end of this weekend. Tetbury, hub of Royal South Gloucestershire, attracts a wide local audience plus many loyal regulars from London and further afield, émigrés for the weekend, no doubt dipping into Westonbirt Arboretum for some Autumn colour during their stay. Cheltenham's twin tented villages draw many more all and sundry, an amorphous horde growing by the year, less dress-conscious than last night's gang.

Once, at a gathering near Tetbury, I fell into conversation with one of the RSG Set. "Where do you live?" he inquired. "Cheltenham," I replied. "Cheltenham?" He spoke the word as if he was rinsing his teeth with a wine he thought was corked. "Cheltenham? Completely beneath my radar."

At our Literature Festival events, you used to be able to meet up with friends: now it's a matter of chance whether or not, even as a long-established punter, you see anyone you know. Harri is one of the regulars: I remember seeing her and her mother at an early event in last year's Festival and being amazed by the thickness of their ticket bundle. Today, therefore, I requested a photograph: the wadge on her lap covers admission to 42 events, I gathered!

We were queuing to get into The Times leader conference: I loved it last year, an hour of rich theatre with a highly-articulate cast of six. The only disappointments this year were the absence of the editor, and the distraction of the large screen flickering away in the background, above the stage.

The Montpellier wasteland

Nine days after the end of our ten-day Festival of Literature, this is what Montpellier Gardens looked like at lunchtime. Still, there were people at work from the marquee hire firm - but who's going to restore the messed up park, and how soon?

I'm all in favour of the Festival, but would propose that it concentrates its tents upon Imperial Square, and uses other venues such as the Everyman, the Parabola and the Playhouse - instead of ruining both of our major gardens for what is surely a disproportionate part of the year. I may be repeating myself (as well as the view of others), but it seems to me to be a no-brainer. At present the tail is wagging the dog.

Nor is our gargantuan event pleasing to all the publishers who come. I was chatting with a representative of one well-known international firm on Saturday last: "How does Cheltenham rate amongst all the literary festivals you must go to?" I asked. "It's too commercial, too impersonal," she replied, without missing a beat.

"Sharing Eden"

Three Festival of Literature events today: near my limit! Two of them were sponsored by the splendid Coexist Foundation. On the platform for the first of these, a discussion took place between followers of the three great Abrahamic faiths, pooling insights which could secure a better future for our planet. As Rabbi Nathan Levy (2nd from left in my photograph) said, "Even if we don't all share the same vision of heaven, we share the same Earth."

A common Earth manifesto subscribed to by the world's great religions? It could give people of faith that credibility they often lack within our sceptical yet green-inclined society; but how can we hope to achieve such a thing when within each of our faiths there are those who question any commitment to the importance of global stewardship?

This said, I bought the book after the event, the first time I'd succumbed this Festival: I usually buy more, but I'm in a mean streak.

Rabbi Nathan, a co-author of Sharing Eden, reminds us that people of faith are uniquely placed to speak truth to power about a concern for environmental justice. Politicians work to a five-year plan, business people may adopt a ten-year plan, but we are used to thinking longer-term: only after seven times seven years do we celebrate jubilee: "And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."

A lot – or sometimes very little – can change in 50 years. As I recorded last month, it’s that period since I started at university: had I instead, as destined, gone into articles in a solicitors’ firm in Birmingham, my life would have been very different. Yesterday was 50 years since the 2nd Vatican Council opened: some would say, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." More mundanely tomorrow will be 50 years since the last train went from Cheltenham to Kingham on the old Honeybourne Line, running 50 yards from our front gate: what would we now give to have back the comprehensive rail network, which Beeching axed?

Words & Pictures

"Words & Pictures: the Art of Illustration" is the title of the new exhibition at the Gardens Gallery, which I visited yesterday afternoon. The layout of the Literature Festival's Montpellier campus seems rather more friendly to this useful gallery this year. Something that's borne out in visitor numbers, I gather - and I hope sales too.

For Niki Whitfield has assembled a most colourful collection of exhibits: four quite different - but all vibrant - takes on the art of illustration, in the form of cards, books, framed/mounted prints and water colours. And as with all Niki's shows, it's immaculately curated. You can catch it till Tuesday evening next.

Having viewed the pictures, I went on to listen to the words - in this instance of Anglican priest, Lucy Winkett. Not that she was advocating too many of them: "the power of silence," was her theme, and indeed she "led us into" silence very effectively at the end of her hour. "Imagine," she urged us, "that you are sitting on a lovely river bank, and placing all the noises you hear into an endless procession of little boats, which float off downstream."

This was a beautifully reflective talk from someone who's surely made to be one of the first women bishops. But how did she she manage to suppress any mention of the word "prayer"? And a friend pointed out afterwards two other omissions: the silence from which a perhaps-depressed person has to be helped to escape; and the value of the mantra as a means of sustaining an individual's period of silence. But then an hour was too short.

Understanding Islam

As a Summerfield Trustee, one of my proudest achievements was to establish the Summerfield Lecture within the Cheltenham Festival of Literature. Our first lecturer was the then little-known Will Hutton, trailing his seminal book, The State We're In. As grant givers, we wanted to be visible within the community so those in need of funds would know where to come, but more than this I felt we had a responsibility to explore big ideas - and where more appropriate to do this than within our own local festival of ideas?

The Summerfield Lecture seems to have morphed in recent years: last night's featured Fiona Reynolds, on the role of the National Trust: admirable speaker, but hardly cutting edge stuff. (Perhaps this is sour grapes - I am not now invited.)

Which yesterday was just as well, as another foundation, now well enmeshed in our Festival, provided an excellent alternative at the same hour: Coexist have sponsored a number of challenging events this year, including Mary Robinson's, in their quest for an expansion of what they term religious literacy. To the extent that hostility to faith-based ideas stems from ignorance, they must be on the right track.

Certainly "Understanding Islam" was a revelatory session - and (judging by the searching questions it elicited) not just for us. Why don't you hold things sacred? the Muslim world asks. Is the price of our intellectual freedom that nothing is sacred?

A London-based Imam, Shaykh Ahmad Saad al-Azhari recited (aided by his iPad) four separate passages from the Qur'an; each one was then translated by commentator Abdul-Rehman Malik, and expanded upon by both the Imam and Dr. Mona Siddiqui (her voice familiar from Thought for the day).

We learnt that for Islam, the God of Abraham is a secret God, longing to be known. So he gives love, but he is not, as for us Christians, love itself. We believe he has revealed himself in the person of Jesus: Jesus (for Muslims) is both the bridge and the gulf - immaculately conceived by Mary, yes, but though of divine spirit, the servant, not the son of God.

We were told this was just a taster session, but I've said it before: we need a follow up mechanism, so that those whose minds are fired up by Festival events can meet again to help one another further along their paths of discovery. Come on, organisers! Where is the Cheltenham Continuing Festival... of Ideas?

Mary Robinson

For me, the highlight of this year's Festival of Literature, so far, has been Christopher Cook's riveting interview on Saturday with Mary Robinson. This took place in the vast Forum marquee, set up in Montpellier Gardens. Sitting at the very back, I wasn't well placed to catch a photograph. Coming home, though, I found this one of her: I took it after hearing her address a conference I was attending in Belfast while she was still President of Ireland.

With inevitably more lines to her face than 17 years ago, she still inspires in me the same warm admiration I felt after that speech. Whereas Peter Hennessy (the day previously) made recent history seem trivial, Robinson revealed through her thoughtful, often humble, answers to questions a total involvement with the burning issues of the past quarter century: the notes I made show as much.

"We have to make the world fairer... I was taught to believe, not to question... Why, I asked myself, is there so much emphasis on form rather than substance?... It's the distortion of religion that divides us... Admitting your mistakes is sometimes not a bad idea... The United States dipped its human rights standards after 9/11: the war on terrorism [sic] skewed the agenda, political opponents being characterised as terrorists... The rise in anti-Americanism is due to a perception that America operates upon double standards... Climate justice energises me: I wake up every morning with a sense of urgency and passion."

"Is it true," our celebrated guest was asked finally, "that you dance?" "Yes," came the smiling reply: "You bond with people when you dance with them: you dance with your eyes."

Mary Robinson - a prime candidate, I'd say, for the Nobel Peace Prize - and/or being made a Cardinal!

"Distilling the frenzy"

Peter Hennessy has recently started writing in The Tablet. Though I have admired various contributions he's made on Radio 4 over the years, I don't find his column quite so must-go-to as (for example) Clifford Longley's.

Hennessy was much in evidence during our thronged literary festival's opening weekend. I liked his self-effacing touch as interviewer with John Cruddas and Tessa Jowell, which produced a worthwhile hour: less successful, however, was his earlier appearance, solo, to promote his latest book: its title as above (referencing Keynes). Never at any festival event have I heard such a litany of quotations by others, or, to put it another way, so many names dropped! If each quote deserves a footnote, then Hennessy has to be right when he confesses, "I'm a footnote person."

He jokingly threatens an autobiography entitled, I've never been one for gossip but... On this evidence, there would be plenty to fill the space after that "but..." - not much scope, though, for substantiating the opening statement. Concentrating on post-War history, he seems obsessed by rumour and the personalities who purvey it. Now that he is a member of the House of Lords - a place for "weapons-grade gossip" - "I have lunch," he boasts, "with my exhibits".

Hennessy sees the role of historians to be that of "natural stay-behinds." They need to look for the "malign combinations" - yet it seemed he sees nothing to which we should be alerted in our leaders of recent decades neglecting to husband resources or tackle long-term environmental threats: "climate change" rates just one brief mention in Distilling the frenzy, according to its index.

"I'm a media tart," he said: at least he's honest enough to admit it.