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".

Everyman Shakespeare

Our literary festival has forged good links with the Royal Shakespeare Company over the years, though there have inevitably been last-minute cancellations. Yesterday, however, three Cleopatras lined up according to schedule on the stage of Cheltenham's Everyman Theatre, for a discussion that never quite took flight. Mainly, Janet Suzman, Harriet Walter and (pictured here) Noma Dumezweni were too polite to each other. You longed for a touch of the asp to enter their conversation. And above all you ached to hear one of them launch into "His legs bestrid the ocean". They lacked a prompter.

Later in the day, Michael Pennington made an altogether more memorable appearance on the same stage. Pennington described catching the Shakespeare bug at the age of 11, and never having shaken it off: his resulting one-man Shakespeare show "Sweet William" is a tour de force.

"Sweet William" runs through what we know of Shakespeare's life in chronological sequence, with the actor morphing into both major and minor characters to illustrate the developing achievement of the playwright and in particular its historical and political context. Apart from audience coughing all round me, which would never have been tolerated during the performance of a play, I have seldom enjoyed a LitFest evening more.