Hard to beat Alan Bennett (age 80) reading his own description of first visiting the Leeds City Art Gallery and of his first Room of His Own at Exeter College, Oxford, failing to buy a pot by Lucie Rie whilst on National Service in Cambridge, not buying a chair by Isokon, but a roll of wallpaper instead, which he wasn’t able to hang.   He stayed on at Oxford as a postgraduate student of medieval history (he taught Bevis Hillier, who collected ceramics, and David Bindman, who collected Old Master drawings) and he retains just a touch of the intellectual dryness of an Oxford don.   His favourite museum is the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.   I wanted to ask how he had found it as a Trustee of the National Gallery.   He ended with his spoof memoir of Virginia Woolf as if read to the Memoir Club from Forty Years On.

Ⓒ Axel Hesslenberg

Ⓒ Axel Hesslenberg

The highlight of the second day of the Charleston Festival was Robert Harris talking about his novel, An Officer and a Spy, which I haven’t read and now want to.   He was admirably straightforward in describing how his interest in the Dreyfus Affair derived from a commission from the filmmaker Roman Polanski;  had involved a bit of research, including the use of a 1900 Baedeker Guide to Paris, which told him about the relevant restaurants;  and then a mere six months of writing from 5.30 in the morning to lunchtime.   He compared his technique to that of Dickens and Trollope, believing that the best novels should be written without pretention.   He was offset by discussion with Hilary Spurling and came across as impressively convincing.

Another thing I like about the Charleston Festival is the presence of the old and the wise.   In the front row of the stalls at the first event was Jeremy Hutchinson (age 99), the emeritus Professor of Law at the Royal Academy, whose mother Mary was Clive Bell’s mistress.   A few rows back was Olivier Bell (age 97), who served in the Control Commission in the second world war and has just been awarded an MBE.   One of the best of the speakers was Asa Briggs (age 93) talking about his third volume of autobiography, still pretty alert, a codebreaker in Bletchley and second Vice Chancellor of Sussex University.   When it came to questions, someone asked a tough one about the long delay in the publication of the Chilcot Inquiry.   Asa Briggs said, ‘Thank you, Phyllis’.   The questioner was P.D. James (age 94).

Each year we go to the Charleston Festival in Sussex and have done every year (I think) since 1993 when I became a Trustee.   I love it:  the windy tent, the excessively knowledgeable audience, lounging about in the sun over lunch, and the magnificent unpredictability of the subjects discussed.   The pleasure is not just what happens and is said in the tent, but the beauty of the setting:  the garden looking brilliantly lush:

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