Well I am back and totally knackered but my knackerhood must be minimal compared to that of all the volunteers and organisers of the festival. Still I am having a quiet day today. About a month ago I had a diagnosis, after a rather painful lockdown, of arthritis in my right hip and spine, and standing a lot which I have been doing over the weekend is a bit difficult, hence my lolling today.
But it was worth it. Everyone who attended was simply delighted to be there at a "live" event and many of our speakers who were due to appear in 2019 had kept the faith with us and came back. They were all lovely.
One of the highlights for me was the Crime Panel which featured women crime writers and I got to finally meet up with Kate Rhodes whose Alice Quintin books I have read since the beginning and Harriet Tyce who is a recent arrival on the crime scene, but whose books are quite brilliant with nasty twists at the end which catch you out big time.
Toby Faber gave us a talk on his recently published history of the founding of Faber & Faber using their archive of letters and documents was fascinating and amusing and very cool about the fact that as a child his godfather was T S Eliot.
I chaired a chat with Liz Trenow who is always a great speaker and whose latest book Secrets of the Lake is terrific. My daughter Helen McCarthy was taking part in an online talk and I found it amusing to see that her book was cheek by jowl with that of Liz in the Festival Bookshop, bearing in mind that Liz used to babysit her!
We had Jo Jo Moyes, Terry Waite, Elly Griffiths, Sally Vickers, Esther Freud and a host of others and it was all delightful and wonderful.
We had a new venue as the Orwell Hotel pulled out at the last moment and the entire Festival was in danger but Harvest House stepped in - a residential block now but a grand Edwardian Hotel in the past - and boy are we grateful to them.
So a huge success and now onto 2022 when we hope all will be back to normal.
Oh and we had one slight hiatus. One of our online speakers got his times muddled and ended up doing his talk on his mobile phone sitting on a bench outside the National Gallery. Wonderful!
I am having a restful day and catch up and hope to be back with a review or two later in the week though as Wimbledon has just started it might be slightly delayed....
No doubt the Wimbledon Rant will be back. Not sure if this is a curse or a blessing. I leave that decision up to you.
