We must be getting old, or so it seems. A few years ago festival fatigue would have taken much longer to set in, but come Monday night we awaken from a long lie in, breakfast in the sunshine and solitude of our base in Craswall, and mosey on down into Hay for a lunchtime session of Tessa Dunlop for me and a bit of stewarding duty for Pete. Tessa doesn’t fail to impress, despite her intended companion Pamela Rose (a 93 year old Bletchley Park girl) having been hospitalised the day before (get well soon Pamela!), she brings the whole era to life, is animated and captivating as she recounts the stories of the fifteen ladies (or girls) she had spent a year interviewing and getting to know, before publishing her book, The Bletchley Park Girls. When asked how difficult it was to keep e secrets they had, one of the ‘girls’ simply replied ‘it wasn’t difficult, because no-one ever asked what women did for the war effort’.

My next session was equally educational, as Amitav Ghosh gave us a quick historical insight on how the opium trade formed the foundation of the capitalist economy in the nineteenth century. His new book Flood of Fire is a follow up to River of Smoke and Sea of Poppies and has taken him ten years to complete. Ghosh explored a plethora of little known words as he takes delight in exploring sound and language in his literature, (I now know the original meaning of ‘doolally’, hilarious!) I am adding the fascinating trilogy to my ever growing pile of ‘must reads’.