This article is taken from the October 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

Some time ago Private Eye produced a quite funny parody of that year’s Cheltenham Literature Festival programme.

The distinguished literary journalist John Walsh would be interviewing A.N. Actress about her latest memoir, Ghostwritten. Sir Michael Palin would reminisce about yaks he had befriended on the road to Tibet. The very last entry ran: “‘My Interesting New Novel” with Barry Witter (cancelled due to lack of interest)”.

The Secret Author remembered this entertaining burlesque as he sat down to contemplate The Times’ announcement of this autumn’s roster. “Dench amongst treasures at Cheltenham book festival,” declared the headline, above the revelation that “Richard Osman’s murders, Dame Judi Dench’s Shakespeare and Sir Geoff Hurst’s goals are amongst the highlights”. We were further informed that “in a show of support for Britain’s literary cultures, a medley of the world’s greatest writers, entertainers and sports people have signed up…”

Already, the Secret Author was experiencing those tiny pangs of disquiet so common to the average literary gent when popular newspapers start talking about literary culture, a faint yet growing sense of unease that the subsequent paragraphs did nothing to relieve.

Who else was on the bill? Why, Geri Horner, the former Ms Halliwell and as such an ornament of that celebrated pop ensemble the Spice Girls, would be discussing her journey from Tin Pan Alley to writing for children.

Meanwhile, the musicians “likely to attend” included Neneh Cherry, Russell Watson, Rick Astley and Radiohead’s bass player Colin Greenwood, who is to be interviewed by the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage.

The offering of “national treasures” naturally extends to Sir Michael, but also has space for Miriam Margolyes, Celia Imrie, Alison Steadman and Miranda Hart. At which point the Secret Author threw the newspaper on the floor and returned to his perusal of Stefan Collini and Francis Mulhern’s What is Cultural Criticism? (Verso), an interesting little book that has not so far attracted the reviews it deserves.

The foregoing is, of course, horribly unfair. In fact, as a re-read of the Times article soon disclosed, a decent number of, you know, proper writers (as opposed to celebs who have written a book or commanded someone to write one for them) will be in attendance.

Why does it have to be packed out with the usual collection of scene-swellers and old lags?

Barbara Kingsolver and Alan Hollinghurst will be treading the boards alongside David Nicholls and Ian Rankin, and there is space for those thespians who can hold a pen, such as Rupert Everett, whose collection of short stories sounds as if it might be pretty good.

On the other hand, it might be argued that if this is advertised as a “literature festival” then why does it have to be packed out with the usual collection of scene-swellers and old lags, and why can’t Radiohead’s bass-player interview the Poet Laureate rather than the other way around?

Alas, the reasons are self-evident. These are tough times for book festivals, several of which are still reeling from the Baillie Gifford row, the result of various weak-minded speakers being persuaded to threaten a boycott unless the sponsors divested themselves of their minuscule per centage of fossil fuel investments. It is jolly good of the Times and the Sunday Times to underwrite Cheltenham, and we should all be grateful to them, even if it means the importation of one or two people responsible for what the classicists used to call biblia abiblia — books that are not books. Naturally if two prominent national newspapers are going to sponsor a festival, they are going to want to see ticket sales soar.

Here, of course, we come to the heart of the matter. The only way to keep large arts festivals solvent is to pack them out with celebs. Were you to advertise a symposium on the experimental novel, the refreshment tents would simply pack up in disgust.

The Secret Author once took part in a discussion in Cheltenham Town Hall with a cabinet minister and various media-world luminaries. Eight hundred people attended, and not a single book was sold. There is no point in being bitter about this. It is what the public wants, and — who knows? — half-a-dozen punters might just have gone home and looked up one’s darling oeuvre on Amazon.

If there is a wider truth here, it is that the old-style literary world, having more or less disappeared, can take a mild satisfaction in seeing the ghost of its former self kept precariously alive by events such as this year’s Cheltenham bunfight. The crumbs that fall from its table are some slight consolation for an otherwise general neglect.

As it happens the Secret Author will be present, in a minor capacity, in Gloucestershire next month. What he is really looking forward to is a gig in an obscure seaside town a few weeks later. There will probably be only 20 or 30 people present, and the number of their purchases may only rise to half-a-dozen, but to adapt a remark that Johnny Rotten once made about the Sex Pistols, they mean it, man.