David Baddiel packed out a school hall for Saturday’s opening session of the Proms at St Jude's Lit Fest.
In conversation with Devorah Baum, the Hampstead comedian and author told the honest, moving and excruciatingly funny story of his mother’s idiosyncratic sex life.
The audience in Hampstead Garden Suburb loved every minute although Dame Henrietta Barnett could never have imagined that some of the more descriptive phrases from My Family: The Memoir would ever be uttered in her beloved school.
Royal biographer Robert Hardman provided a moving look into the last days of Queen Elizabeth when he talked to Simon Lewis about his latest work Charles III: New King. New Court.
The wealth of detail was remarkable while never intrusive. Particularly poignant was the moment Charles learned his mother had died. He’d left her Balmoral bedside to let her rest. Summoned urgently to return while picking mushrooms, he was greeted on the phone for the first time by the words “Your Majesty”. Nothing more needed to be said.
Award-winning cookery expert Fuchsia Dunlop revealed that in China cuisine is so important that strangers are often greeted not with “How do you do?” or “Pleased to meet you” but with “Have you eaten?”
She then took her audience on a gourmet journey into the way Chinese food is made cooked and consumed and revered in its homeland.
As she says in her book Invitation to a Banquet, it’s a world away from the commercialised Cantonese variety that has taken over the planet.
How to write a crime thriller? It’s a mystery to many but one that was unpicked by three writers at the top of their game.
Erin Kelly (The Poison Tree) Claire Douglas (The Couple at No 9) and Amy McCulloch (Breathless) operate in very different ways. But all agreed that the secret of success – apart from an occasional flash of inspiration – is sheer hard work.
Sathnam Sanghera was unprepared for the large turnout that greeted him at the start of the festival’s second (very sunny) day. The journalist and author told them “I’m surprised you all here and not out there enjoying the weather.”
The audience, however, clearly thought they were in the right place as Sanghera discussed his latest work, Empireworld. His exploration of the impact the British Empire had on the rest of the world led to a lively Q&A session. Was it all bad? What were the positives? – questions that will probably never be fully answered.
In the early 1960s a wind of change from the north swept the Beatles and soon-to-be PM Harold Wilson into the heart of stuffy and stagnating post-war Britain.
Many in the audience had their own memories of events returned to life by David Kynaston as he discussed his new book A Northern Wind with broadcaster David Aaronovitch.
From the Cuban missile crisis to the Profumo affair and the death of Winston Churchill, Kynaston painted a vivid social history. Much of his material came from unpublished diaries – written not by decision makers but by those who merely watched. Fascinating stuff.
Journalist Tobias Buck’s Final Verdict raised questions about memory justice and collective and personal guilt.
Covering the trial of 93-year-old Bruno Dey, conscripted as a concentration camp guard at the age of 17, he was forced to ask himself: “What would I have done?”
The dilemma was further complicated by the discovery that his own grandfather had been a member of the SS.
Lit Fest favourite Dame Jenni Murray closed the event in conversation with Clair Wills, whose detective story memoir Missing Persons is a history of unmarried motherhood through three generation of an Irish family.
A moving, exquisitely told story, it asked how could a family – and a whole country – could abandon unmarried mothers and their children and erase them from history?
LitFest chair Niamh O’Donnell-Keenan was delighted with the weekend. She said: “Proms LitFest had a great range of authors and interviewers and each session was a 'must see'. Our audiences loved it .
Proms at St Jude's Concerts continue until 30 June with a family festival on 30 June. For more information and tickets Promsatstjudes.org.uk
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