I was fortunate to be able to attend the Blenheim Literary Festival recently. Set in beautiful Capability Brown landscaped grounds, the Palace provides a stunning backdrop to the event, which featured many of the nation’s best loved writers and personalities.

Nicholas Parsons– as delightful and charming in real life as he is on radio and television – gave a talk on the life and work of Edward Lear which managed to be informative and very amusing at the same time. He impressed his enthusiastic audience speaking for an entire hour without any reference to notes at all, making several long (and error free, I should add) recitations of favourites such as The Pobble who had No Toes, The Owl and the Pussycat, and The Jumblies.

Lord Owen provided a complete contrast in the next talk as he discussed his fascinating account of the meetings of the May 1940 War Cabinet Cabinet’s Finest Hour: The Hidden Agenda of May 1940. He then took questions on topics as wide ranging as the situation in Syria and how it might be resolved, and his views on the future of the NHS.

On a different – but wholly appropriate note given the setting – I also thoroughly enjoyed the talk given by Adrian Tinniswood on The Long Weekend – Life in the English Country House Between the Wars for the glimpse that it gave of the decadent ways of the aristocracy.

The same sort of luxurious living (albeit post) was also fully on display in Justine Picardie’s account of Dior at Blenheim, which told how he showed off his New Look to fashion hungry debutantes and socialites in two fabulous fashion shows put on to raise money for the Red Cross in the 1950s. Justine herself, who had clearly fallen under the spell of not just the clothes, but also the Palace, was a main mover behind the reprise of this evening earlier in the year, and I for one will be watching the Palace website in the coming season to see if it repeated in 2017. –