Festival of writing and ideas: Day 3

A gentle start with Julian Barnes (author of loads of books I really like) and Paul Muldoon (Pulitzer Prize-winner for poetry) chatting about life in a very unstructured fashion.

An excellent continuation of the day’s talks with Ed Vulliamy (journalist/writer/singer) and Fiachna Ó Braonáin (Hothouse Flowers / radio presenter) discussing Ed’s book “When Words Fail” as part of the overall topic “Musicians are the heralds of the future”. Not sure if I’d read the book, but I’d gladly go and see him talk and perform any time. Picture below is a grainy effort of a shot during their cover of Mr. Tamborine Man. The audience got behind it well.

A hard act to follow, for sure.

However, the last talk we went to on that Sunday blew the rest away… Tim Smit (do-er of stuff) was an inspiration. He talked about how he came to set up the Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Helligan, which you’d expect, but also how he went from having a very successful music career to walking away and doing something different.