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.

11-12 noon: Dalrymple’s India. An hour of William Dalrymple presenting some highlights of the last five years of his work on the book “The Anarchy: The Fall of the Mughal Empire and the Rise of the East India Company”. He had some fascinating stories and related them to the current death throes of the British empire and the prevalence of global corporations that appear beyond the law (Facebook vs. East India Company, etc.) 

12.30-1.30pm: Up Against The Wall: real-life Narcos, Trump’s wall, etc.

Out of the dimly-lit hotel, and back to the sunny fields of the main festival area.

2-3pm: Return to Libya. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hisham Matar and the Irish Times’ Paris Correspondent Lara Marlowe talking about the truth behind the disappearance of Matar’s father. Without wishing to appear callous, it didn’t hold my interest well… not due to the subject, but I just didn’t find the interviewing style engaging.

3.30-4.30pm: On a bit of a downer from the last talk, I went to a performance of four 15-minute slots by different people:

• Anne Enright talking about something I’ve long since forgotten.
• Martha West, who gave an excellent performance of some of her poems about growing up – a real highlight.
• Lucy Siegle talking about fast fashion.
• Finally, a dessert course of William Dalrymple talking about the Coptic influence on the Celtic church.

To be honest, I wish I’d had a liquid lunch as it might have taken the edge off the afternoon nicely. As it was, I decided to call it a day on the talks after that.

Straight off the Dublin ferry at 5am, we made our way through the quiet streets towards Boris. We weren’t allowed to show up until early afternoon, but thankfully friends in Kildare were awake enough that we could visit them along the way. I was towing the Cabanon trailer tent, which added to the fun and games.

When we finally pitched up in Borris, the hard standing was basically a car park with some fine gravel on it.  The neighbours were very friendly, especially one we spent a good deal of time with.  She even made us tea in the mornings, and we shared our banana bread.  The camping facilities were woeful, unfortunately.  For a festival that’s not really aimed at the same demographic as Electric Picnic or Glastonbury, they really should have provided enough portaloos and ensured that they were hygenic throughout – at one point they’d run out of running water. 

The shower was a converted horse box, which obviously struck someone as quirky and fun at the time, but was heavily over-subscribed.  The only thing in its favour was that I met some interesting people while queuing for it in the mornings. 

There were a number of speakers on at any given time slot, so choosing was quite difficult with some of them.  Thankfully the same speakers gave different talks throughout the weekend, so if there was one particular person you wanted to see, it would probably be possible if you weren’t so worried about their topic.   

The Friday programme was quite speaker-packed, despite the shorter time available.

4-5pm: The West Cork Podcast crew discussed their true crime reporting of the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder case. It would probably have helped to have been following their series, but I’d read about the case before at least. If I’m honest, I found it a bit ghoulish, but what could you expect?

5.15 – 6.15pm: Crimes against humanity? Philippe Sands discussing the road from Nuremburg to now with the great Fintan O’Toole.

6.30 – 7.30pm: Water off a duck’s back? Carl Bernstein, Martin Amis and Ed Vulliamy discussing the difficulty of reporting on scandals nowadays when investigative journalists are branded ‘enemies of the people’.

7.30 – 8.30pm: The Misinformation Age: Simon Schama, Misha Glenny and Fintan O’Toole talking about the survival of democracy in a world run by algorithms.

Drinking then ensued.