Chalke Hist Fest – Tuesday
This is Solstice-Land in June after all and so waking up at 5am because of the light is to be expected. A couple of hours dozing as the lightest of rain tapped at the canvas above and I emerge for a remarkably warm shower. Having gone to sleep shortly after 11 to the sound of Duolingo in the tent next door, I was surprised to find two teenagers (together the spit of Millais’ The Princes in the Tower) still sword fighting and leaping from bench to bench as I headed towards the coffee van.
Schoolchildren are enrolled into the Union Army
On site, the secondary schoolkids were milling through, an unexpected amount of enthusiasm for the talks and displays on offer. 1,500 children are supposed to attend these first few mornings – I fail to see why we never came from school before I remember it has been a shocking eleven years since I left, not very long after the festival began. The press tent remained quiet all morning but for the occasional photographers’ mutters as they curse their upload speeds.
It was Michael Palin for starters then! National treasure was the epithet on the punters’ lips – he did not disappoint the audience spilling out onto the concourse. Like watching your favourite film in the run-up to Christmas, it was cosy and relaxed, precisely what it said on the tin. Focused on his latest dairies spanning 1999 to 2009, the Python covered Hemingway, Himalayas and South Africa. Esacpades included bull’s testicles, windows falling down and bemusing the Venezuelan military with the fish-slapping dance. Aside from the many giggles, the takeaway was that there is a difference between travelling and holidaying – many of the audience no doubt patting themselves on the back for falling into the former category.
It behoves a first-time partaker in the rites of Chalke to see one the festival’s Maecenases (is that the plural?!), Tom Holland, in action – not least if he is set to talk about the Caesars and his new translation of Suetonius! Bringing it back to his formative years spent snooping about in this very valley, Church Bottom, for the ghost of a Roman centurion on order from the classically-minded vicar of the village, Holland spanned the 200-year succession of Caesar’s and the fringes of the Empire. Starting with Vespasian, his campaigning in Britannia and Titus’ exploits in Judaea, he painted a splendid portrait of Rome’s favourite biographer, his trip to Vindolanda with Hadrian and eventual fall from favour.
A treat awaited at the end of the day as Sam Leith skipped through the centuries of childhood literature. Summing up The Haunted Wood, the diverting ride began with (not so diverting) Calvinist anti-play primers on morals through to the madness of Lewis Carroll as a mark in the sand, from Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies to the alleged ‘larceny’ of JK Rowling (“She Who Must Not Be Named”). The Spectator’s literary editor possesses a obvious mastery of his source materials, whizzing through and dissecting several titles at a time, details about authors and their motives coming out of his ears. This proficiency is matched only by his cutting, occasionally acerbic and often poignant, insights on the books that first mould the adult readers of the future.
Zebedee Baker-Smith is Books Editor at Aspects of History. Head to the CHF site here.
