I ‘did’ fifteen events in almost as many days at Ilkley Literature Festival this year. They ranged from chairing an ‘in conversation with’ the mischievous and beguiling Fay Weldon whose stylish satire The Spa Decameron had me chuckling for several days. Poet and children’s writer Kevin Crossley-Hollland kept his young audience enthralled as he talked about his latest book Gatty’s Tale, and nature writer Richard Mabey enthused about the secret lives of beech trees to a packed audience.

Oddly the only event that made me nervous was with Libby Purves; not because she was scary, quite the reverse. She was absolutely lovely with a fund of interesting and funny anecdotes. I think it was because I found myself interviewing The Interviewer whose voice had been part of my life for so many years on Radio 4.

Iain Banks, Blake Morrison, Adam Thorpe and John Julius Norwich were all fascinating , as were Virginia Nicholson and Rupert Christiansen, and rarely have I heard an audience laugh quite so much as when I chaired Dom Joly and John O’Farrell.

But two of my favourite events were my conversation with Sue Townsend whose funniness and political engagement and passion were a beacon of inspiration, and then the dramatic magic created by actor Joe Williams and his trio of young players in their re-creation of the world and writings of eighteenth century freed slave and abolitionist Olaudah Equinao. Pure sorcery.