Culture Online

One of my favourite times of the year is the Hay Literary Festival which takes place at the end of May, perfectly timed during half-term to allow me to spend a weekend or longer in the beautiful Welsh hills. This year, of course, it has not taken place but the organisers performed a miracle by putting a veritable feast of events online.

I attended some fabulous sessions, two of which I would like to share with you. I hope you find them as thought-provoking and enjoyable as I did.

Rutger Bregman - Humankind: A Hopeful History

It is a long-held belief that human beings are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest. Providing a new historical perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history, Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. When we think the worst of others, it brings out the worst in our politics and economics too. Rutger Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think and act, as the foundation for achieving true change in our society. It is time for a new view of human nature. Just published,

Humankind was obviously written before the current crisis but is extremely timely: Bregman's research has shown that, in times of crisis, there is an explosion of altruism and kindness such as we are seeing during the current pandemic. He finds that most people are decent but, as we know all too well, that power corrupts. He tells us what we know in our hearts, that some things cannot be quantified, many done by women and not counted in GDP. The 'economy' was only invented in the 1930's after the Great Depression and we have spent the last 90 years chasing after growth instead of valuing the real economy. As Bregman states, human beings tell each other stories and then become them. We have a negativity bias. Our news programmes show only too well that we only take notice of the bad things in society.

I came across this book before the Hay Festival while reading an article in the Guardian Review. While researching his book, Bregman looked inevitably to the classic book Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, first published in 1954. It tells the story of a party of school boys stranded on an island. At first a classic adventure story, the horrible twist shows the well-behaved party of schoolboys turned into a tribe of faceless, murderous savages.

This has been our expectation of human beings for time immemorial yet Bregman found a very different, true-life story which told of six Tongan teenagers who survived for 15 months on a remote, uninhabited island. Unlike in Lord of the Flies, however, this little tribe made a pact never to quarrel and were finally rescued. Read the article here.

This lecture was truly inspiring and recent events have shown that Bregman is right, most people are inherently decent. He also shows that crises are extraordinary opportunities for change - let's grab this once-in-a-generation to make change for good.

My second lecture was entitled 'Not Just Books - what is lost when libraries are lost in conflict'. This was chaired by John Simpson with Bettany Hughes, Lord Paul Boateng and Edmund de Vaal. It was inspiring to hear them describe libraries as a 'critical resource for human civilisation'. The conversation ranged from the Library of Alexandria which was destroyed by Julius Caesar's troops in 48BC, to the Iraq National Library and Archives in Baghdad destroyed in 2003. Almost every case of destruction is linked to repression and rarely accidental, it is the desire by invading or dictatorial forces to destroy a country's civilisation and it is no less true today than it was in 48BC. However, it is true to say that whenever we see destruction, there is nearly always an attempt to rebuild the library. Indeed a BBC article in 2016 highlighted a 'secret library' in Syria where enthusiasts had stocked an underground library in Syria with volumes rescued from bombed buildings - and users dodged shells and bullets to reach it. Click on the picture to read the article.

Paul Boateng runs Book Aid International, a charity dear to my heart and one I have supported in school for many years. Book Aid restocks libraries which have been destroyed. They support young readers in schools and libraries around the world, work to provide access for books to refugees, as well as providing medical and health care books to libraries, universities and hospitals around the world. You can find out more about them here and you might consider supporting their work.

Edmund de Waall has created a 'library of exile' - a 'space to sit and read and be' at the British Museum. It is an installation housing more than 2,000 books in translation, written by exiled authors. Sadly, of course, the museum is currently closed but you can explore the contents via the online catalogue.

Bettany Hughes is a passionate advocate of libraries and reflected that we may be more desperate to keep them open after COVID - let's hope that is indeed the case.

I finished an inspiring week by attending the Guardian Online Bookclub with Philip Pullman talking about his second Dark Materials trilogy The Book of Dust. Beginning with La Belle Sauvage, the story tells of Lyra's arrival in Oxford as a baby before the first trilogy. It continues in The Secret Commonwealth with her story after she has grown up and many of us are awaiting the third avidly, no publication date yet sadly.

Pullman roams around many literary connections from Milton to Spenser to Blake but also delivers rip-roaring adventures enjoyed by all ages. His books are about finding out who you are and coming to terms with your own personality. Highly recommended.