The great Melbourne Writers’ Festival

Here’s the view from my 39th floor full length window at the Sofitel, Melbourne (I don’t suffer from vertigo, honest, I just want to close the shutters once this photos taken). I’m finally at the major date of this tour and at an event that is a masterclass in how to run a book festival. I’ve done lots of similar events over the years and I can tell you this: the Melbourne Writers’ Festival really is one of the best in the world. So renowned that all your author mates go green with envy the moment you tell them you’ve been blessed with an invitation.

What makes it so great? To be honest I think it’s something Australian. For starters this is called a writers festival, carefully avoiding the difficult term ‘literature’. The range of speakers is wide and deeply interesting. In town over the duration of the event you’ll find Clive James and Dave Eggers, J.M. Coetzee and A.C Grayling, David Starkey and Victoria Glendinning. Those of us working at the darker end of the library get a pretty good roll call too, Jeffery Deaver and Karin Slaughter to name but two.

There’s an utter lack of snobbery in the whole thing that seems very Aussie to me. Thriller writers rub shoulders with academics, historians with poets and political writers. More than anything though this is an event that is somehow built within the popular imagination of the city. I was taken aback by the size of the audiences when I was here three years ago. Melbourne seems to catch the ordinary reader in a way that many festivals don’t. There’s nothing clubbish or cliquey about anything here, and that is deeply refreshing.

I’m on the radio soon taping a kind of Desert Island Discs program for 3MBS Melbourne. After that it’s a session with John Lanchester on food and drink in fiction, and another panel tomorrow. I only turned up last night but the buzz is obvious. It’s great to be back.