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From WH Auden to Kate Adie... 30 years on,
Frederic Manby returns to the Ilkley Literature Festival.
The cod war was at "a new fever pitch" according to the front pages and an Icelandic gunboat had fired rifles at a Hull trawler. Buckingham Palace was said to be interested in the trend to abandon the National anthem at public events but not unduly worried. The future of the cinema at Beverley was being discussed.
In Ilkley that April they were having their first literature festival. The undoubted star act was WH Auden; the poet with a face more fissured than any rock on the town's famous moor.
His refusal to read a Lesson at the inaugural church service made headlines. Wystan Hugh wanted to use the King James bible. The vicar was not feeling charitable; he insisted the New English version should be used. Auden was to die soon afterwards. The church plods on, now as fissured as the face of the great lyricist.
Other festival headliners included Margaret Drabble, Sydney Nolan, and the emerging Fay Weldon. The mood caught and it became a biennial fixture. In 1975, a woman in the audience screamed and vomited and had to be led away during the premiere of Ted Hughes' mythological and wrought Cave Birds. Definitely less demanding was an event hosted by Ilkley Leisure in Retirement Group. It didn't get reported so its content is lost.
Over the years, Ilkley heard the Liverpool beat poets, the more mainstream views of AL Rowse, Colin Welland and Stan Barstow (standing in for Melvyn Bragg who was having an op on his sinuses). Pythons Jones and Palin were there...