There is an important but barely known  political-intellectual movement in Britain that is independent of parties, not influenced by offshore-owned newspapers and ignored by the BBC. Yet it

is bringing together thousands of people each month to discuss political ideas, often challenging ones. Britain’s ever growing network of book festivals has been a curious phenomenon that

really took off in the 21st century.  The big famous ones — Hay, Cheltenham, Oxford, Edinburgh — are still there, but now ooze establishment self-importance. The “star” at this year’s Hay

Festival was Theresa May, who writes about as well as she spoke in the House Commons. She was a poor Home Secretary. She voted Remain but then said she would “Make Brexit Work”. She

It had more intellectually provocative speakers, ranging from General David Petraeus (who has lost more wars than any other 4 star US general) to Sir Simon Wessley, always challenging on

mental health, to Thangam Debbonaire, the concert-level classical cellist slated to be our next Culture Secretary. We all owe a debt of thanks to the organisers of the two Hay festivals, as

there now more than 100 book or literary or speakers’ festivals ranging from Tring to Deptford. There will be one close to where you live, dear reader, this week. A big crowd turned up at

the Lewes Speakers’ Festival to hear Will Hutton, the economics intellectual who has toiled in the barren fields of reformist, practical economic policy on the Left for half a century, pitch

ideas for Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves. He was followed by Tom Baldwin, who has written a serious, well-researched biography of Starmer, based on deep research and interviews. Baldwin

is light years from meretricious smear narratives of Angela Rayner’s life or in its day the notorious David Cameron biography starring a pig. That is the attraction of all the British books

festivals, old and new, which no other country in Europe can match. They allow the interested citizen to confront top politicians, writers and thinkers, without intermediation by the BBC or

literary editors, with their small coteries of preferred authors and reviewers. Bernard Pivot was a French literary journalist who each year did a _dictée_ – a dictation test which millions

of French undertook live on television. More importantly, every Friday night he pulled together five or six authors of new books that he linked together. It was pedagogic, penetrating and

(small “p”) political. Bernard Pivot, french journalist, interviewer and tv host, (Shutterstock) Pivot has just died and has yet to be replaced, but we have never in Britain elevated books

to the same importance they have in French or German life. Instead we have literary festivals which are more demotic. They allow anyone to come and hear in the flesh a writer and ask

questions directly. In a very British way, they are set up and run by networks of enthusiasts and volunteers as well as dedicated, usually underpaid professionals. Festivals provide a rare

platform in an increasingly insular, inward-looking, solipsistic Britain. They are a standing rebuke to Brexit, which meant the repudiation of the most important, widest-ranging treaty ever

negotiated and signed in more than seven centuries of international treaties in the history of first, English, then British international relations. The network of British intellectuals,

researchers, and foreign correspondents who think and write on the world beyond our shores are put on parade along with historians, philosophers, and novelists at our book and speakers

festivals. There are sessions on food, gardening, fashion. There is popular history, like the annual book by  Sir Max Hastings on a WW2 battle, invariably written from the British point of

view. Book festivals are also where our novelists — who toil in loneliness with just the white page or blank screen for company to produce the books who tell us who we are or where we came

from — come out of their cells and meet their readers in the flesh. Such festivals also allow smaller cities and towns to assert their existence and status independent of the big cities of

over-centralised Britain. Thangam Debbonnaire is likely to be Britain’s next Culture Secretary, unless the worryingly increasingly anti-semitic Greens succeed in dislodging her from her

Bristol seat where she became the first MP of colour in South West England. She trained as a classical cellist and played professionally in the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic for three years.

She would be the first professional artist to be Culture Secretary. Thangam Debbonaire (Shutterstock) There may be free tickets to all the best theatres, concert halls, opera houses,

Wembley, Twickenham and Wimbledon, but the unenviable task of the Culture Secretary is to divide up a tiny budget amongst all the outstretched hand of the ever-needy world of artists. Ms

Debonnaire should keep a small eye out for Britain’s marvellous network of books festivals. In our cold sunless northern European nation, called _Das Land ohne Musik_ by Germans around 1900,

books have defined and held together over decades and centuries the four English nations in the first European union in a single state structure: the United Kingdom. Prime ministers since

Margaret Thatcher have tended to be philistines. Our book festivals prove that the people are not. _Denis_ _ MacShane was Labour’s Minoster for Europe. His latest book is “Labour Takes

Power. The _ _Denis_ _ MacShane Diaries 1997-2001” Biteback Publishing. _ A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an

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