Aye Write reviews: Chris Tarrant | Laura Bates & Harriet Johnson | Jess Phillips | Gulhumar Haitiwaji

In spite of cancellations, this year’s Aye Write shows the key role book festivals can play in bringing important stories to light, writes David Robinson

Gulbahar Haitiwaji

I’m beginning to worry about book festivals. Yes, I know the pandemic is only just in the rearview mirror and book festivals’ predominantly white-haired demographic tend to be a cautious bunch, even when the country isn’t already in the middle of a cost of living crisis.

All the same, on the middle Saturday of Aye Write I didn’t expect to find the event with that fine doctor and writer Gavin Francis cancelled. Who has a better perspective on the pandemic than a GP who has worked through it and whose latest book is all about recovery? Robert Hardman’s event was also scrapped through lack of interest – even though the subject of his latest book is just three weeks away from celebrating her Platinum Jubilee.

Then there was Chris Tarrant, telling unmemorable showbiz tales to a nine-tenths empty Mitchell Theatre. Today Is Saturday: Watch And Smile – the original title of his Tiswas children’s TV show in the 1970s – never felt less apt.

So what worked? The rage of feminist activist Laura Bates and barrister Harriet Johnson against the root causes of violence against women was wide-ranging, eloquent and convincing. Home Secretary Priti Patel, said Johnson, has done so little to boost conviction rates for rape that it comes close to decriminalising it.

Labour MP Jess Phillips took aim at Patel too, winning over a packed audience with streetwise Brummie charm, honesty and idealism.

Best of all was Gulhumar Haitiwaji. No, I hadn’t heard of her either. But her mother Gulbahar’s story of life inside a Chinese brainwashing "re-education” camp for Uyghurs is the first such memoir in English. We need to hear stories like these – basically, Orwell’s 1984 come to life – just as we need book festivals to continue to provide them.