Book Festival reviews: Peter Burke | Michael Palin | Neil Gaiman | Chris Riddell

HOW we look at the past can tell us a great deal about the present. As inflation rose in the 1920s, the history of price came to the fore. In the 1950s, with the world population soaring, demographics was born.

Now, the growth area is the history of knowledge. And who better to guide us through the information age than Peter Burke, professor emeritus of cultural history at Cambridge University, author of the two-volume A Social History of Knowledge?

Looking at the present in light of the past brings a few surprises. For one thing, information overload is nothing new. The cry of the frustrated reader: “So many books, so little time”, was expressed as early as 1550, while the printing press was still a new invention. And perhaps we spend too much time worrying about how to find trustworthy information in the digital age. Wikipedia pages come with “health warnings” about incomplete citations, Prof Burke said, but printed encyclopaedias should have them too.

Trustworthy information is a major concern of Michael Palin’s second novel, The Truth. Fallen-on-hard-times journalist Keith Mabbut is given an opportunity to revitalise his career when he writes the biography of environmentalist Hamish Melville. But as he starts his research, he has to disentangle fact from fiction.

In this sell-out event, talk quickly turned from fiction to fact, to Palin’s Monty Python adventures and subsequent career as a television presenter. He recalled his first visit to the Fringe in 1964, part of an Oxford revue group called The Etceteras, where he cut his teeth as a comedy writer.

The audience were after more up-to-date facts, however, concerning the news that fellow Python John Cleese has just got married for the fourth time. Perhaps, Palin ventured good-humouredly, he was trying to upstage Eric Idle’s performance at the Olympics closing ceremony.

Another sell-out crowd was in the main theatre half an hour later to hear Neil Gaiman and illustrator Chris Riddell speak about their collaboration on Gaiman’s novel, Coraline. It felt like a kind of tenth birthday party for the book, with several hundred friends in attendance.

Gaiman spoke about his inspiration; Riddell delighted the audience by drawing, live, while Gaiman read from the book. A school librarian chipped in to say that Coraline is one of her most frequently stolen titles – surely a fitting tribute.