West Cork Literary Festival - Event questions

The West Cork Literary Festival centred on Bantry is one of the blue rib and events of the Irish cultural year partnering some of the nation’s, and the world’s, leading writers and thinkers with readers and seekers of knowledge.

Its watchword is a pleasing informality and lack of stuffiness.

The closing event, and sell-out draw for more than 400 people, was a discussion with Sam Bungey and Jennifer Forde, makers of the podcast hit West Cork concerning the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder.

Setting aside the academic debate about whether a podcast can be literature, this was attended by an engaged and well-informed audience.

Yet, it must be imagined by design, there was no scope or time for questions which is antithetical to the spirit of such events where ordinary people have the opportunity to raise points that interest them.

It is possible to perceive that there may have been difficulties in throwing the subject open, but they should not have been insurmountable.

Indeed one of the objectives of the documentary makers is to elicit new information ahead of the trial in absentia in France this autumn (and three or four more episodes from them).

Participation is a fundamental component of literary festivals. If this disappointing lockdown was an experiment, it is one best not repeated.