Sir – This year’s Oxford Literary Festival offered many treats and the novelty of using central landmark buildings.


But the decision not to have the great food, drink, mini-lecture and bookshop marquee in the meadow was, by common consent, seen as a drawback — not to say a catastrophic psychological howler by the organisers.


True you could still buy an author’s book at their lecture and hot drinks (and seating) were available for about 20 people at a time in the bland JCR — but gone was the great socialising, book-browsing, meeting-place mecca to which we had become so pleasantly attached. Did nobody think of us? What a mess.
By no stretch of the imagination were the alternatives offered at all satisfactory; and, when you consider rival book fairs, this year Oxford will have ‘slipped down the league’, and rightly so, because of misjudging the tastes of its loyal followers.
Austerity and want of empathy can be taken too far, you know!
I must also assert that lecture rooms should be cleaned every day (including weekends) and the two rooms I was in on the final Sunday seemed as chilly as United’s South Stand — not at all the way to welcome our Hollywood star, Stephanie Powers. General unpreparedness left her starting late and having to truncate her talk. I know this upset her. She expected better: and so, shivering, did we. A pity. Please consider the punters next year.
Patrick Snaith, Oxford