Though many are the charms of Oxfordshire, I felt compelled on Saturday to concur with the opinion of Michael Henderson, expressed in that day’s Daily Telegraph, that Derbyshire is England’s most beautiful county. Agreement was a matter settled, really, since I was reading Henderson’s column over a delicious breakfast on a sunny morning in a guest house beside a well-tended park, where a happy collie was practising with its owner what I suppose I should call ‘pawball’, in a town singled out for the writer’s praise.

An annual visit to the Buxton Festival has been an agreeable feature of my life for the past six years. I owe my happy discovery of it to Trevor Osborne, a member of its board of directors, who invited Rosemarie and me as his guests in 2009. Trevor, the developer of Oxford’s Castle site, is engaged in a long-term project to fashion a £35m spa hotel from the glorious 18th-century Crescent, which is the town’s principal architectural delight. The project should be completed in 2016.

Away from the festival there is much to enjoy. Having ‘done’ many of the obvious touristy things in previous years — including Chatsworth House, Haddon Hall and a steam train ride to Matlock — we tried this time to find something different. Highlight on Sunday was a drive through the glorious Goyt Valley, past Errwood Reservoir, during which I noted with amazement that the many cyclists we saw had almost all been able to accomplish the prodigious climbs it presented without getting off their machines. We were later to observe some again, enjoying pints of Robinson’s bitter (much needed) at the Cat and Fiddle on the Buxton to Macclesfield road. Situated 1,689 feet above sea level, this is the second highest pub in England. (The highest, at 1,732ft, is the Tan Hill Inn in Swaledale, which I have also visited.)

On Saturday morning I made a journey into the past with a drive to Hathersage, which I last visited in 1970 while being taught the journalist’s craft in Sheffield. I had been an enthusiastic user of its outdoor swimming pool, which is still in use and now heated, and a regular attender at its weekly folk club. One act I saw there was The Humblebums, composed of two men later to find much greater fame individually. One was Gerry Rafferty, who went on to give the world Baker Street; the other was Billy Connolly, who turned to comedy when he realised that his spoken introductions were lasting rather longer than the songs.

Oxford Mail:
The Cat and Fiddle, England's second highest pub

Departure to Hathersage had to be delayed until late morning to permit my attendance at the festival’s first literary event. This was a talk by the admirable John Julius Norwich about his new book containing a selection of the letters he received from his mother, Lady Diana Cooper. With no beating about the bush, Lord Norwich told his rapt audience at once that she was not, as was supposed during her lifetime, the daughter of the 8th Duke of Rutland but rather a result of his duchess’s affair with the notorious philanderer Harry Cust. This possibly made him, Norwich added, a relation of Margaret Thatcher, whose own family tree is thought by some also to feature a branch supplied by Cust.

Among many amusing stories Norwich related, one concerned Randolph Churchill, the son of the great prime minister, whose irritating garrulity on a wartime mission had been dealt with by his colleague Evelyn Waugh with a wager that challenged him to read the whole of the Bible in a week. Churchill completed the reading, which was accompanied by his frequent exclamations: “God, what a s**t God is!”

Lord Norwich was introduced by the festival’s chairman, Dame Janet Smith. Away from matters cultural, this retired High Court judge has an almost unparalleled record as an investigator of iniquity as the compiler of reports into, first, the activities of serial killer Dr Harold Shipman and more recently — indeed, her findings have yet to be published — those of the abuser Jimmy Savile.

The main draw for me at Buxton is its operas. This year we are being given a real rarity in Antonin Dvorak’s The Jacobin, conducted by the festival’s artistic director Stephen Barlow, whose wife Joanna Lumley always lends lustre through her presence. The other principal offering is Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice in a production that updates the action to the rock ’n’ roll era of today and shows us paradise in the shape of a beach.

My reviews of both can be found on The Oxford Times website. For festival information go to buxtonfestival.co.uk