Even in bad weather, literary festivals can be magical: the gentle tap of rain on canvas as an audience tunes in to what it hopes will be another scintillating conversation. For some, this is a chance to clap eyes on a beloved author, and perhaps to have a favourite paperback signed. For others, this is the place for discovering new voices, and afterwards to read their work, hot off the press, in a deckchair with a cup of tea (or something stronger). Questions are asked. Connections are made. Children are handsomely accommodated, whether they want to meet the Gruffalo or to climb the pyramids with Greg Jenner. In 2024, such gatherings are as vital and as pleasing a part of the nation’s cultural diary as the FA Cup or the Proms – the only difference being that, in most cases, they cost a great deal less to attend.
But for how much longer will they exist, at least in their present form? Last week, following a campaign by the organisation Fossil Free Books, the investment fund Baillie Gifford announced it was to end its remaining sponsorship deals with literary festivals.
Such news was, perhaps, predictable. The Hay festival and the Edinburgh international book festival had already cancelled their arrangements with Baillie Gifford: Julie Finch, the chief executive of the former, said somewhat bizarrely that it wanted to guarantee the “freedom of our stages and spaces for open debate”; Jenny Niven, the director of the latter, spoke of the “intolerable pressure” on her staff. It was surely only a matter of time before Baillie Gifford walked away. Nevertheless, the anger, disappointment and anxiety among both the public and in publishing circles was – and is – widespread, and very real.
Baillie Gifford’s precise sins are hard to fathom. While Fossil Free Books claims that the firm is implicated in “fossil fuels, genocide and colonial violence”, its links to Israel seem only to comprise small investments in multinational companies such as Amazon and Meta, while only 2% of its overall portfolio is in fossil fuels (it invests far more in green energy).
But the bigger problem now lies with the future. Other potential sponsors – assuming they exist, which is moot, if one considers funding for the arts overall – are bound to ask themselves: does the business exist that is good enough – pure enough – for these campaigners? Big, democratic festivals are going to shrink, others may wither on the vine, and we will all be the poorer for it, including those writers whose threatened boycotts of some festivals precipitated Baillie Gifford’s exit.
The UK’s book festivals are part of an extremely fragile ecosystem. It has taken decades of hard work on the part of their organisers, as well as armies of local volunteers, to get them to where they are now, popular and vibrant. In an age of austerity, cuts and social fragmentation, their contribution to literacy and good mental health is increasingly significant. In a society where soft censorship is rife and free-thinking often shouted down, they provide a forum in which it’s possible to debate and disseminate difficult, controversial ideas. But if they’re important to their communities, their value to writers, and therefore to literature itself, is also crucial. Only a very few authors can afford to turn down an invitation to a festival, should they be lucky enough to get one. Sales of books, and of literary novels in particular, are vanishingly small; a couple of thousand copies sold will get you on the bestseller list. Most writers struggle to make a living.
Don’t we know by now that what we lose, we never get back? Since 2010, almost 800 libraries have closed their doors, a fifth of the total. They sit, sad and empty, awaiting an offer from a hotel chain or developer. Whatever their original intentions, the activists and celebrity supporters of Fossil Free Books are in effect campaigning against both charitable organisations that do only good work in this country, and the life of its mind. They should be careful what they wish for.
