BREEZILY drop into conversation at an early July dinner party that you’ve spent the previous weekend festivaling in the West Country, and let your host imagine you jostling to the Arctic Monkeys at Worthy Farm, warm cider in hand and face bedecked in glow paint.
The truth, of course, for any sane Fielder, will have been a different sort of festival at the end of June, an hour-and-a-bit back down the A303 heading east from Glastonbury. The Chalke History Festival in the Wiltshire village of Broad Chalke, nestled below the ancient chalk downs, is a place where panamas – not bucket hats – abound, where red trousers are de rigueur, and where vintage tents fill with those savvy enough to have bagged tickets for speakers from Private Eye editor Ian Hislop to historian Dan Snow.
“You can be standing at the bar and on one side you have a Roman legionary and on the other you have a Second World War Tommy. It is quite surreal but it has its own unique charm,” says James Holland, who cofounded the festival with fellow historianin 2011 – originally to raise funds for the local cricket club – with talks and debates but also live music and historical performances. Here is just one of a crop of setups that gives ‘festival’ a reassuringly civilised meaning.
