Across the literary pages: a Londoner’s diary

Don’t be fooled by the incessant rain and your resurgent rheumatism, the summer literary festival season is upon us. The line-up at the Hay Festival is old news; the hotels of Edinburgh are preparing; and anticipation fills tea rooms from Warwick to St. Ives.

The festival market is flooded, but there is one new festival to which I will draw your attention. It is in London, so you may be able to go to it at the drop of a hat. The team responsible for Way With Words (the very highly regarded show in Devon) are taking over the canopy of Opera Holland Park from 18th to 20th May. It will be more relaxed than the flesh-pits of Cheltenham, Oxford and Aldeburgh, offering only a few choice speakers per day.

Festival regulars such as P.D. James, Penelope Lively, Maureen Lipman and John McCarthy will attend, together with men of the moment, Jeremy Paxman and Evan Davies. The highlight, though, is Jung Chang, author of the hugely successful and hugely long Wild Swans, which has just been reprinted.

Individual tickets cost £12 and a day pass will set you back £50. It is expensive, but the setting alone will make it worth the money – nearly. The gates open at 11am.

If that doesn’t tickle you fancy, then I can recommend the forthcoming exhibition at Lambeth Palace. It charts the devotional relationship between the monarchy and the Book of Common Prayer, and the Church of England more generally. There are diverting, almost whimsical items among the exhibits. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s annotated Order of Service from the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton sticks in the mind, particularly his immaculate handwriting in green ink – it had to be green, didn’t it?

Next to those fascinating trifles are books and documents with a provenance that extends back over 500 years. The single most extraordinary piece is a vibrantly decorated book of hours alleged to have been left by Richard III in his tent at Bosworth Field.

But, as you skip around the books and papers in Lambeth’s Great Hall, you will emerge with a sense of how important the Prayer Book is in our island story – and how so much of the historical idea of English exceptionalism is rooted in transparent myths. I did not know, for instance, that Cranmer’s sacred Prayer Book, which has defined so much of our language, was a close translation of crude Catholic medieval liturgy. See why for yourself.