Page 281 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024
P. 281
18 June 2024
“Festivals are not always attractive,” wrote EM Forster looking back
on the first Aldeburgh Festival in 1949. “Sometimes they are just an
excuse for overcharging.”
Had Forster been staying in Aldeburgh for this year’s Festival he
may have taken umbrage with some of the accommodation
charges or balked at a High Street café charging a bewildering
£9.50 for a jacket potato and a topping.
No matter. Seventy-four years after EM Forster talked in the Baptist
Chapel on Aldeburgh High Street, he’d have been pleased to see
what he wrote then still holds true now. Coming to the
th
75 Aldeburgh Festival this year – an annual trip that is fast
becoming some of a pilgrimage for Thoroughly Good – some
things appear different whilst others remain resolutely and
reassuringly the same.
LASTING LEGACY
My week-long trip has seen a convergence of past and present – a
family of friends, present-day and former colleagues, convening to
experience a special event that honours its founding principles in
