This has been a busy month, and there hasn’t been much time to reflect that we have been publishing this magazine for 25 years. Our January issue will mark the start of a new quarter-century, so perhaps we will find ways to highlight that then. In the meantime, Margaret Drabble’s return to Bridport (see page 42) to talk with Christopher Hampton is another milestone. She was one of the inaugural literary speakers in the early days of Bridport’s Arts Centre, setting the stage for an incredible journey of cultural events for the local community. That journey continues to this day, and Margaret’s talk is a fundraiser for the arts centre’s Come Together campaign. When she first appeared, she was on a literary tour, a tradition that clearly endures, given next month’s lineup of author talks at the arts centre and nearby venues for the Bridport Literary Festival. As part of that, I began a conversation with author and journalist Jonathan Freedland about his book The Traitors Circle, a story of anti-Nazi dissenters in the Second World War (see page 44). We discussed some of the book’s themes and will continue that conversation on stage at the Electric Palace on the 14th of November. Coming not long after the results of the Israeli election and the American midterms, two potentially seismic events, we will explore how we would react if we or our neighbours were threatened by a philosophy similar to that of the Nazi regime. Remembering what happened under that regime is also timely in November, and John Davis recalls the story of All Quiet on the Western Front in his Reflections article (see page 36). Calling it one of the ‘finest anti-war books ever penned’, he reminds us that the author’s sister was beheaded simply for being his sister. Perhaps proof that the bravery of speaking the truth has never been more critical.
