Saturday, 6 October saw a group of us heading to the Cheltenham Literary Festival.

Those fortunate enough to attend, accompanied by Mrs Caiger-Smith and Dr Mickleborough, had the great opportunity to see Philip Pullman, a man who, we discovered, not only has an incontrovertible flair for the written word but an innate ability to charm and captivate an audience into complete amusement and understanding.Pullman’s natural intellect didn’t fail to reveal itself during his talk on the subject of his new book, ‘Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm’.

Earlier in the day we fought through enormous herds of people in order to enter The Times Debate, ‘Is Britain Still Great?’, led by four well accomplished members of the British community, including, former Secretary of State for justice, Jack Straw, whom some of us were able to meet and proceeded to ask questions which we had thought up during the debate.

Despite missing the chance to see JK Rowling and Rupert Everett by just a day, I think we can safely say that this was an extremely informative and engaging day out for all those who were present.