Matt Holland, director of the Swindon Festival of Literature, looks back on two weeks of words and wonders

From the first unforgettable moment at dawn in Lawn Woods, when a lone piper stood silhouetted in the morning mist on a stone pillar high on a ridge overlooking the town and played us into May morning and a white horse with flowing mane came galloping into view from the valley below, to the last hilarious anecdote from fridge-carrying tennis player Tony Hawks at the Arts Centre 13 days later, the seventh Swindon Festival of Literature was a buzz of entertaining intellectual and emotional excitement. Terrific stuff. In fact, brilliant!

Festival of Literature is what it was called but as a 13 day celebration of life, that included dawn frolics, woodland walks, poems and pints, literary seduction, laudable lectures, secrets of consciousness, suffering scientists, crop circle capers, millennium conversations, seven summits speakers, seductive storytelling, ballads and blues, plus exploratory chat to write home about, it defied description.

In such a feast for the mind, that attracted more than 2,000 people to over forty events, half a dozen of which were sold out, highlights are hard to pick, but there were certainly some memorable moments.

Kate Adie, fresh into Swindon from reporting for the BBC from the Zimbabwean front and looking positively chic in shifting slit-skirt blue, was entertaining, eloquent, and outspoken on all things topical and tricky. She reckoned we live in an age of too much choice and fussiness, a time where if your budgie falls of its perch, you call for a counsellor.

Professor Ken Robinson, flown in from the USA, gave a riveting Clive Brain Memorial Lecture in which he warned of the dangers of teaching children in key stages, because they do not grow up in key stages.

In Ravensroost Woods on a glorious afternoon among bluebells, children and grownups were held spellbound by puppeteers and storytellers, while at the Town Hall, courageous competing poets wowed a full house and had everyone baying for more.

And there will be more literary treats in store in 2001. Mark your diary: 1 - 12 May. Meanwhile, to keep in touch with the joy of text, why not join the Literature Festival reading group. It will meet monthly in convivial surroundings with good books and good chat. For further details, telephone (01793) 771080.

www.swindonlink.com sponsored the Festival of Literature programme online. To see what you missed this year, click here.