More than 70,000 visitors flocked to the Lahore Literary Festival at the end of February, a dazzling celebration of Pakistani poetry, music, dance, history and politics. We wandered round Lahore’s old city, dispersed round the capital at private dinner parties in the evenings and (in my case) attended nets at the Bagh-e-Jinnah cricket ground, where Pakistan played its early Test matches.
There was just one blot on a magnificently organised occasion. At the last moment, the British Council got cold feet. Having sponsored Aminatta Forna, the Sierra Leone novelist (who knows better than most about war zones), the council in effect placed her under house arrest at the Pearl Continental Hotel just opposite the festival. She was escorted across the road to say her piece and left early, I am told, in boredom and disgust.
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