Organiser Pam White and playwright Alan Bennett

THE bill was like a literary Who’s Who with a mix of broadcasting royalty thrown in as well, a line-up which would make the organisers of some of the world’s biggest book festivals green with envy.

And yet the star names were not flocking to Hay-on-Wye this weekend – but the volunteer-run library in Primrose Hill.

To mark the 10th anniversary since its formation, organisers held a series of talks which included the likes of broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, Succession actor Brian Cox, novelist Deborah Moggach, Joan Bakewell, The Split actor Stephen Mangan and his sister Anita and the playwright Alan Bennett. Lucky ticket holders only had to pay £5 to hear them speak at the library in Sharpleshall Street, and ask questions.

A decade ago there had been a risk of closure as Camden Council refused to continue funding what was then Chalk Farm Library amid a series of spending cuts – but councillors did agree to hive off control and management to a group of volunteers, who have kept it alive and well ever since.

“We were determined not to lose it,” said Pam White, the organiser of the book festival held over both Saturday and Sunday. “The library is about books. Books are our core and we would like to continue to be known as a library that cares about books, and also a library that cares about the community.”

She added: “When I do a book festival I do it properly. Each talk was super.”

It was perhaps the understatement of the year – and on Sunday afternoon an audience was left enchanted by reflections from Mr Bennett, who lives nearby and had joined the campaign against the closures back in 2012.

Still commanding huge public affection, his appearances at public events and newspaper interviews have become rarer, so having him read extracts from his diaries and talk more widely about the world was a welcome show of support for how the volunteers have kept the lending service alive.

He told the audience that he was perhaps her “only subject” to say a rude word in front of the late Queen, Her Majesty Elizabeth II, and also that he was the first writer to represent her in a British drama way before Netflix “was taking all the credit” for The Crown.

Mr Bennett said: “I never met the Queen, and I’m glad as I would have been cripplingly shy. For me she was a creature of myth and I was happy for her to remain so.”

He recalled seeing her once while driving through Headingley: “Mam was ill but with dad, in his eternal trilby and raincoat, we stood and waited in a crowd. We didn’t wave. But what happened was so unlike my father, it nearly fetched a tear to my eye. As the car went past, dad took off his hat.”

He added: “Royalty, like most public ceremony, he had dismissed as ‘splother’. But somewhere beyond that, almost a surprise to himself, he was a loyal subject. And the same, I suppose, could be said of me too.” Mr Bennett said that his A Question of Attribution at the National Theatre in 1984 was the “first time the Queen had been represented on the stage”, adding: “All the publicity since has gone to Netflix and The Crown. They were thought to be the pioneers, but they weren’t.”

The Queen was said to have commented that Prunella Scales’ portrayal was not accurate as she never made “wise cracks”.

“But she did,” said Mr Bennett. “When Prunella was being given the CBE and was kneeling before her Majesty, waiting for the ribbon to put round her neck, the queen whispered: ‘I suppose you think you ought to be doing this?’”

Mr Bennett, whose diaries have been a permanent feature in the London Review of Books since the 1980s, said he had made a contribution to an obituary for the Queen made three years ago for Radio 4, adding: “When the Queen died I didn’t hear it and I was wondering if they had second thoughts. “I’ll read it here now: ‘I must be one of the late Queen’s subjects to have almost said the word erection in her presence’.”

He recalled a rude gag made on stage during a Beyond the Fringe show in 1961 that the Queen had attended. “There was no reaction on the night when the Queen was present. Normally it went by in gales of hilarity.”

While reading from his diary, he also lamented the death of an old friend who died earlier this year.

“I love jokes and used to be fed them on a weekly basis by Barry Cryer, who was a lovely man,” he read. “The last joke he told me was this: A couple is walking down the street and they see someone walking down the road. “The wife said ‘Isn’t that the Archbishop of Canterbury?’ She says to the husband go and ask.

“The husband goes over and says ‘Terribly sorry, but are you the Archbishop of Canterbury?’ ‘Bugger off’, comes the reply. “He goes back to his wife. ‘What did he say?’ ‘He said bugger off. ‘Oooohh no, now we will never know’.”

Mr Cryer, the Sorry I Haven’t A Clue panellist, died in February and the New Journal is running a campaign to get a plaque in his honour erected at Mornington Crescent station. Mr Bennett lived for many years in Gloucester Crescent in Camden Town – where an old woman lived in a van outside the front, inspiring the hit movie based on his recollections.

He had played his part in the campaign to save the library from closure, warning the council at the time: “It is not just a facility. People who use a library, particularly children, go there because it’s quiet and somewhere they won’t be disturbed.

Mr Bennett had added: “A child shouldn’t have to go on a journey to a library, it should be around the corner and the handier the better.”

He later sent out copies of the New Journal’s article about his support – Continued on p4 to campaigners in the Isle of Man who were trying to save a mobile library from being shut down and said the risk of losing libraries was replicated across the UK.

During his speech on Sunday, he drew smiles from the audience in which he explained he had received letters from a man called Tom King, a fan who has a tattoo of the writer on his arm.

“Periodically, Tom King writes to me of news of the fortunes of the tattoo,” he read. “It makes for an amusing conversation during intercourse. This suggests to me the intercourse is less than fervent’.”

Primrose Hill Library is one of three libraries in Camden that was handed over to volunteers – the process was also gone through to save Belsize Library and Keats Library from closure.

“The controversy was that the council had chosen to close our library,” said Ms White.

“I remember Pat Callaghan [deputy leader of the council and then-ward councillor] saying the main thing is not to lose the building. And that is what happened: We didn’t lose, it is a great space.” She added that there were plans in progress to create a “warm bank” at Primrose Hill.

The New Journal has reported on how public buildings will become places for people to stay warm during the winter because of soaring energy bills.

“In some ways we have already been a warm bank. We have news­papers and places to sit. It’s ideal really,” she said.

Other speakers include Lonely Planet travel book founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler, Guardian writer Hadley Freeman and Annabel Steadman – the author of Skandar And The Unicorn  Thief.