The 2004 Durham Literature Festival is in reflective, as well as celebratory, mood, looking back on its own history. It was only proper that this should be particularly evident in its first event, with its threefold link to the past: there was an echo of last year's festival theme of horror and darkness in the story of the heroic Beowulf and his battles with a series of monsters; there was a connection to Durham's medieval past in the choice to set the ancient literary form of storytelling in Crook Hall's historic Great Hall, where the capacity audience overflowed up into the Minstrels' Gallery; and there was a connection the even more distant literary past, for the story of Beowulf was already old when it was written down in the only surviving manuscript, a thousand years ago.
Hugh Lupton's telling of that story sees its roots in something more ancient still; despite the Christian elements in the Old English text, he also sees reminiscences of older religions, where gods not men do battle for the riches of the land. But he also recognises strands in the story which remain part of popular entertainment today, describing his story as having "one foot in the Gothic, one foot in the world of Marvel comics". Certainly the children in the audience were enthralled as he used the tricks of Old English poetry, full of alliteration and repetition, to describe the monster Grendel emerging for his mire to rampage and destroy like the Incredible Hulk.
How the young hero Beowulf killed the monstrous Grendel, how Grendel's even more terrifying mother came for revenge, and only Beowulf was able to kill her too - this is the familiar part of the story. But after a break for refreshments, and to wander in the dusk in Crook Hall's beautiful gardens, Hugh Lupton returned with a roll on his bodhran and a volley of riddles (some authentically Anglo-Saxon, some not: why do anarchists drink herbal tea? because proper tea is theft). Having softened up his audience, he continued the story of Beowulf to its necessary conclusion: how, long after, the old man did battle one more time to defeat a dragon which was burning and devastating his kingdom, but how he was killed by the dragon and sent to his own magnificent funeral pyre.
Alison Lister, Festival organiser, assured the audience that they would enjoy their evening of storytelling; at the end of the evening, no-one seemed inclined to argue. Hugh Lupton's vivid narration also acted as a sales pitch for Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, on sale at the festival bookstall, and which the storyteller was modestly reluctant to sign.
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Last update: 30th September 2004