The highlights of any literary festival are always the juicy little snippets of insider gossip that are dropped tantalisingly from the flower-bedecked platform to the eager book fans below.

How fabulous then to kick off with an admission from the chair of Friday's very first event, Faber's editorial director, Hannah Griffiths, that she had until now refused to read David Nicholls' best-selling One Day because, "It has completely dominated my industry for the past two years and stopped me getting any of my books into the shops!". She did admit to having loved it.

Literary success isn't just a problem for rival publishers. Nicholls, who began as a humble script editor, said that had One Day not been well received he would have stopped writing books altogether, but now that it has been the publishing story of the last year or more, he hasn't had time to get going on the next one.

Lucky John Boyne and Jill Dawson both had new novels to read. Boyne's The Absolutist, about conscientious objectors in the First World War, tells a love story spanning the class divide. Jill Dawson read from her forthcoming Lucky Bunny, in this brilliant extract a child's account of the Blitz, which begins with plucky innocence but descends inexorably into the full horror of war.

A wonderful start to the festival.