Book Festival Day 1: Lord Browne and Karl Marlantes

John Browne has spent decades at the heart of the British establishment. Once described as the UK’s “most powerful businessman”, the former head of BP and current crossbench peer used the Book Festival event for the launch of his memoirs to discuss his role at the very top of British business and politics.

Not an uncontroversial figure, after describing his rise to the top of the giant energy corperation, he denied his “Beyond Petroleum” campaign was mere “greenwashing”, and expressed regret that BP’s efforts in renewable energy have stalled.

Had this event been held in America, he probably would have been barracked by questions about the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill. When this came up, he picked his answers very carefully, saying that that blame could not be apportioned before the exact causes of the oil rig blast were known. However he provided no stirring defence of his beleaguered former colleague Tony Hayward, who had to step down as BP chief executive recently as a result of the disaster.

A question about his visits to Libya prompted forceful denials that he lobbied Libyan President Gaddafi. Several US Senators have accused BP of having a hand in the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, an accusation which, if true, would land squarely at the feet of Lord Browne. He also denied “cutting corners” in the company’s safety procedures when Festival director Nick Barley threw the accusation at him.

Overall Browne came across as highly intelligent and precise in his answers. He elicited genuine sympathy for his harsh treatment in being very publicly outed as gay by the media, which he described as being the saddest times of his life. However there is a coldness about his personality that will fail to disarm BP’s harshest critics, and may lead to suggestions of callousness when he publishes his long-awaited review into higher education funding later this year.

Bestselling author and Vietnam veteran Karl Marlantes also offered some frank personal revelations. 35 years in the making, his novel Matterhorn has received rave reviews from heavyweight publications in the US. Telling the story of a bloody and ultimately futile battle for a hilltop in Vietnam, it draws on Marlantes’ own experiences in the US Marines, though is far from being a memoir.

His descriptions of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder he suffered were harrowing. After years in a job as a successful business consultant, he found he was unable to put the horrors of war behind him when a vivid hallucination of corpses lying on his boardroom table heralded a period of mental decline.

In a moment of very dark humour, his Q&A session was punctuated by noises of military tattoo fireworks detonating outside just after he described psychological “triggers” for flashbacks. “Now let’s all watch the author jump!” chuckled the deep-voiced former Lieutenant.

Speaking about the America’s current involvement in Afghanistan, he lamented that while he’s no pacifist, “the parallels are uncanny” between Vietnam and the current conflict.

Taking inspiration from classic First World War poets like Siegfried Sassoon, Marlantes sought to deal with his past by writing Matterhorn, and also to produce the coveted Great American Novel. The book’s long gestation period, owing partly to uncooperative publishers, means it has been honed into a very impressive piece of literature.