The 2006 Birmingham Book Festival was our biggest and best yet. Headline writers and performers included the playwright Willy Russell, the songwriter Billy Bragg, the novelist Lionel Shriver and the actress Julie Walters (launching her first novel).

The Festival was not without controversy, however, as we welcomed philosopher Richard Dawkins taking religion (all religion) to task and Moazzam Begg giving his account of a lengthy incarceration in Guantanamo Bay. Our poetry-film Half-Life offered a chilling reminder of the effects of the Chernobyl disaster, with poetry from Mario Petrucci.

Performance poetry was eloquently represented with John Hegley, and the poet and writer Ian McMillan created our very own Da-Da opera with the help of the composer Christopher Fox. Composer Scott Wilson gave a splendid performance of John Cage's text piece Lecture on Nothing, including a stunning silence of some minutes!

Writing workshops were many and various, including a Workshop Saturday featuring eight sessions of frenzied scribbling and forward thinking. Our most memorable workshop was Night Writer, which involved a dozen hardy souls writing through the night in the auspicious confines of the Presidential Suite on the top floor of the Radisson SAS Hotel in the centre of Birmingham. Both the joy and the coffee were unconfined.

The Festival included plenty of celebrations' books were launched, the new Birmingham Poet Laureate - the irrepressible Spoz! - had his first event (along with nearly ten other previous Laureates), and we finished with a poetry party at the Electric Cinema that went on deep into the night.