Feed your mind – and your stomach – at a festival

The Scottish philosopher David Hume was not keen on London, according to a new biography by contemporary philosopher Julian Baggini.

He complained it was packed with ‘factious barbarians’. When visiting Paris in the 1760s, he praised the capital of France as a sophisticated hub of letters and learning: ‘The Taste for literature is neither decay’d nor deprav’d here; as with the Barbarians who inhabit the banks of the Thames.’

This seems a little odd, since Hume’s contemporary Dr