Doubtless to the delight of some, the first three days of The Blenheim Palace Literary Festival passed Gray-free owing to my absence on a Greek holiday. I was back on Sunday, though, to enjoy a last day of book talk and all the hobnobbing that goes with it. Don’t condemn me for this: the social side to a lit-fest is an important draw for many punters, a welcome chance to talk to the famous and talented (usually, but not always, in the shape of the same person).

Gold was struck this year for me in a thrilling meeting with the opera star Jessye Norman, a year short of her 70th birthday but still looking a million dollars. She had arrived on Thursday to discuss her memoir Stand Up Straight and Sing with the BBC’s creative director Alan Yentob. She found the festival so alluring that she stuck around, lending lustre at every event she attended. I caught up with her at our mutual friend Ben Okri’s unveiling of his new novel The Age of Magic. The passages he read suggest this to be a work of genius.

Like many divas, Ms Norman — I’d never dare to ‘Jessye’ her — is known to be a little . . . well, diva- like. Blenheim saw nothing but warm charm, however. After festival director Sally Dunsmore generously presented me with a copy of Jessye’s book — there, I lied — she signed it lavishly and then talked animatedly of her life in London, her base for work in Europe. Concerning Covent Garden’s current production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, she told me: “I was laughing all the way through.” I took this to mean she enjoyed the humour.

Laughter was a feature of lunch in the Green Room when I met actor Trystan Gravelle who shares with Ms Norman — did you spot it? — the peculiarity of a first name in which an expected ‘i’ is replaced by a ‘y’. I have seen his excellent acting on stage a number of times (he was a member of the RSC for three years), but know nothing of him in his latest and most famous role as restaurant manager Victor Colleano in ITV’s drama about department store life, Mr Selfridge. There is, however, a third series on the way, which the show’s writer Kate Brooke (with Trystan on a festival platform) convinced me I should watch. She read English at Christ Church, which speaks quality to me.

Brought up in the Welsh-speaking Carmarthenshire mining village of Trimsaran, Trystan has an accent that leaves no doubt about his origins. With absurd archness, however, I could not resist inquiring if he was indeed one of the boyos. Of course, he said, adding that not all theatre critics — I had by now told him of my Oxford Times duties — realised this to be the case.

Of one of his stage performances in the role of a Welshman, the Daily Telegraph’s Charles Spencer wrote that his accent was truly appalling. Trystan must have felt as Charlie Chaplin did when he was judged to be only a runner-up in a Charlie Chaplin lookalike competition.

Chaplin’s was one of a number of extremely famous names that cropped up during the festival event that kept me from Cocktails with Mr Selfridge. This was the talk by Selina Hastings — unmissable in my estimation — about her latest book, The Red Earl. The distinguished biographer of (among others) Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford has in this new life turned her attention to her father, the 15th Earl of Huntingdon.

What an amazing story she has to tell, concerning an aristocrat of the old school — Eton, Christ Church (Bullingdon Club, naturally) — who steadily moved far to the left, to the fury of his parents. If not a Communist Party member, he was, Selina told us, certainly a fellow traveller — his conversion having come, as it happens, as a consequence of his travels.

Reaching America by way of Tahiti (where the disgraced Lord Beauchamp and his favourite footman had been a guest), he worked as a general ‘gofer’ for the great Mexican artist Diego Rivera.

Besides Chaplin, contacts he made included Rudolph Valentino, Randolph Hearst and Edsel Ford (son of Henry). The privations he saw journeying to Ford’s Detroit factory during the Great Depression played a big part in his conversion.

After Selina’s talk (which has made reading the book a ‘must’ for this weekend) I was delighted to be introduced to her. In an accompanying family group was her sister, Caroline Shackleton, a retired psychologist, who lives locally. A keen reader of The Oxford Times, she told me, Caroline will be pleased, I hope, to see herself in this column today.