The evening began with a sellout interview with Sir Jeremy Hunt, hosted by festival patron and broadcaster Iain Dale. What followed was an hour of candid, compelling conversation that had the audience completely hooked. Sir Jeremy was disarmingly open, confessing a rather unfortunate set of A-level maths results, revealing he dropped economics at university, and offering a series of brilliantly observed anecdotes from his years in government, including some wonderfully warm stories about Theresa May and the morning that started with a text from Liz Truss and ended with him stepping into one of the most powerful offices in British politics as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Drawing on themes from his book, he made a compelling case for Britain's extraordinary untapped confidence, pointing to the London, Oxford, Cambridge triangle as home to some of the world's most respected universities, and reminding the audience that the chip architecture powering every iPhone on the planet was designed not in Silicon Valley but in Cambridge, by ARM Holdings. He spoke of a country with more AI startups than anywhere else in Europe, a record of innovation that punches well above its weight, and a tech ecosystem that the world simply doesn't give Britain enough credit for. He touched on a meeting with Elon Musk and offered some measured thoughts on Trump's approach to leadership. When he opened the floor to questions, the Fowey audience wasn’t shy about addressing the big issues - covering Brexit, the future of the NHS, AI, and energy. Sir Jeremy was warm, witty, and thoroughly engaging throughout. If the first half of the evening had been food for thought, what followed was pure food for the soul.