Loss and a longing to resurrect the past were the overriding themes of an emotional talk by former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion.

Ranking as one of the absolute highlights of this year’s festival, Motion gave a warm and personal insight into how his latest literary work reflected the inner turmoil of coming to terms with the death of his father.

Coinciding, as it did, with also quitting the post of Poet Laureate, getting remarried and moving house, Motion explains this shifting landscape in his own life gave him the energy to finally tackle a project decades in the making.

Focussing predominantly on the father/son relationship, he drew parallels with the characters in his new book, Silver: Return To Treasure Island, which propels Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic forward 40 years as the son of Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver’s “seductive minx” of a daughter team up in a bid to tie up nagging loose ends from the original masterpiece – namely what happened to Long John Silver and, more importantly, what happened to all the silver left on Treasure Island.

Having admitted to not reading the book until his late teens, at a time when he was first introduced to poetry by the A Level teacher who “gave me my whole life”, Motion seeks to redress this ‘failing’ while also setting out on his own adventure to explore the emotions after his father passed away.

The audience was captivated by Motion’s heart-warming accounts of his dad’s battles with a volatile lawnmower and the fact he only read half-a-book in his entire life. Humour, sorrow, regret and hope provided for a spirit-affirming melting pot of emotions, which were prised further open with incredibly touching readings from his most recent poetry collection, The Cinder Path.

Motion said: “The road to literary ruin is paved with bad sequels. You run the danger of getting burned up in the fire of the original book’s genius.”

Given the rapturous reception for his readings, this is a trap Motion is never likely to fall into. For him, at least, there really is a silver lining to this story.

Richard Parker