Atheism panel: Raymond Tallis, Julian Baggini and Christopher Brookmyre Star rating: **** A L Kennedy HHHH Star rating: **** Melvyn Bragg Star rating: ***** Mark Kitto and Jan Wong Star rating: ***

Given the enormous family trouble that confessional literature has just gotten Julie Myerson into, one might have expected Melvyn Bragg's defence of "autobiographical fiction" to be shot full of holes.

But here was one confessional piece that had apparently been agreed on by parent and child: whether Bragg should write about the suicide of his first wife, Lisa, and the mother of his eldest daughter, in the final volume of his novel series about his upbringing. I'm mentioning this session first, as it's going to be a long time before I forget it. Often do we see writers perform these days; rarely do we see right inside their souls, and this was one of the most troubling appearances I've ever witnessed.

Often having to break off from what he was saying; unsure whether writing about this traumatic event had brought "closure"; the physical difficulties in writing about it in the first place and why he'd done so, something he still couldn't fathom; the pain in talking about it, yet the reluctance to stop: all of it was evidence of someone still coming to terms with something that happened 50 years ago.

Being a writer, Bragg's natural, belated response to his wife's death has been to write about it, but perhaps the most shocking thing is that he doesn't feel it has helped. "Something has been unknotted by talking about it," he told us. "But not writing about it."

He'd buried it, he said, all those years; all that was left was the horror of dragging it back up.

Some things will always have to be faced, and in Sunday's session with Jan Wong and Mark Kitto, it's not just a country's cultural change that is being buried now, as Wong pointed out about China's current attitude to the Cultural Revolution.

It was Wong's own actions as a student at Beijing University, when she "ratted" on a young woman who wanted to know about moving to the west, that had also been buried.

Decades later, Wong finally went back to look for the woman she'd betrayed, to find her and apologise. Her subsequent book is as eloquent an example of atonement as you'll find.

Neither A L Kennedy nor the Atheism event could keep off the subject of the credit crunch - Christopher Brookmyre disliked the idea that "a belief in God gives you extra credit", and Kennedy worried about the future of books in times of recession, although given her massive sweep of international prize money over the past two years, she could probably give Sir Fred Goodwin a good run for his cash. As most religions don't, in fact, offer salvation anyway, according to Raymond Tallis, the words "rich man", "eye" and "needle" probably won't bother Sir Fred very much.

What atheism could offer, said Brookmyre, was the joy of the here and now, and pointed out that maybe we just need to learn how to appreciate it when we're happy.

I couldn't help wondering what Melvyn Bragg's response to that sentiment might have been.