The stars were there at the 2012 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, held in Oxford on 28-30 March. From Bill Drayton, the father of the movement, spectral and luminous, to the newest Skoll awardees like Debbie Sung Din Taylor, whose award ceremony speech flickered like an Olympic torch – a new hope for Burma as it emerges from a long winter of dictatorship.

The Skoll chroniclers were there: to name just two, Skoll Foundation chief executive Sally Osberg provided an account of the state of the movement, while director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship Pamela Hartigan traced the outlines of leading edge practice.