The first wave of reinforcements brought back Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell to help the Prime Minister address the global financial emergency.

Today Gordon Brown whistled up the ghosts of Picasso, Titian, Adam Smith, Field Marshall Montgomery and Uncle Bill of Burma to launch his counter-attack.

He used a surprise appearance at the <i>The Times</i> Cheltenham Literature Festival to press home his conviction that his years of experience make him the only man to lead the country out of the current crisis.

The ageing Picasso, he recalled, once responded to a suggestion that his 45-second doodle was worth a fortune by saying “it didn’t take me 45 seconds, it took me 82 years”.

Four hundred years earlier Titian completed his final masterpiece and said: “I am finally beginning to learn how to paint,” he added.

Mr Brown too is looking deep into his personal hinterland for the resources to fight this gravest of crises, forging an irresistible but unstated comparison with other rival leaders who may be younger and more fashionable but are certainly less grizzled.

“The life before is the preparation for the moment,” he said sternly. “The moment becomes the opportunity by which, in responding, [courageous people] show just what a person they are.”

“We learn all the time, by our mistakes and by experience. I just hope the experience I’ve gained over the last ten years is going to be of use to people in dealing with this particular set of problems now.”

A book festival is an unlikely place to find a man in the eye of an all-consuming political and economic storm and there was an audible gasp from the audience when the Prime Minister finally appeared, 26 minutes late, and mounted the small stage at the front of the Drawing Room in Cheltenham’s Victorian town hall shortly before 1pm.

His 170-strong audience was made up of A-level politics students, local VIPs and incredulous members of the public who had taken a chance on the unspecified “Special Opening Event”.

The Prime Minister, dressed in a navy suit and imperial purple tie, appeared relaxed and energised, even as the stock markets were sliding around the world.

He was there ostensibly to promote his new book, Wartime Courage, a collection of stories of heroism from the Second World War, but apologised that what had been intended as a literary discussion would, through force of circumstances, turn out to be nothing of the sort.

Mr Brown was clearly more concerned about appearing a frivolous Nero figure who fiddled while the City burned than he was with reminding his audience of double Maths on a Friday afternoon.

In his opening words he plunged into a history lesson on how oil price rises and the credit crunch led the world into the financial carnage it is suffering today.

“We are facing something quite new,” he added, a truly global financial crisis for which we lack “a global system of fixing it”.

There were scornful words for the reckless bankers (mostly American, it seemed) who had dragged the world banking system to the brink of ruin: “No economy should be allowed to be brought down by a few acts of irresponsibility”.

But there were hopeful and determined words about the opportunities for the young Britons in the room once these “teething troubles of globalisation” were out of the way.

The fixed smile that the Prime Minster wore when he entered the room was swiftly replaced by a genuine grin. This was, evidently, a man relishing the fight.

He quoted Field Marshall Montgomery and his belief that his troops were his most important asset. He invoked General Sir William Slim, known as “Uncle Bill”, who was written off by snootier superiors until he defeated the Japanese in Burma to become one of the most admired British officers in the Second World War.

Even Adam Smith, patron saint of the free market and the other famous son of Kirkcaldy (“a bit more famous than me”), was dragged into line to support the huge stakes the British taxpayer has taken in leading banks this week. “He had a moral sense that we all share some sort of responsibility for each other and he believed that where necessary you have to intervene.”

The audience were impressed.

Robert Padgett, 65, a retired investment manager who is “not a Brown supporter”, said: “ He’s risen to the occasion and he’s clearly revelling in the occasion. He has a depth to him which is good and interesting.”

Cassie Staines, 17, from Pate’s school in Cheltenham said: “He really doesn’t look as stressed as I expected him to. You don’t have to like him to respect him, do you?”

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