Unlike many of her contemporaries, she remains popular and active, and her Highway of Diamonds tour has been selling out around the country
Three decades might have slipped away since she took folk into the mainstream and was almost a permanent fixture on television, but she looks little different, particularly when she flashes that smile, and her voice is as honeyed as ever.
What's more she is still protesting, Bush, Blair and the Iraq War earning her particular scorn, tempered by her renewed optimism that her native America has at last redeemed itself in electing Barack Obama.
The concert began with Bob Dylan's The Times, They Are A-Changin' which today seems more prophetically topical than ever. Her own composition Children of Abraham still sounds like a clarion call to opposition, especially on this night when she coaxed her audience into simultaneously singing the refrain from Down by the Riverside ("We ain't gonna study war no more"). The effect, with the lights down, was deeply moving.
And her version of Violeta Parra's magnificent Gracias A La Vida (Thanks to life) brought the house down.
After the break, Julie played requests non-stop, throwing herself into such favourites as Donovan's Try For The Sun and Dylan's Chimes Of Freedom, and had the audience roaring for more.
Andrew Liddle