There was far more than bookishness on offer at the 10-day event, writes SINEAD GLEESONin Hay-on-Wye
IN THE sleepy town of Hay-on-Wye a banner swings in the wind: “People say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” So, it seems, do the 100,000 people who have been passing through the town for its 23rd festival.
After years of threatening to go to the literary gathering, I finally made it – but not without a journey of Shackletonian proportions. Set amid rolling Welsh hills, the beauty of the landscape helps offset the sheer trauma of getting there. Arriving weary (three buses, one plane, one taxi, one train, but thankfully not frostbitten), it was a question of poring over the 90-page programme, figuring out an itinerary and where to find the festival’s obligatory beverage, Pimm’s.
Last Friday, Ian McEwan’s event was more stand-up than lit-lecture, as the crowd cackled to his reading of Solar, which had just won the PG Wodehouse award for comic writing.
Afterwards, as is the prize’s custom, he was presented with a Gloucester Old Spot pig, forced to clamber into a trailer with the mucky beast for a photo op.
There was almost an Orwellian segue from that scene to the BBC’s Andrew Marr chastising corrupt politicians of old. The brown envelopes of Ireland’s ministers had nothing on Lloyd George, who, according to Marr, “sold peerages as if they were on a menu”.
Christy Moore played an excellent gig afterwards and the famously perspiring singer joked “this never happens” as he donned a sweatshirt and hat in the chilly marquee.
Even though 400 events take place over 10 days, people- watching, slouched in a deckchair, is hard to resist. The festival’s demographic is “99 per cent white”, according to Michael, a black Londoner with Irish connections, who proudly compared himself to Chris Hughton and Phil Lynott.
It gives Hay a slightly homogenised air of clipped accents and men wearing cravats and Panama hats who wouldn’t look out of place at Wimbledon.
Alongside the over-50s, there were a sizeable number of families, with cherubic children in eco-friendly clothes. Hay Fever, the children’s programme, was dominated by authors, but there were also craft and painting workshops, cookery schools and a book bus.
Quentin Blake, Roald Dahl’s illustrator, conducted live drawing of festival attendees, while Roddy Doyle chatted to awestruck kids about his Rover books.
Traipsing between multiple events was hungry work. Festivals have upped their culinary game, and the days of the lone chip van are long gone. Certainly, there were burgers to be had, but they were of the gamey venison or organic lamb variety. Sheep’s milk ice-cream begged to be scoffed in the sun and the toilets were better than some hotels this writer has stayed in. The overall vibe was uber-relaxed, interrupted only on Sunday by a police presence for Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former president.
Hay has been called “the Glastonbury of books” (with superior loos), but Bill Clinton’s description – “the Woodstock of the mind” – is more accurate because there’s far more on offer than bookishness. Music, theatre and art were well represented and the night-time club venue was Baskerville Hall, one of the inspirations for Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous hound story.
In the onsite bookshop, at barely 10am, a group of women were shrieking excitedly after a cookery demonstration with Yotam Ottolenghi. Queues snaked outside an oversized doll house for a show that gave you a potted history of opera in 20 minutes (www.opera playhouse.com).
It was hard to avoid famous faces. Harder still not to faint at the sight of Jon Snow in the flesh. Robert Winston strode past our BB window; there was a rumour Radiohead’s Thom Yorke was browsing in the bookshop; and Ed Miliband crossed our path so many times, I feared he might be stalking me. As festivals go, it was a fantastic experience, organised with care, efficiency and thought.
This veteran of music festivals has always been entreated to bring babywipes and toilet rolls. You won’t need either in Hay, but do bring plenty of money. If the venison burgers or the Penguin merchandise don’t vacuum your cash, the 30-plus great bookshops in the town certainly will.
The Guardian Hay festival runs until tomorrow – www.hay festival.com