FIFTY SHADES OF HAY

I’ve spent the last two days literally running at the Hay Festival in Wales (although now I’m going to make it my mission to go to more of them every year – there is one in Beirut and Nairobi amongst others this year) from lecture to lecture and am beginning to wonder whether this is actually my spriritual home, because I couldn’t be happier than when I’m sitting in a lecture listening to an author I love and willing some of those intellectual molecules that float about the whole festival diffuse into my veins via fumes that exude from every pore of every tent. It is literally heaven running from person to person in order to get a front row seat or be the first in line at the book signing (for us anyway – my children don’t agree obviously). But if you like books then you should give it a go because you actually get to talk to authors and politicians and UN humanitarian celebrities and scientists and chefs and journalists and Stella Rimmington for goodness sake who I thought might have to live in a glass box.

The people watching is fascinating and of course there is definitely a type that goes there – the average man I noticed seemed to have more hair and cool shoes and do lots more gesticulating than usual and appears annoyingly self contained – just generally more arty and comfortable in their own skin with generally a gorgeous woman attached in charge of the tickets.

ANYWAY, because I’m currently away and therefore can’t write up my copious notes for a bit, I’m just going to share the highlights with you – so here is a very brief summary of some of those that we saw:-

Suffice to say, I wonder whether the author who wrote “Fifty Shades Of Grey” would be invited here or indeed have an easy time from the audience….it appears that you have to be of a certain standing and we kicked off our two days by admiring the beautiful and exceptionally professional and clever Mariella Frostrup doing her Book show with Colm Tobin, Sandi Toksvig and Howard Jacobson:-

These two women were extraordinarily captivating – talking about Arab women and sex:-

A very funny Giles Coren talking about his comedian father, Alan amongst other things:-

He doesn’t really look very pleased that I’m sitting next to him does he?

Jack Straw signing his book – which I didn’t buy on account of the fact that he didn’t seem to be making any sort of donation to an Iraqi charity of some description, which I thought he should:-

The extraordinary Stella Rimmington talking about her life:-

One of my all time favourite authors; Barbara Kingsolver talking about her new challenging book about climate change”-