The Bookseller.com

28th August 2008

Joel Rickett

Joel Rickett is deputy editor of The Bookseller, and also writes columns for the Guardian and Screen International.

Blogging Hay: the opening weekend

27.05.08

Where am I? There are sodden fields, flooded tents, people crammed into leaking marquees to hear star names. There are overpriced tickets, blue-chip corporate sponsors and food that's so organic it hurts. I could be at Glastonbury – until the couple behind me in the Naomi Klein queue begin arguing about whether a quote is by Orwell or Wilde...

... This can only be Hay.

The Guardian Hay Festival is celebrating its 21st birthday this year, but its human age would be somewhere around the early 40s (with the obligatory 2.4 kids). 

Yet the festival's real transformation has happened this millennium. You can trace it back to that heady night in 2001 when Bill Clinton breezed into town, delivering an electric sermon on war and peace (followed by a midnight dinner, where he was wooed by Gail Rebuck and serenaded by Cerys Mathews). That was the moment that Hay director Peter Florence had been working for, when the scale of his ambitions were clear.

So on Sunday night we had another former US president, Jimmy Carter, perform in the vast Barclays Wealth stage. The atmosphere was intense and Carter's performance flawless – winning a standing ovation for imploring Obama and McCain to promise that the US will "never again torture a prisoner".

But the surroundings were transformed from the chaos of Clinton 2001: this was a slick arena show, with industrial queue management and tickets at £50 a pop.

As hundreds of other literary festivals have sprung up, Hay has kept moving forward, getting bigger and diversifying across the arts. What used to be a circle of tents in a field is now a mini-town, with eight main venues and miles of covered walkways, coffee stalls and bars. There's a cinema, a yoga tent, a baby space, a souvenirs shop, a circus, and of course the ever-crammed bookshop run by the indefatigable Diana Blunt of local Pemberton's. You can't move for Sky's cameras and Radio 4's microphones.

It would be too easy to accuse Hay of selling out. Big money has arrived, but there's also room on site for local traders, artists, small charities. The green message is everywhere, and Hay has even produced an environmental toolkit for use by other festivals.

This new scale does, however, mean less serendipity: agendas are rigidly pre-planned, and there's less chance of bumping into someone you know (if you can recognise them under their hoods).

Yet the Hay veterans are still out in force – a spirited crowd that asks probing questions and quickly grows restless if authors miss the mark (or if, like Cherie Blair, they are seen to be cashing in). The crowd will also turn on itself: witness the murmurs and slow-hand clapping that came when an Israeli hawk tried to attack President Carter.

It's for this reason that all publishers should come to Hay: to mix with real, opinionated readers, to see what's really driving them, to see which authors sink and which subjects swim. You experience first-hand why Hay favourites like Will Self, Christopher Hitchens and Rosie Boycott really earn their keep.

This year's hits seem to be the sessions covering religion/ethics/politics/identity (such as the Rev Gene Robinson), anything involving the American presidential elections, and the superstar children's writers (from the endearingly ramshackle Julia Donaldson event to the sold-out Where's Spot!).

But pretty much all the 477 (477!) events have a momentum of their own – and the promise that during the audience questions, anything can happen.

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