Happy birthday, Hay, a party of words and wit for 30 years
COLUMNIST
MICK Jagger told me never to name-drop, but within a single Bank Holiday weekend I ramped up more clangs than a percussionist playing the tubular bells in the finale of the 1812 Overture.
I saw Charlotte Rampling in the loo; Ed Balls and Joan Bakewell in the coffee queue, and had supper with Tom Daley. I laughed with Graham Norton in a tent, smiled at Stephen Fry in a green room and partied with Simon Schama and Tracey Emin in a book shop. But sadly I missed Eddie Izzard – resplendent in leather trousers and four-inch heels, apparently – sashaying down the aisles of the Spar.
And this endless game of celebrity bingo all took place in Wales. As May merges into June each year the literati are lured to a small town in Powys for what Bill Clinton dubbed the “Woodstock of the mind” and Graham Norton describes as “Glastonbury with books”.
To everyone else it is simply Hay. This year marks the festival’s 30th anniversary. Familiarity with this vibrant extravaganza of learning, literature and crumpled cream linen should breed awe rather than contempt.
To jump in the car and in just 90 minutes be in a place where literature, politics, music, comedy and science collide against a backdrop of verdant Welsh countryside, good pubs and fabulous knick-knack shops is a wonderful treat.
Some years I’ve seen the festival from the participants’ perspective as well as the punters’. On Saturday I had the pleasure of interviewing Olympic diver Tom Daley about his new book – Tom’s Daily Plan – and the amazing life and career he has already crammed into his 23 years. He was articulate, funny and engaging. It was also a joy to see how he inspired the younger members of the audience – kids clamoured to ask him serious questions about sport.
Because the festival brings the world to Wales – including the panama-hatted of Hampstead and the boho beauties of Notting Hill – we may forget that it is an entirely home-grown and thoroughly Welsh success story. And while we’re on the subject of the Boden-clad clientele cliché, it is worth pointing out that Hay draws half its audience from Wales itself.
Festival director Peter Florence can trace his Welsh heritage back 700 years on his mother’s side and has a cousin who is a crowned bard. The festival came into being as a kind of Florence family eisteddfod as Peter and his parents came up with the concept around the kitchen table 30 years ago.
His father sparked its creation “talking about poetry, ideas and music”, while his mother underlined the importance of the “feel” of the festival. “It’s got to be a party,” she insisted, establishing the USP that has served it brilliantly ever since.
Peter has described the festival’s subsequent development as “a ridiculously lucky, happy journey”. But that is a modest assessment. Even in its smallest beginnings it had big ambitions.
For example, one of the first literary leviathans Peter secured was Arthur Miller back in 1989. And he must have worked his trademark social alchemy as the playwright’s knowledge of Wales was so hazy he inquired if Hay-on-Wye was “some kind of sandwich”.
In these early days the scale of the festival had the delicacy of a handbound limited-edition run of poetry. Now it’s more chunky than the collected blockbusters of Dan Brown. (Though you probably won’t find The Da Vinci Code on site.)
Time was when the green room was the staff room of the local primary. Salman Rushdie could be found discussing his latest ouvre under the potato prints of Year 5, while the press office consisted of a single fax machine.
But over the past 30 years the festival has expanded – from 22 events in a pub car park to more than 70 gatherings across 20 acres of dairy meadow – while attempting to retain the intimacy that made it special in the first place.
Bill Clinton’s wholesale seduction of the festival prompted its major growth spurt. Since he left Hay in a rapturous swoon – and that was just the men – there was no turning back. The event could only get bigger.
Global, in fact. Organisers have now programmed 120 festivals in 20 different countries. This year sees events in Colombia, Denmark, Mexico, Spain and Peru. The 30th birthday is being celebrated by marking another anniversary – 500 years since Martin Luther “literally or metaphorically, nailed his 95 Theses to that church door in Wittenberg”.
The festival has responded with its imaginative Reformations Project.
As Peter explains: “We’ve invited 30 writers and thinkers to re-imagine the world’s institutions and authorities – from the NHS and the EU, to marriage, honour, peace and citizenship. The first 23 Reformations will be heard at Hay and the remaining seven will be introduced at our international festivals around the world later this year.”
Yet however diverse the locations and challenging the concepts, the festival formula is straightforward and unchanging. It’s mind food. The recipe is simple. An hour of chat between an interviewer and a writer or thinker, or just a captivating speaker addressing the audience. Ideas are explored, opinions expressed, questions taken.
Audience participation often provides an unexpected source of comedy. There are those who see their moment with the microphone as a chance to prove they too are as brainy as the people on the stage.
Their actual question only comes after a lengthy monologue, personal anecdote or, as a bemused Melvyn Bragg once discovered as a lady in the third row embraced her inner thespian, the declamation of an entire poem.
But however leftfield the question, the answers stay with the audience long after they have joined the queue for the exit – whether it’s Jeremy Paxman provocatively suggesting the media should “stop sneering” at Trump, Welsh surgeon David Nott powerfully describing the warzone “evils” of Syria, or Sheila Hancock summing up the human condition: “Life is bloody hard – you’ve just got to wing it.”
The Hay Festival continues to sprawl and inevitably such growth has an impact. It was disconcerting to see police wielding guns amid crowds carrying paperbacks and icecreams. But in the current climate, its scale naturally demands such security measures.
Yet however much the festival develops, the small-is-beautiful brigade should not panic. The core concept remains the same. It’s still about serving up a feast of words, wit and ideas. When it comes to nourishing portions of mind food, Hay has known the importance of thinking big from the very first festival 30 years ago.
And although its horizons have always been wide, it has transformed itself into the world’s largest literary event by keeping the values of a close and creative Welsh community at its heart. As Peter Florence says, the Hay Festival is still a “bunch of local people who do something together”. Happy 30th birthday, Hay. Carolyn Hitt is back at the Hay Festival this Sunday at 1pm on the Starlight Stage, interviewing Jeff Brazier on his book The Grief Survival Guide.