Just over the border between England and Wales lies the small town of Hay-on-Wye, reputed to have more bookshops per head of population than any other town in the world. Each year for ten days in spring the Hay Literary Festival is run, and Hay becomes the only place in the world a book lover would want to be.
Hay Festival 2012 had over 900 events. There was music, comedy, films, events to occupy and educate children, but mostly authors and experts talking about their work to people who read.
There is the occasional celebrity hawking their possibly-ghost-written autobiography but these can easily be avoided.
Poets and politicians, scientists and biographers, journalists and playwrights, people with a passion to share and a willing audience to listen and challenge, that is what Hay is really about.
When the festival first started in 1987, talks were given in halls and rooms in pubs. Now it has grown so much that a tented festival site is erected a little outside of town, and there are 'Hay' festivals run in 12 different countries.
In the festival site there are shops, restaurants, places to sit and be still, and of course the tents where the talks happen. These can be an intimate space for less than fifty people or a huge marquee for thousands. At the centre is a bookshop where authors sign books after their talks.
This year we saw separate talks from Ed Vulliamy and Janine di Giovanni, both journalists who had reported from the Bosnian conflict. Janine di Giovanni had written about her attempt to build a life for herself after the conflict, and Ed Vulliamy had written about what had happened to the Bosnians afterwards. His frustration about the lack of world concern for these people was almost painful to watch.
Claire Tomalin discussed her superb biography of Charles Dickens, while in a separate event her husband Michael Frayn talked about the genesis of his hilarious new book Skios.
For me one of the highlights this year was an event in the main marquee. The cartoonist for the Daily Telegraph describing his working day and frequent stumbles on the way to producing a daily topical cartoon, illustrated with the cartoons that made the front page. He had everybody laughing.
Previous years we have seen talks from Margaret Atwood, her husband Graeme Gibson, Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler’s Ark which was made into the film Schindler’s List. The poet Owen Sheers, talking about his book Resistance, and then a few years later talking about the film it had become.
While the big name authors are fascinating sometimes it is the smaller groups that catch your interest. Last year we saw a talk by a man who spent a summer photographing all of the butterflies in the UK and the audience of about forty people loved it all.
Hay is a great leveler. The only people who get special treatment are the artists giving the talks and their immediate entourage. Everyone else is part of the crowd. Celebrities look quite upset when they are told to go and find a seat at the back. It does mean that you can find other authors in the audience, but also people like the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Minister for Education. As you walk around the venues you might find yourself walking beside an ex head of MI5, the British counter intelligence service. While you are eating breakfast in your hotel you might end up talking to an author you are seeing later in the day. All of these have happened to me.
Accommodation during festival weeks can get booked a couple of years in advance, so book early if you want to come. My accommodation for next year is already booked.
Let me know if you are going to be at next year's Hay Festival and I'll meet you for a coffee in the Friends Café or for a pint at the Blue Boar.
Neil Constable is a trainer for SAS in the UK, a book lover, and author of SAS Programming for Enterprise Guide Users.
