A day at Hay-on-Wye

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Hay-on-Wye, Wales: Books, authors and rain and more rain are the traditional highlights of the first weekend at Hay Festival at Hay-on-Wye, a small on the Welsh side of Wales-England border in southwest Britain. This time it was no different.
All the events on Saturday, May 29, were accompanied by the sound of rain lashing on the tents and howling wind, perfectly normal for a festival where willies, raincoats and umbrellas are almost a compulsory uniform. Famous the world for over 30 second-hand and antiquarian bookshops, Hay-on-Wye transforms a field on its outskirts into a tented arena for the 10-day literary festival, which was conceived by British actor and director Peter Florence with his father Norman in his mother’s kitchen in Hay.
The festival, which started in 1988, has spread all over the world and the latest edition will be inaugurated in Kerala in November this year.
The launch of Hay Kerala on Saturday afternoon was attended by Sanjoy Roy and team, who are helping Hay Festivals to organise the three-day Thiruvanathapuram extravaganza, broadcast journalists Jon Snow and Nik Gowing, Florence’s mother Rhoda and wife Becky, who are festival regulars, among others.
The launch, followed by South Indian food and a range of juices, had just one talking point: former Union minister Shashi Tharoor’s absence from the festival.
The Kerala festival will be an annual fixture and Lyndy Cooke, one of the festival directors, hopes it will grow organically so that over the years it will grow to encompass other artistic aspects. Colombian ambassador Mauricio Rodriguez gave a glowing endorsement to Hay Festival, detailing the numerous ways it had helped the development of Cartagena. After the Kerala launch, there was just enough time for a quick tour of festival site, mostly tented, around a range of open areas. American author Bill Bryson, who has recently published his latest book At Home, was signing books at Pembertons Bookshop and the queue quickly grew to more than 100 people. The crowd at Oxfam bookshop was daunting, but buying books for £2 is always an incredible incentive.
Each day at the festival is packed with activity with more than 50 speakers, discussions on books, writers, politics, economy, music and dance. The trick is to book in advance and utilise 30-minute break in between each session to hunt down favourite authors for autographs or a small chat.
The biggest disappointment was no-show by Swedish crime thriller writer Henning Mankell, who was on his way to break the Gaza blockade.

Nadine Gordimer

South African Nobel-laureate Nadine Gordimer was frank in assessment of her poetic attempt and drew laughter when she recounted how, ironically for an anti-apartheid activist, her first poem as a young girl was an ode to Boer leader Paul Kruger. “I was just not good enough to attempt poetry,” the 86-year-old writer said.
Gordimer, the top draw writer speaking on Saturday, forgot she had won the Booker Prize, mentioned contribution of Mahatma Gandhi and South Africans of Indian origin to the anti-apartheid struggle, and expressed regret that she didn’t learn any of the indigenous languages of her country in her discussion with Peter Florence.

Kazuo Ishiguro

The Japan-born British writer Kazuo Ishiguro, in his discussion with UCL professor John Mullan, doggedly defended the use of clichés, or rather the footballer-speak, in his short story compilation, The Nocturnes.
The 55-year-old author said he liked to use phrases like “to be fair,” “at the end of the day,” “to tell the truth,” as he found them poignant and beautiful when challenged by Prof. Mullan on the use of phrases which are normally not used deliberately by writers. “I have speak like the character, I have be like the narrator, they have to speak in a language entirely natural to them,” Ishiguro explained. “I like clichés, I like the way footballers speak,” he added. The least of his concerns while writing is that the language is cliché ridden, Ishiguro said and revealed that he does avoid use of “basically.”

David Mitchell

Booker-nominated author David Mitchell, who is still inundated with questions and admiration about Cloud Atlas, admitted it was tough for him to write a third person narrative for his latest novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, which is a love story based on the man-made island of Dejima in Edo Japan.
Forty-one-year-old Mitchell, who has a Japanese wife, explores his enduring fascination with Japan in his latest novel. Playing with words and coming up with phrases to delight the audience, Mitchell criticised himself over use some words while reading an extract from his book. Admitting that he suffers from stammering, he revealed that his love of words comes from trying to keep his stammering in control. “These days I am having trouble with words starting with S,” he said adding that a few parts of Black Swan Green, in which the main character had a stammer, were autobiographical.

Felipe Fernandez Armesto

London-born historian Felipe Fernandez Armesto was in form, defending his controversial book, 1492: The Year the World Began, and antagonising most of his listeners, who along with presenter Brownen Maddox were bemused and aghast at his dismissal of Renaissance as a movement with no effect on history of the world.
He defended this theory that 1492, the year Christopher Columbus set sail, was the most important date in the world history, but slipped up on his knowledge of Indian food. The Oxford professor, who has written a history of food, said vindaloo, corruption of Portuguese term for garlic and wine, was Indianised in Bengal. He mistook Bengal for Goa!
With his powerpoint skills very rusty, his fumbling with the system raised more laughs and appreciation than his ideas, which put Reformation as “little local difficulty.” However, his talk definitely led to passionate discussions amongst his audience.

Lord Stern

British economist Nicholas Stern, a professor at London School of Economic, attacked climate change sceptics, saying they were hopelessly confused between weather and climate when using the example of cold winter in Europe and United States to disprove global warming. “Look at exceptionally hot winters in Asia, especially India,” he said countering the argument about the coldest winter in Europe and the US this year.
In conversation with journalist Rosie Boycott, Lord Stern was very optimistic and defended Copenhagen deal. “Life is full of ups and downs. People didn’t see, because it was so chaotic and acrimonious, that the Copenhagen accord turned out to be a strong platform for going forward. It was much less fragile than many of us feared.
The submissions to Copenhagen now cover 120 countries, and 80 per cent of emissions. If everybody delivers, it will give you emissions levels in 2020 that are the same as we have now,” said the economist, who was publicising his latest book, A Blueprint For a Safer Planet: How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity, at the festival.