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Helen M Jerome reviews

Hay Festival 2009... HELEN M JEROME has an untypically sunny time at one of the world's premier literary festivals - rubs shoulders with the good, the great, and Alan Bennett, and emerges edified. Hay on Wye nestles over the Golden Valley and the Black Mountains. You have your toe in Wales, with the dual-language road signs to prove it, but this small market town managed to draw bibliophiles of all nationalities. If you're looking for a book - any book - it's probably in at least one of the numerous bookshops here. And this bookish destination also boasts an ever-expanding literary festival - now simply Hay Festival - started a couple of decades ago by Festival supremo PETER FLORENCE and his dad. In its early years, the festival encircled the primary school playground and car park. The Green Room was a classroom, venues included the old chapel up the hill, the atmosphere was intimate, but the ambition of the 10-day event was palpable. Here was TOM WOLFE wearing spats, EDMUND HILLARY reliving the ascent of Everest, SALMAN RUSHDIE accompanied by armed escorts, PETER USTINOV delivering another anecdote, and would-be novelist SOPHIE MARCEAU effortlessly exuding glamour. The game-changer was when BILL CLINTON came to town, took a look around, dubbed it the "Woodstock of the mind", and propelled Hay into the Champions League of Lit Fests. Gradually the festival split from the town itself - which has brought some local envy and inevitable bitterness - and moved further away to create its own self-contained campus, Glastonbury-style. Here be smart cafes, bars, carpeted walkways, deckchairs, ice cream stand, food hall, a vast bookshop, and bizarrely sponsored marquees for the events. Yes, the Guardian Stage (they are the main sponsors), the Sony Screen (films add a fresh texture), the Oxfam Studio... but the Barclays Wealth Pavilion? Mmm. More than a few heads were shaken at this. The miracle is, that despite the murmurings of selling out, going corporate and losing touch with its roots, despite the security men sporting handcuffs, despite the loss of intimacy, the core of the festival is as good as ever. Possibly better, even. After two previous years of cold rain and muddy fields, when teepees and yurts leaked, macs and wellies were de rigeur, and the Dunkirk spirit prevailed, finally the sun beamed down on Hay for the last few days of May 2009.

Peter Florence's vision means that there are now spin-off festivals all over the world. But Hay is still the daddy. And wherever you looked this time there were treats to savour. The main attractions were national treasure ALAN BENNETT and global treasure DESMOND TUTU, with the likes of STEPHEN FRY, JEREMY PAXMAN, HESTON BLUMENTHAL, DARA O'BRIAIN and DAVID FROST also filling up the Big Tent with their fans. The one bit of bad weather on Bank Holiday Monday briefly brought the house (lights) down, and lost all sound, as a white-stetsoned TONY 'Some Like It Hot' CURTIS dramatically entered stage right in a wheelchair to wax lyrical about ex-lover Marilyn Monroe, then use less flattering words about Joan Collins and Shelley Winters. Music is muscling in too, with the heavenly MARA CARLYLE the pick of the bunch this time. ED MILIBAND came over as not such a bad chap - as politicians go - alongside FRANNY 'Age of Stupid' ARMSTRONG, who advised Ed to "Forget saving the Labour Party. You've got to save the world, mate!" Politics move so fast that JAN RAVENS' impressions of half the cabinet now seem old hat. JEREMY HARDY managed to be timeless and bang-up-to-date. Bibliophile ROBIN INCE had the most manic and innovative act. Stand-up stalwart DYLAN MORAN was content to charm everyone. By now you're probably wondering where the poets, novelists and giants of non- fiction were? OK. The National Poets of Wales and England, respectively GILLIAN CLARKE and CAROL-ANN DUFFY, sandwiched the suddenly-packed events for RUTH PADEL as she accepted then quit her Oxford Professor of Poetry post. And punchy young poets SION TOMOS OWEN and NICK MELLORS were among the promising NU FICTION writers making their debuts.

ZOE 'Notes on a Scandal' HELLER spoke of her atheism while discussing her much- misunderstood The Believers; GILES 'Last King of Scotland' FODEN admitted that his meteorologist father-in-law helped him shape his 'weather' novel Turbulence; ANNE 'Fugitive Pieces' MICHAELS appeared as intense as her work, as she described visiting locations before writing about them in Winter Vault; MJ HYLAND said she avoids using adjectives in her fiction, "except in emergencies". DAVID 'Damned Utd' PEACE described his meticulous, longhand writing process, and his total immersion in his subjects for the Red Riding quartet and Tokyo trilogy - but his great revelation is that he's only writing a total of twelve novels, perhaps including one on Geoff Boycott, then that's it. His fellow crime novelist, Henning 'Wallander' Mankell was a no-show. Ireland's COLM TOIBIN forged an unexpectedly hilarious double-act with Lebanese writer RAWI HAGE as they discussed their respective examinations of exile, Brooklyn and Cockroach. Egypt's ALAA AL ASWANY continues to multitask by being a fulltime dentist who writes bestsellers like The Yacoubian Building in his leisure time. Comic novelist LISSA 'Father Ted' EVANS showed why her third book, Their Finest Hour and a Half, made the Orange and Wodehouse lists, and said she's planning to write about World War 2 again. And the 1940s have also gripped the imagination of the ever-brilliant storyteller SARAH 'Night Watch' WATERS for a second time in 'Little Stranger'. Of course, one of the biggest launches - and events - of Hay 2009 coincided with the 65th anniversary of another event: D-DAY, by ANTONY BEEVOR. With the same compelling, almost novelistic, narrative style he employed in Stalingrad and Berlin, Beevor has taken the well-worn story of the Normandy landings, found new accounts and diaries, re-examined overlooked sources, and made that pivotal operation seem fresh and vital. If you want to know how war-weariness and fear of failure led some men to literally shoot themselves in the foot or the hand - through sandbags - to get shipped home. If you want to know how the female collaborateurs "horizontales" were really treated, and exactly how food represented power. If you want to hear how some of the French genuinely felt they were swapping one occupier for another - this is the book. And it's not without controversy, as he's described the Allies' bombing of Caen as "close to a war crime" because of its futility.

Anniversaries are always ripe territory for historians - so 20 years after the Velvet Revolution and the end of the Cold War it was high time for the likes of specialists like TIM GARTON-ASH and ARCHIE BROWN to question whether it's time for another revolution right now, and to tackle the Fall of Communism in the Soviet Union respectively. Back on our shores, RICHARD OVERY explored Britain between the wars, a time when apocalyptic language came to the fore, when psychoanalysis and psychotherapy were making inroads, and when eugenics wasn't seen as politically incorrect, but was actually being debated seriously. RICHARD EVANS gave the Open University lecture on War and Society in Germany in World War 2 (with ERIC HOBSBAWM looking on), and bombarded us with facts about the wave of suicides after defeat, how Hitler wouldn't use women in the war because it would be bad for the nation's future child-bearing, and the church's deliberate "independence" to remain an "honest broker". Riveting stuff. Looking across the Atlantic, DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN admitted she was a 24- year-old intern in the White House long before that became a famous position. That was in the time of Lyndon Johnson, even though Goodwin's politics were very different. She's now the trusted biographer of Presidents, and most recently cast her memoir skills much further back to Abe Lincoln, "the darkest of dark horses", who took the radical step of filling his cabinet with people who hated him, hence the title of her book, Team of Rivals. Another rank outsider from Illinois, Barack Obama, quickly picked up on the parallels with Lincoln, and has not only immersed himself in the book, but now recommends it, consults with Goodwin, and has his own 'team of rivals' including Hillary Clinton.

DAVID SIMON, creator of The Wire and a US newspaperman to his very core, bemoaned the state of investigative journalism today; labelled reporting a "threatened profession" when there's never been more need for it; and suggested that the model for online journalism might follow the TV model of HBO, so you pay for what you really want. He also poured scorn on the smallness of the British MPs' expenses scandal, saying: "We have a time-honoured tradition of political corruption in my country. There's no room for amateurism". And if you want to know how to write drama as well as Simon, he has only one name to recommend: Anton Chekhov. From the Design Museum, DEYAN SUDJIC looked at the Language of Things, from Damien Hirst's jewelled skull to the complete reinvention of a country like Turkey. The ever-entertaining ALAIN DE BOTTON presented a deadpan study of the Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, spotting that we're never far from a career crisis; we're defined by 'what we do'; and noting that it's only since 1750 that the idea of marrying for love rather than practicality has been popular. Lots of fun. ANNA BARFORD and DANIEL DORLING showed off their Atlas of the Real World, which pours statistics - on religion, health, wealth, birth, death and everything in between - through algorithms to show the world as it really is; an illuminating, sobering indictment of the inequities of the way we live.

Most controversially, Zambian-born economist DAMBISA MOYO showed why she's becoming known as the Anti-Bono, despite being praised by the likes of Kofi Annan. Her coolly argued, but passionate plea to stop propping up Africa with aid is fleshed out in her challenging book, Dead Aid. As her interrogator, Jon Snow, commented: "She's unpinned a grenade." She says aid is endemic in virtually every part of Africa, fuelling corruption, making governments abdicate responsibility and fail to innovate, with growth either negligible or going backwards. Moyo wants us to change our intellectual approach to Africa away from pity. She proposes a radical, five-year phasing out of aid; instead she wants us to microfinance, and lend money as a business deal. Africa's best bet for growth right now, says Moyo, is to link up with China. Blimey. Big ideas, challenging everything we thought was right. Another jaw- dropping Hay moment. AND FINALLY... THE 10 MUST-READS: TEAM OF RIVALS, by Doris Kearns Goodwin DEAD AID, by Dambisa Moyo D-DAY, by Anthony Beevor LITTLE STRANGER, by Sarah Waters BROOKLYN, by Colm Toibin THEIR FINEST HOUR-AND-A-HALF, by Lissa Evans ATLAS OF THE REAL WORLD THE BELIEVERS, by Zoe Heller TURBULENCE, by Giles Foden HOMICIDE, by David Simon DATE FOR YOUR DIARY: Next year's Hay Festival: 27 May - 6 June 2010

Check out the official Hay Festival website at: HayFestival.com