Be Still My Bleeding Leftwing Pinko Heart

As we hurtled at 60mph down another country lane in the west of England, in the pouring rain, tailgating the car in front, I made it clear to Paul that if I ended up a vegetable, I wanted the life support machine turned off. I tried to console myself that we were passengers in a German-made car, and they are pretty safe. But we made it to Crickhowell (pronounced Crac-ow -, I thought I was in Poland!) safely, with our limbs and breakfasts intact.

Wales was pretty miserable while we were there – but we had a great time at the Hay Festival. I thought I had died and gone to guardian-reader heaven. More left-wing, pinko, bleeding-heart liberals than I thought existed in the whole wide world were there. We’d booked a couple of events before we got there, but decided upon others as we went. The events themselves were an hour long – with a 40-50 minute talk (or interview), then questions from the floor.

First up was Germaine Greer. This was a last-minute decision, and one of the best talks we saw. I had seen her speak a couple of times before (off the cuff) and she is often on television over here as a talking head on review shows etc. I had never been that impressed with her comments, she always seemed to be saying the first thing that came into her head, and as a result of this, didn’t particularly want to go see her talk on ‘Poetry as Male Display’. She was great, dissecting a John Donne poem for us line by line, saying what a great poem it was, but illustrating how it objectified and subjugated women at the same time. All very interesting and intellectual. (‘She used words I didn’t know!’ someone said afterwards.)

The next day we saw Andrew Davies, who has adapted the Tailor of Panama, Bleak House, Brideshead Revisited and more recently The Line of Beauty, talk about his projects. He was quite the raconteur, and sprinkled his chat with references to other adapters (screenwriters? Who knows? There were lots of sage “Mmmm”’s from the audience – mostly I didn’t know who he was talking about.) His main piece of advice - ’Make sure sex is the spine of the story’.

Another talk we thought might be dry was given by Antony Beevor , on ‘The Battle for Spain’. He talked about how the Spanish Civil War probably wasn’t the fault of either right or left, and modern Spain’s struggle to come to terms with it’s past. He managed to tie in recent events (including remarks by a Spanish general who basically said if the Catalan’s didn’t pull their heads in, then the army would have to take care of things in Catalunya. I was quite excited by that, because I’d read about it. ), so we enjoyed this talk as well. He related Hitler’s diary entry after meeting Greneral Franco and not giving him want he wanted in return for Franco’s commitment to enter WWII ‘He is the only person I’ve met who made me feel like a Jew’. Humorous, if slightly chilling, with the benefit of hindsight.

We then Saw Antony Gormley discuss his installation at Menzies, Western Australia, for the Perth Festival. It was interesting, but there was nothing of note to comment on.

Our last event was the guardian debate: Free to Offend? Joan Bakewell, (Chair) Madeleine Bunting, Ziaudin Sardar, Philip Hensher, Reza Aslan and Anthony Julius discussed whether freedom of speech overrode the right of an individual not to be caused offence. So two Muslims, a Jew, and a Christian and one other (unknown) discussed the recent controversy over the Mohammed cartoons, Jerry Springer - The Opera (7.5/10), and the withdrawal of a play in Britain, because it offended Sikhs. I don’t think they came up with any answers, but the points of view put across were thought provoking.

So that's about it for our weekend, we were lucky enough to get the train back, so there was no need for Novenas on the return journey. I'd have loved to have stayed and seen AL Gore (but he was charging £30!!), and the talk on Creationism v. Evolution ('Who are the monkeys? You decide.'), but obviously it's not possible to see everything. And my brain hurt on the Sunday after attending four events. Next year we'll be back, hopefully for longer and with bigger brains. More photos are here.