MAKING HAY at the Hay Festival 2012

There was palpable tension in the air as the immaculately attired Campbell took the stage on Friday evening.  This is a man who divides a room or in this case a rather large Guardian sponsored tent.  Now that Labour is out of office Campbell is publishing a new set of diaries this time with the good stuff. [...]

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The historian John Julius Norwich took us on a whistle-stop tour through many of the world’s great cities and it was a charming and informative romp.   From early settlements likes Samarkand which grew up on the great human river that was the Silk Road to the birth of the great cities of Europe.   We were [...]

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Allegra Huston or ‘Legs’ as her sister Anjelica calls her was at Hay to discuss her autobiographical memoir ‘Love Child’ published last year.  Huston was born in London and her mother the American ballerina Enrica Soma was married to John Huston who she Allegra believed to be her father.  In fact her biological father was the [...]

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The former metropolitan police commissioner Ian Blair has oft been described as an arch politician, if this session was anything to go by that’s not too wide of the mark. Given that the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes by armed police occurred on Blair’s watch it was a racing certainty that the liberal Hay audience would [...]

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