Levison Wood  was an Officer in the Parachute Regiment. He is the first person to walk the entire length of the river Nile, taking a year beginning in December 2013. He has written a book detailing the expedition called ‘Walking the Nile’.

He had a companion called Boston, an African  former rebel soldier, and the expedition was filmed for a documentary series on Channel 4.

He begins by scotching myths of elegance on the banks of the Nile portrayed by Agatha Christie and others. He underlines this with an image of a Nile cruise boat rusting on a sand bank.  The recent history of Nile cruising is all but over with the political and military instability in the region. 

This was a gruelling venture through searing heat, inhospitable land and war zones.
In clips from the TV series we see Levison wrestling with tribesmen, rescuing a baby monkey from a bush fire and avoiding land mines in South Sudan. Having seen him pummelled by the feet of his nomadic companions on one leg of the trip, I’d recommend that you never ask a Bedouin for a massage.

I’m heading back from my first day at Hay and it’s been a really great experience. My intentions on going there were a bit different than most people on the blog – I’m with a small start-up from Cardiff, Dead Bird Press, and I headed to the festival to try and promote our first novel, ‘The Death of Danny Daggers’, by first-time Welsh author Haydn Wilks.

Trying to promote a new book is challenging and we’ve faced a steep learning curve thus far, but one of the better ideas we came up with was heading to the festival with a stack of flyers and a smile and going out to spread the word to a crowd of thousands who’ve descended upon this beautifully odd little town in Wales bonded by a mutual love of books.

The responses have been fantastic. Few people took a flyer from me today without firing off a few questions about what the book was about, and it’s been really heartening to receive such warm responses. As someone whose done sales jobs in the past, promoting a book at the Hay festival has been a world away from the rejection and avoidance I’m used to receiving when trying to push something new onto the general public.

Other commitments prevent me from coming back to the festival until the weekend, and also scuppered my plans to pay it a visit last Saturday and Sunday, but I intend to *ahem* make hay whilst the sun is (hopefully) shining and enjoy another day or two handing out flyers this weekend. If you see me, come and grab one! And if you’re interested, you can read an extract from the novel we’re promoting over at the author’s website, haydnwilks.com.

Bernard Hinault, known as ‘the Badger, was a man of few words, a hard man, a man of granite a kind of Clint Eastwood on two wheels.

Will Fotheringham, the UK’s leading cycling journalist, has done much to convey the grit required to be be a competitive road cyclist. He was also ghost writer of Bradley Wiggins autobiography ‘My Time’. In a new book he has written about one of cycling’s hardest ever hard men, Hinault.

Bernard Hinault won the Tour de France five times. He is one of only six cyclists to have won all three Grand Tours, and the last French cyclist to win Tour in 1985.

He was an angry young man with a record in cycling second only to Eddie Merckx. In the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré in 1977 Hinault, in the yellow jersey, was heading for victory. But he crashed in the mountain descent. He climbed up from the roadside, licked his wounds and and got back on his bike, going on to win the race in Grenoble.

Fotheringham’s book ‘Bernard Hinault and the Fall and Rise of French Cycling’ also contemplates the future and the emergence of tough and talented young French riders.

By Virginia

I have a confession to make.  Despite the fact that John Boyne’s book ‘The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas’ is an international bestseller and an award winning film, I’ve not seen either.  On the other hand, my three kids have seen both as it’s a set Year 7 text. They’ve all raved about it, and I’ve been meaning to get round to the book, so the fact John Boyne was speaking at Hay provided the perfect opportunity.

I’m still only about a quarter of the way through, but this didn’t detract from my enjoyment of John Boyne’s conversation with Hay Festival founder, Peter Florence. They began with a discussion of how important historical accuracy was to a novel that was also intended to be a fable. Boyne described how he wanted to write a historical story, without referring directly to the violence of the holocaust but in such a way that the truth is uncovered for the reader. He explained that geographical authenticity was less important to him than what happened to people. An example of this being that Bruno’s house would have actually been inside the fence, rather than on the outside.  However, for narrative purposes, it is important a fence separates him from Shmuel.

The conversation moved on to the character of Bruno, who Florence described as naive, and Boyne felt was just innocent  – someone who had no reason not to know what was going and had not yet thought through the issues.  This has drawn some criticism – as some feel it is improbable that Bruno, aged 9, could be quite so ignorant. Boyne himself wondered out loud if he and his editor had got that right.  His intent was to show the story unfolding through the eyes of a child who didn’t understand what he was seeing, that allows the audience to question and be his conscience.  This allows Boyne to use narrative hints (such as Bruno’s description of Auschwitz as ‘Out-With’, the question of what sort of people don’t have baths?) so the reader is ahead of Bruno and knows what is going to happen. But should Bruno have in fact been more aware?

I think Boyne is right and the critics are unfair. Our parents are our first heroes. Bruno is from a loving family so it seems highly plausible to me that he would find it impossible to believe that his father is anything other than good.  Secondly, the reality of the Holocaust was that many grown-ups didn’t see what was happening on their doorstep (or didn’t want to see it). Why is it so unlikely that a child fails to understand the truth, when so many grown ups were so ignorant?  Thirdly, children believe what they are told, and if your father tells you other people are ‘non-persons’ who are you to argue? Finally, whilst we all like to think only bad people take part in these terrible historical events, the machinery of state killing is only possible because ordinary people participate in it unquestioningly. (A thought that reminded of my interview with Chris Woods earlier. It strikes me today’s US and UK drones programmes are full of good ordinary people who involved in a system that is killing people, because they believe they are doing the right thing for their countries).

Boyne also noted that whilst Bruno is basically a good person, he is capable of great selfishness. He often talks at Shmuel and is focussed on his own problems, rather than listening to his friend.  When he takes food he eats some of it. When he betrays Shmuel he is sorry but also worries about being lonely. Again this seems very plausible – given that Bruno is a privileged child with loving parents and servants, it is entirely believable that his first thoughts are often about himself.

Although the book is about the horrors of the Holocaust, for Boyne it is ultimately about friendship.

The most important line in the book comes when Bruno and Shmuel are holding hands and say they  are best friends for life. As dark and sad and honest as the book’s ending is, it does have this moment of beauty. Their friendship is stronger than the horror; it is they who they are cannot be beaten.

This is my last talk at Hay and it was a great one to go out on. It left me with lots to ponder and a wonderful book to take away. 

We must be getting old, or so it seems. A few years ago festival fatigue would have taken much longer to set in, but come Monday night we awaken from a long lie in, breakfast in the sunshine and solitude of our base in Craswall, and mosey on down into Hay for a lunchtime session of Tessa Dunlop for me and a bit of stewarding duty for Pete. Tessa doesn’t fail to impress, despite her intended companion Pamela Rose (a 93 year old Bletchley Park girl) having been hospitalised the day before (get well soon Pamela!), she brings the whole era to life, is animated and captivating as she recounts the stories of the fifteen ladies (or girls) she had spent a year interviewing and getting to know, before publishing her book, The Bletchley Park Girls. When asked how difficult it was to keep e secrets they had, one of the ‘girls’ simply replied ‘it wasn’t difficult, because no-one ever asked what women did for the war effort’.

My next session was equally educational, as Amitav Ghosh gave us a quick historical insight on how the opium trade formed the foundation of the capitalist economy in the nineteenth century. His new book Flood of Fire is a follow up to River of Smoke and Sea of Poppies and has taken him ten years to complete. Ghosh explored a plethora of little known words as he takes delight in exploring sound and language in his literature, (I now know the original meaning of ‘doolally’, hilarious!) I am adding the fascinating trilogy to my ever growing pile of ‘must reads’.

Maajid Nawaz begins with a shocking tale from his home town of Southend. At the age of 15 he was about to take a racist beating from supporters of Combat 18. A local, Maajid  believes was called Matt, attempted to step in and was stabbed multiple times by the skinhead thugs.

In a later episode his friend fooled the thugs into believing he had a bomb in a rucksack. They backed off and it taught Nawaz the power of fear. It was his first real step to radicalisation.

At 16 he joined the Islamist Jihadist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. The student Nawaz was expelled for his political activities. He later went to SOAS but travelled extensively in Pakistan and Denmark creating and building Jihadist groups. At 24, he was in Egypt when 9/11 happened. He was arrested and subjected to inhumane treatment, although he escaped the levels of torture that many fellow inmates experienced. He was there for four years. Whilst in jail he came to the conclusion that Islamic Jihad was essentially a fascist ideology overlaid over Islam. He left Egypt and prison as a liberal committed to human rights.

Maajid founded Quilliam, a London-based think tank that focuses on Islamism as the cause of Muslim terrorism. It lobbies governments in order to demonstrate how Islamist ideology is incompatible with Islam.

In 2009 he joined the Liberal Democrats, because he believed and wanted to show that the democratic system could embrace even those who has sought to oppose and undermine it.

Sponsored by Shepherd’s Ice Cream

Who is Malorie Blackman?

She’s the current Children’s Laureate (for a few more weeks at least). She is a well known name amongst both teens and the education sector. As an English teacher I was bursting with joy to see her talk of the highlights of her career both as a writer and as Children’s Laureate. She did not fail to please.

Not only was she funny, she addressed key issues that affect teachers, children and parents. There was a distinct focus on reading for pleasure which Blackman freely advocates as being the most important developmental feature in teenagers. One of the key ideas to enable this more freely across the board is through the use of libraries. Again, Blackman is an advocate of libraries, stating how ‘libraries are mandatory in prisons but not in schools’ with the tone of shock and disdain. The other idea freely exposed is parental engagement with children’s reading, especially in terms of male reading role models.

Jonathan Sacks, Baron Sacks, is a rabbi, philosopher and scholar of Judaism, who was Chief Rabbi from 1991 to 2013.  His book ‘Not in God’s Name – Confronting Religious Violence’ explores the concept of altruistic evil or the execution of terrible acts in the name of a higher power.

Religion is on the rise across the world, simply because religious people have far more children. The secular nations of Europe all have a birth rate of less than two per family, so secular communities are in a period of inevitable decline.

Lord Sacks, it transpires, is a fan of social media and believes that we should be using it more to build bonds in society “but there is also a lot of anger on the Internet.”

Sacks compares the relationship between Judaism, Christianity and Islam to sibling rivalry. He cites Freud in describing this rivalry as a powerful and violent force. However, he says that the many bible stories about sibling conflict are teaching followers of all three religions, not to view themselves this way.

The BBC’s Head of News James Harding challenges this view, saying that religious teachings that tell their adherents that they are “chosen”‘ must themselves be a source of conflict. Lord Sacks counters saying that religion will ultimately persuade its followers to question conflict that brings suffering on its own people.

A respectable panel of Judges chaired by Philippe Sands discussed the relationship between international and domestic law with a specific focus on criminal and human rights law.

I entered this talk (to my shame) largely ignorant of the work of Andrew O’Hagan. However as I often discover ignorance can also mean no pre conceived ideas or expectations, which in turn can lead to wonderful surprises.

This was certainly my experience of Andrew O’Hagan in conversation with Rosie Boycott. These two clearly go back a long way and consequently the tone of the interview was relaxed and informed as Rosie interviewed him about his latest novel ‘The Illuminations’ and so much more besides.

O’Hagan is a journalist by trade and consequently his novels are largely informed by journalism. ‘The Illuminations’ is very much about the effects of the war in Afghanistan on one particular soldier; something O’Hagan knows much about having spent time with soldiers in Kabul.

Interesting conversation emerged about the lack of literature that has come out of the conflicts the UK has been involved in for the last 25 years compared to the wealth of stories, essays and novels that draw on World War I and II as inspiration. O’Hagan made that point that “we are living in under described times” . He is clearly bemused by this listing recent events such as the recent vote on Scottish Indepedence as providing enough material to keep novelists going for years.

I could have listened to Andrew O’Hagan much longer than the allocated hour, he was interesting and engaging and hearing him read a particularly tense scene from his novel was for me the highlight as I suspect it was for much of the audience. I stole a moment to glance around and saw an audience listening in open-mouthed rapt attention.

I left this talk feeling thrilled by the power of fiction and excited to have discovered another author I had not read before