The small book festival that’s traveled the world in search of ideas
Skift Take
The Hay Festival has largely traveled to participants rather than the other way around, but has still drawn visitors and recognition to the small town where it all began.
"A festival," the author Matt Haig recently wrote in the Telegraph, "is a book you can walk into." For those who have never been to the Hay Festival, it must be difficult to imagine how a village of tents – erected as if by magic in the night – can be home to so many potentially life-altering ideas. But it is.
The comedian Frank Skinner turned up, heard the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, and fell in love with the stars. Jimmy Carter, the former US president, listened to Gene Robinson, a gay American bishop – both away from their home country – and began to think differently about homosexuality and the church. Hilary Mantel came last year and first had the thought that led to her eloquent and controversial assertions about the Duchess
