Port Eliot lit fest
The Culture Vulture is spreading his wings and flying to the countryside this weekend. I'm taking him off to Saltash, Cornwall, for the Port Eliot Lit Fest.
Love of the land
His plays inspired riots and a revival of Irish culture, yet rarely have they been done justice. Until now. Colm Tóibín on the doomed genius of JM Synge.
In Cat Ballou jeans at 67, Fonda wows the west
The queen of this year's Guardian Hay book festival - the largest literary festival in the world - arrived on its closing day with blond-highlighted hair and turquoise earrings in a beige suede trouser suit, to discuss her autobiography, My Life So Far, and was taken to the hearts of listeners who have grown up repeating her lines.
Bubbly and share of pig for winner of Wodehouse prize
Marina Lewycka's first novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, a comedy poised between the cultures and languages of the former Soviet republic and provincial England, won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction. Her achievement, which was announced at the Guardian Hay book festival on its closing day, brought Lewycka only a jeroboam of champagne and a symbolic share of a Wodehousian pig.
I saw hate in a graveyard – Stephen Fry
Actor shaken by anti-semitic outrage as he explored his Jewish past.
The class war in fiction – and fact
After 111 editions of socialist classic, author's family has received just £25.
Crime writer with a twist
The prizes awarded to the authors honoured by a new competition for prison writing would not cover the cost of the invitation card for other Hay bashes. The winner gets a £20 phone card, the runners up £5 cards. Clive Hopwood, of the Writers in Prison organisation, joint organisers of the competition, said: "In the best tradition of the Oscars, most of our winners can't be with us today."
Tiny fans besiege book world’s bejewelled star
Roll over Jane Fonda and Goldie Hawn, Jacqueline Wilson, the newly-elected children's laureate, was the one true diva at Hay this year.
Nicolas Roeg interview: his brilliant career
How did Nicolas Roeg go from lowly cameraman to the legendary director of Don’t Look Now, Performance and The Man Who Fell to Earth? In a rare interview, he tells all to Jason Wood. Read the full, unedited transcript.
Hay days
Tiffany Murray is a longtime friend of the Hay festival, but this year, as well as helping out, she read from her debut novel, Happy Accidents, at an event with Audrey Niffenegger and Diana Evans. From gout and pigs to clashes with Goldie Hawn, she kept a diary of her time in Hay.
The trouble with fictional Troubles
Festival author Linda Anderson challenges writers to abandon Northern Irish cliches of thuggish gunmen and harridans banging binlids, and get to grips with the new political situation in the province.