Hay festival: The politicians are coming

What's happened to Hay? Once novelists and poets were the centre of gravity, now it's scientists and politicians. Where better to show their human and cultured sides?

Is political leadership renewable?

Jeremy Leggett: The challenge facing David Miliband is clear - to realise the potential of renewable energy. Today's question at Hay: does he have the courage to do it?

Hay festival: Celebrating Auden

A large crowd joined poets Simon Armitage and John Fuller to pay tribute to WH Auden - despite the science heavyweights next door.

The voice of conscience

For decades he was the scourge of successive Nigerian despots. Now aged 72, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka tells Maya Jaggi how 'repetitions of history' - most recently the atrocities in Darfur - continue to haunt his life and work.

We are where we are

Martin Kettle: The Iraq war has been a disaster, but the argument at Hay that further inquiry is pointless proved the more persuasive.

Scott and a Scot

Alastair Harper: Scott Capurro told some risqué jokes at the Hay Festival. Gordon Brown tried to. But they both lost their crowds when they talked up Tony.

Tristram Shandy in Bloomsbury

Martin Kettle: Like the book, the British Museum is full of connections and digressions, as Neil MacGregor illustrated at Hay.

Today, yesterday, at Hay

Alastair Harper: The Hay audience was asked to help put together the Today programme. But are we expert enough?

Truths and prejudice part 2

Martin Bright: The challenge of an atheist Palestinian to the Hamas representative is what set the Hay debate alight.