Child’s play

Where is Michael Morpurgo? It's my first event of the day and I'm already running 10 minutes late. The tent is deserted. Has it been moved? Is this the right day? Notebook dangling uselessly in one hand, bag from the other, I have no idea what to do.

Don’t mention the war

John Harris: As the Hay Festival proves, Iraq is defining contemporary debate. But it's also killing it.

Hare: I was wrong about Powell. He lied

· Playwright explains role reversal in Stuff Happens · Politics of Iraq war like 'Shakespearean tragedy'

Tinseltown’s rainbow warrior

Matthew Modine may be famous for his roles in Birdy and Full Metal Jacket, but, he tells John Harris, he'd rather be known as the man who slashed Hollywood's paper consumption.

Gore’s plea on climate change wins ovation

"We're running the planet like a company in liquidation," the former US vice-president Al Gore told an audience at the Hay festival, in an impassioned plea to act on climate change before it is too late.

Off the record

Beth Orton's music earned her the title of the 'comedown queen' for a generation of ravers. But, she tells Laura Barton, she has always felt there is more to life than music.

Age concern

Headliners at this year's festival - one last night, the other just finished this evening - have been painter Howard Hodgkin and poet Seamus Heaney, both now at that eminent stage of life where more mundane mortals might be plugged into pension plans.

Free to offend? Part 2

Georgina Henry: Audio: Hear Madeleine Bunting and Anthony Julius discuss how to reconcile freedom of expression and religious sensibilities.

Doom, destruction and weirdos: another day at Hay

'In a global village there will be global village idiots. And with this power, just one could be too many' ... Lord Rees. Photograph: David Sillitoe It is hard to feel depressed among the quaint bookshops and pleasant rolling hills of Hay-on-Wye - even while it buckets with rain, writes science correspondent James Randerson.

Why Creationism is wrong

Sarah Crown: Steve Jones was preaching to the converted about evolution at the Hay festival. It was just a shame America's 100m creationists could not have been there.

Terror or error: is humanity on the eve of destruction?

· Head of Royal Society sees global defining moment· Humankind 'holds planet's future in its hand'

In praise of … literary festivals

Leader: The literary festival has exploded into the life of a score or more British towns over the past decade or two in an extraordinary flowering of literacy. Along with Hay, there is Cheltenham and Bath, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Wigtown.