The Hay has become the Starbucks of literary festivals

The Hay Festival, memorably described by Bill Clinton as ‘the Woodstock of the mind’, has, over the past couple of decades, transformed into something more like the Starbucks of literary festivals. Like a bookish spider plant, it has sent out runners from its home in the rain-sodden Welsh marches to grow festivals all over the world. This spring it went to Abu Dhabi — where its chief point of contact was 69-year-old Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, a scion of the wealthy ruling dynasty who enjoys the title of ‘minister for tolerance’ in that illiberal regime.

Should it have been there? This is a perennial ethical problem. Remember that species of diplomacy that in the Blair years was called ‘constructive engagement’? The idea is that you make nice with regimes whose values don’t align with your own — blood-soaked dictatorships, people who see the virtue in keeping their womenfolk indoors, or hanging homosexuals from cranes and so forth — in the hope that they will see the error of their ways and join the great family of civilised nations. It has tended to be a policy most enthusiastically pursued, mind you, with those countries that have a big budget for buying British arms, vast sovereign wealth funds and/or agreeable hotels. You strike the deal, press the flesh, make sotto voce remarks in ‘the strongest possible terms’ about not chucking religious minorities into internment camps, and pose grinning for photographs to cement your ‘partnership’.

As it goes with government, so it goes with literary festivals. Most writers and journalists love a festival, especially somewhere warm. You flog a few books, stay in a nice hotel and get wined and dined with literary celebrities. And there’s a decent case to be made that in the process you do good: a high-profile festival can help shine a spotlight human-rights-wise and connect local writers with international colleagues.