Hay Festival 2011: Politicians love to be brought to book

Literary festivals offer relief from the 'bear pit’ of Westminster, writes Matthew d’Ancona.

David Miliband
A Nobel pursuit: David Miliband always made time for reading

At this time of year, authors with a book to sell traditionally embark on a punishing schedule, travelling the land from festival to festival, marquee to marquee, book-signing to book-signing. It’s the closest the literary world gets to rock 'n’ roll on the road.

The best gig of the lot, needless to say, is a booking at the Telegraph Hay Festival, the word’s greatest literary gathering. But the tour goes on even after this most civilised of events. No sleep till Edinburgh.

That doesn’t explain why so many politicians without a book to sell disrupt their diaries to speak at a session. David Miliband, whom I am interviewing this evening at 8.30, doesn’t have a geopolitical masterpiece to plug. He has only just returned from Pakistan, was at his brother Ed’s wedding in Nottingham on Friday, and is looking forward to half-term. But he still leapt at the opportunity to appear at Hay. Why?

The best answer I have heard came from Robin Cook at one of the many festivals he spoke at in the final years of his life. The intelligence of the audience, he said, was guaranteed at literary festivals. But, the former foreign secretary suggested, that wasn’t the heart of the matter. “The Westminster village,” he said, “is all about adversarial debate. It’s a bear-pit. This is much more thoughtful.”

The advent of 24/7 media has made the world a more transparent place, but it is cacophonous and competitive and friendly to sound bites. Prime Minister’s Questions often generates more heat than light. At events like Hay, politicians can speak with the audience in an atmosphere that encourages intellectual stimulation.

Gordon Brown adores book festivals. Phenomenally well read, he loves nothing more than to discuss his book-of-the-moment. “What you reading?” is a standard Brown greeting.

Even as foreign secretary, David Miliband made time for books. Amid all the briefs and draft speeches in his office, I remember him brandishing a copy of the Nobel-prize winning economist Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice.

Some have argued that book fairs have replaced great public meetings as a place where politicians can address large numbers of people. I doubt this. I would ascribe the affection politicians feel for these events to the philistine streak in British political life. John Major was quite right that “only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be too clever by half”. Most politicians with an intellectual pedigree do their best to disguise it.

We have one of the brainiest Cabinets for generations, and they attract similarly erudite advisers. Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s right-hand man, and Rohan Silva, one of Number 10’s rising stars, have been running seminars on new books to keep the Coalition’s intellectual bloodstream healthy. Recent subjects have included Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein: the Art and Science of Remembering Everything and David Brooks’s The Social Animal – the Cameroons’ new bible).

But for all this high-octane thinking behind the scenes, there are few public spaces where politicians can speak publicly about ideas. At places like Hay they engage with questions more revealingly, less like a speak-your-weight machine. You can find out a lot about what makes a politician tick at such an event, because he or she is unusually relaxed.

Bill Clinton declared Hay to be the “Woodstock of the Mind”. It gives politicians a chance to perform at their best, listen to the best, wear tie-dye, pray to Krishna and dance in the mud. Of course, I speak metaphorically. Unless David Miliband surprises us all tonight.

  • [Event 119] 8.30pm David Miliband talks to Matthew d’Ancona at the Sky Arts Studio