Hay Festival actively promotes bookworming. The event is the go-to for any high-brow culture vulture, attracting world-renowned authors, critics, comedians, musicians and politicians, many of whom are there to promote their most recently published works. From the pool this year, we’ve selected our Top 5 books from the festival. Get your head in one of these…
Text: Sarah Raphael, Ogun Gortan
John Waters, the notorious filmmaker, actor and writer from the bygone studio 54-era turned up to promote his ferocious and educational new guide for queens, ‘Role Models’. An iconic voice for US subculture, Waters is renowned for his delightfully vulgar films, with tranny antithesis Devine. In what was a sold-out event, Waters and Baroness Helena Kennedy had a good old chinwag. The queues for the signing after the event reached out the door for miles. He’s still got it!
Former editor of i-D during the humorous 80s, current GQ editor and author several times over, Dylan Jones was out to spread word of his collaborative book with David Bailey aptly titled, ‘Heroes’. The volume is a photographic exposition on the lives of men and women serving in Afghanistan, with glimpses into base camp bastion. The project was initiated in aid of a charitable cause, to raise money and awareness for ‘Help for Heroes’, a charity raising money for returning servicemen and women.
John Hegarty the co-creator of global advertising company BBH and overall industry mogul threw a launch party at Hay for his new book, ‘Hegarty On Advertising’. The book blows the whistle on advertising trends, signalling TV is once again king and a place advertisers want to be. The book also delves into the visionary’s remarkable history, the early days of BBH in the 80s and landmark moments like the first Levi’s campaign. In conversation with Dylan Jones, the two media powerhouses mentioned key points on the resurgent relevance of TV advertising with shows like X Factor making it a ripe and fruitful venture once again.
Home design expert, Grand Designs presenter and possessor of the best on screen frown, Kevin McCloud arrived at a Hay with an agenda to get us all to develop more meaningful relationships with the environment we live in. His talk echoed consistently with the living philosophy set out in his new publication, ‘43 Principles of Home’. Slating big commercial shopping centres like Bluewater in favour of small, local businesses and encouraging the sustainable philosophy of ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’, McCloud is on a mission. If you were being crass, you might say it’s his grand design.
Chaired by Dylan Jones, Hay opened its Starlight room for a panel discussion of i-D Covers 1980-2010 with Terry and Tricia Jones, Caryn Franklin and Richard Buckley. The book was published last year by Taschen edited by Terry Jones and Edward Enninful with a foreword by Richard Buckley and tells the stories behind the winks that have mapped the evolution of i-D from fanzine to leading fashion glossy.