Peter Florence

The Hay festival was started in 1988 by Peter Florence, then a young actor. His mother's family came from the Black Mountains in Wales, and Hay, with its antiquarian and second-hand bookshops, seemed the ideal place for an offbeat literary festival. He funded the first festival with the winnings of a poker game.

 The debate in 2003

The next year he persuaded American playwright Arthur Miller to be the star guest (a bemused Miller reportedly asked if Hay-on-Wye was some kind of sandwich). Since then, the festival has grown on its own unique lines – high-minded and casual, ambitious and intimate. Don DeLillo, Norman Mailer, Toni Morrison and Bill Clinton have crossed the Atlantic for it. Ian McEwan appears most years, reading his work in progress and asking what the audience thinks. Bands and comics perform alongside the writers – Dylan Moran, Arthur Smith and Cerys Matthews are on the bill this year.

A view of Hay-on-Wye

In its 17-year history, Hay has acquired its share of legends. There was the all-night poker session Bill Clinton led in 2001. And the time Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Golding went sleepwalking in a nightgown and cap. And the very public proposition Harold Pinter received from a woman in his audience.

John Updike headlines this year's festival

There are traditions about the weather too. For years, huge rainstorms greeted the opening of the festival, giving people a good excuse to pile straight out of the events and into the pubs. The last few years have been treacherously sunny but, undaunted, punters open bottles of wine in the fields or retire to pub gardens.

The festival's range has grown steadily. There are art exhibitions, a circus, writing masterclasses, debates. Children's events (author talks, dog handling, hip hop and more) run for the entire 10 days. And then, of course, there are the writers, headlined this year by John Updike, master-chronicler of the American male.

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