Dylan Jones

Hay Notebook

The first Saturday of the Hay Festival is always a bit like the first day of term — bumping into people you’ve haven’t seen in months, sometimes for a whole year. Then there are the people down from London, dressed in mufti, sporting inappropriate sunglasses and crumpled linen jackets that haven’t been out of the wardrobe since the previous Hay Festival. I like to pick up my tickets, hang out in the green room and generally reacquaint myself with what is undoubtedly the greatest literary festival in the world.

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I had planned to watch Hilary Mantel, Boris Johnson and Harry Belafonte, but a bout of food poisoning probably caused by a hastily consumed steak tartare the day before had thrown my schedule into turmoil. However the one thing I wasn’t going to miss was Francine Stock talking to Ed Victor and Gail Rebuck about her late husband Philip Gould’s extraordinary book When I Die: Lessons From the Death Zone. I read this in one sitting on a flight back from New York a few weeks ago, and found the whole thing extremely uplifting.

Books about serious illnesses usually work when they combine three strands: a self-deprecation bordering on humour (Americans are especially bad at this, as they can treat illness as something that has chosen them because of their specialness), helpful matter-of-fact guidance through the process, and some kind of spiritual resolution. 

Gould’s book is a perfect example, and one that should be cherished. When you would bump into Philip in London, in the days when he was still fighting his illness, he would always be sitting in a corner, casually taking in everything around him. This often didn’t last for long, as he was so magnetic that he soon had a swarm of people surrounding him, heatedly asking for advice.

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