following a relaxing family holiday enjoying the Guardian Hay Festival and countryside in beautiful Hay-on-Wye. We were blessed with good weather, conducive for swimming in the Wye and cycling. The Festival goes from strength to strength and is commendably diversified. I must have attended at least 20 lectures/presentations, selected from hundreds and catering to a wide range of tastes. Of these, I was pleased and informed by at least a dozen and disappointed by only two. The philosophers and scientists are usually interesting, not least AC Grayling and Martin Rees. Among critics, Christopher Hitchens remains outstanding and refreshingly controversial. While I do not attend the Hay Festival for financial talks, two of my three favourite presentations this year were by Roger Bootle (no stranger to veteran subscribers and here is his latest column from The Telegraph) and Howard Davies. The third, and a new discovery for me, was the young neuroscientist and author David Eagleman, talking about his delightful book, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, which I recommend highly.