If these hills could talk…

 
“Hands up all the atheists here,” asked Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion", and almost one hundred per cent of the Hay Festival audience shot up their hands.
 
 “I find that very comforting,” said Dawkins.
 
Someone asked the question:” What would you say if it could be proved that God really does exist?”
 
“I would be devastated,” said Dawkins. “ It would undermine all our scientific knowledge. ”
 
Well, it’s been another challenging day at Hay though light relief came in the form of Alexander McCall.  This Edinburgh author had the audience in raptures as he talked about 7 year old Bertie and his pushy mother.
 Edinburgh, he said is infested with “pushy mothers” and wanted to know what the Scottish Government were doing about it, though he suspected very little. He said Oxford was another site of “pushy mothers”.
 
He struck a sombre note though when he mentioned that this year’s prize for the most humorous novel had not been awarded because no new novel had been published which merited it. He wondered if it was a sign of our times and the growth of political correctness. Writers were now terrified of causing offence.
He said that when he had one of his characters, a vegan, die from starvation he was inundated with angry letters from vegans.
 
Asked about his writing routine he said that he gets up at 3.30am every morning and writes for three hours. He never corrects. He never plans.
“It just flows from the subconscious.”
 
Photo: poster at Hay Festival from Welsh tourist Board