A festival of ideas - Telegraph Bertrand Russell claimed that to be truly civilised is to be able to fill your leisure hours intelligently. "At present," he lamented, "very few people have reached this level." Yet over the past 25 years, millions of people have made a very intelligent choice indeed - to fill their free time with a visit to what has become Britain's greatest literary festival, at Hay-on-Wye, or its sister events across the globe. In the guide to the festival that we publish today, its founder and director, Peter Florence, recalls how an idea that began with a group of family and friends sitting around a kitchen table has blossomed into a national institution. In this anniversary year, there will be more than 700 events taking place in the shadow of the Welsh mountains, with speakers including Salman Rushdie, Hilary Mantel, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Terry Pratchett and such Daily Telegraph regulars as the columnist Mary Portas and the cartoonist Matt Pritchett. Yet it is not just Hay that offers hope that we are gradually progressing towards Russell's goal. Every summer, across Britain, there is now such a profusion of festivals of culture, literature or music that one is rarely ever more than a hop, skip or a jump away from an event that offers improvement, education or simply delight. We may be in drought, but the stream of ideas still flows.