✒The Guardian Hay festival has been eagerly awaiting the appearance of the deputy PM – Nick Clegg appears tomorrow – but now all the talk is of The Real PM. Is David Cameron loosening his hold on the reins of state to follow most of the rest of his MPs to Powys? Indeed no: The Real PM is a documentary following Peter Mandelson from October 2009 to election night. The maker, Hannah Rothschild, was due to show the film with Mandelson in attendance, but we have been told that the film "has been withdrawn on the insistence of the subject". Do we sense a hissy fit?
✒There has been blood and guts aplenty: Cambridge ancient historian Richard Miles gave an all too vivid description of the corpse-clogged streets of Carthage as it was sacked by the Romans, and historian Tom Holland told an enthralled audience about the Viking Harald Bluetooth, after whom the wireless technology was named (because he briefly united Denmark and Norway. Yes, it's a leap to communications protocols, but there we go). Harald, the son of Gorm the Old, was killed by his son Sveyn Forkbeard while crouching in the undergrowth emptying his bowels, Holland recounted with evident delight.
✒History has been the strongest theme of this year's festival, after the ideas of Niall Ferguson for teaching the subject in schools were enthusiastically embraced by education secretary Michael Gove. Asked what place ancient history might take, Ferguson suggested it could be taught at primary level, arguing that ancient civilisations are simpler and thus easier to understand than later societies. This has gone down like the proverbial knackered lift with ancient historians. Professor Paul Cartledge, who has been talking about Athenian democracy, said Ferguson was talking "bunkum and balderdash". Richard Miles put it even more bluntly: "You could only think the ancient world was simple if you knew bugger all about ancient history."