Because its own interests are inimical to the generation and maintenance of local reputations, and in response to a slowly developing realization about which side their bread is most thickly buttered, this year the Hay Festival organizers have allowed a monolithic financial institution to give us a short turn as a literary critic. Rising to the creative challenge, Barclays has presented a new juxtaposition of ideas: Oscar Wilde, runs the reminder, knew that the soul is the repository of real riches, while the bank's own mundane expertise is available to help you "enjoy your wealth". I didn't know there's a substantial connexion between a loveably roguish writer and the notion of profitably managing my global financial strategies in the age of deregulation, but Barclays Wealth have made it for me. Their offering of a whole-of-life dialectic for the New Millennium is going to have a profound effect on the way I think.
Instinctively feeling their way around unfamiliar subject matter, perhaps Barclays' ad-people were themselves subliminally affected by Wilde's subtle talents for self-promotion, or maybe they were merely pumped up by the thought of his Astrakhan trimmings. Whichever it was, their programme advertisement has made me voraciously keen to have them shovel all my spare scratch into an exciting foreign venture, but they'll have to forgive me for a couple of days while I traipse off to the the railway station to look for my handbag.
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