Stephen Fry is to be the new president of the Hay Festival, taking on the figurehead role for the next three years.



Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival, said Fry had lit up Hay with “grace and wit and generosity” for 20 years.

“He embodies the pleasures of conversation, he has an insatiable curiosity about the world, and he is committed to the cardinal virtues of fairness and kindness. This is our man,” said Florence.



Fry will take part in two events at this year’s festival, one “venturing into futuristic technology with Tony Fadell” and the other celebrating Shakespeare’s exploration of love.



Fry said: “When Peter Florence asked me to become president of the Hay Festival my first thought was that he must be joking or on psychotropic medication. This is the honour of honours. To step into the giant shoes of Eric Hobsbawm and Tom Bingham, people of such worldwide intellectual renown is, as cricketers say, quite an ask.



“Hay-on-Wye is way on high. The Hay-on-Wye fortnight holds a very special place in the book-lover’s calendar. Ask any author or reader. This is the one we wrestle our diary into submission for until it surrenders and allows us to attend. The mixture of events, debates, interviews and readings by day with talks, music and comedy by night is unique and its audiences are amongst the most enthusiastic, attentive and well informed you could find anywhere.



“To say that I am proud to be president is criminally to understate.”



This year’s Hay Festival runs from 22nd May to 1st June and will have more than 700 events, including Judi Dench in conversation with Richard Eyre, Kate Adie examining the legacy of women in World War One, comedy from Ruby Wax and Bill Bailey, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ian McEwan and Toni Morrison heading up the fiction bill.