In this series of The Essay, recorded in front of an audience at the Hay festival earlier this week, five writers take George Orwell's essay title Why I Write as a starting point for their own explorations. The writers include the screenwriter, novelist and author of the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, Frank Cottrell Boyce; the editor and translator Daniel Hahn; Horatio Clare, whose first book was set on the hillsides where he grew up around Hay itself; and the Welsh poet laureate, Gillian Clarke.