Letter from Hay on Wye: The man at the small Welsh literature tent among the big marquees at the Hay Festival thought a while before replying to my question.
I had asked Mr Jones whether one of the largest literary festivals in Britain, sited in this little Welsh market town and massively supported by the Guardian newspaper in London, was paying due importance to Welsh language and culture. "Well," said Mr Jones cautiously, "it's getting better." A long pause. "Slowly."
Before the festival ended yesterday, scores of thousands of visitors had poured in for 10 days to attend 359 events, talks and discussions on every cultural subject from the death of William of Orange to the way the French treat Matisse. Among stars such as former Labour minister Tony Benn, biographer Anthony Howard and Nobel prize-winning nuclear physicist Joseph Rotblat, this year's speakers have included a sprinkling of mainly second line US figures. The literary diet has been embellished by various musical events and Ailish Tynan, the soprano from Mullingar who on Friday gave a concert recorded by BBC Radio 3 for transmission on July 1st, was much admired. The festival has proved so successful that its formula is being copied as far away as Cartagena and Parati, gems of colonial architecture in Colombia in Brazil respectively.
Hay on Wye lies 100m from the border with England and is famed for having the largest number of bookshops, second hand and new, in any similar town on the planet.
It sits on a river which wanders down from the Welsh mountains into England before it empties into the Bristol Channel and it is surrounded north and south by gentle green hills.
The thousand or so inhabitants live in a charming but untidy collection of buildings that include a castle, almshouses and butter market. There are more shops selling caftans than candy floss. Though the old counties of Radnorshire, Montgomeryshire and Breconshire - now collectively relabelled Powys - in which Hay sits are not a particularly Welsh-speaking area, this town is reached by twisty roads labelled by bilingual road signs and by white markings on the tarmac which say ARAF SLOW.
But there is no denying the atmosphere of the festival is overwhelmingly English. A local professor who attended one of the many parties which the festival spawns commented in a horrified tone: "I didn't hear a Welsh accent the whole evening."
On his diplomatic best behaviour, Mr Jones, from the small Welsh literature tent, said he had heard many more Welsh accents this year than last. "We're making progress, little by little. There's something scheduled on Welsh literature every day and Welsh people are starting to come up from the valleys of South Wales."
He added bravely: "It's not all visiting intellectuals from London. And anyway the festival gives us a great opportunity to bring Welsh culture to the attention of our visitors from England."
Now in its 18th year, the festival - boosted by the patronage of a powerful London newspaper and the attentions of other editors in press, radio and television - has grown into something that increasingly demands acknowledgement from those in the cultural, and indeed the political, fields.
Hence came the decision of the Canadian and the Israeli governments and the Anglo-Israel Association to offer finance to Peter Florence, the quietly-spoken but redoubtable festival organiser, and thus make sure Canadian and Israeli voices were heard here. (Supporters of the Palestinians hit back last Thursday by placing cards under the windscreen wipers of parked cars, bearing an appeal for public protest against Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and its policy of collective punishment.)
Nevertheless, the gathering is overwhelmingly tolerant and peaceful. Few gatherings of such a size in Britain can be so lightly policed. In a week's stay, I saw only one wandering constable and he was looking bored.
What tensions there are consist of murmured intellectual confrontations.
The stewarding caused some hilarity with stewards being jocularly referred to as "the Guardian's thought police", the senior ones being equipped with two-way radios and earpieces of the sort favoured by the bodyguards of presidents.
As far as the Welsh language lobby is concerned, there is much more missionary work to be done for their cause at Hay. "The difference between Wales and Ireland," claimed one member of the lobby, "is that we kept our language and lost our independence while the Irish got their independence and lost their language."