At last, three cheers for the Royal Ballet. Its new programme contains three works by three of the company's own choreographers, all British and all good. They include the season's only creation, which is also David Bintley's first for Covent Garden in 10 years. Bintley likes making story ballets, but he also does some inventive all-dance pieces, and this is one of them At last, three cheers for the Royal Ballet. This score was written in 1900 for one of Petipa's last ballets, and is ideal for display dancing (extracts from it are familiar from Ashton's Birthday Offering). Bintley adopts its French title, Les Saisons, to distinguish it from the Seasons ballet he made to Verdi for his own Birmingham company a couple of years back.He adopts a freer structure this time, too, following the year's progress from winter through spring and summer to autumn, but with overlaps when one season usurps another's time (haven't we seen that too often lately?), and he allows his cast to mingle in a mass finale.The outcome is 40 minutes of varied, mostly enchanting dances. At first it seems that women will have the upper hand as five of them swiftly follow each other in contrasted solos for Winter: Bintley adds a touch of humour at times, and he lets the dancers show remarkable speed or delicacy.

In Spring, too, Alina Cojocaru has most of the going in her pretty solos, with her partner Johan Kobborg largely in the background, supporting her flights of fancy across the stage.In Summer, for the first time an ensemble, albeit all women, join the principal couple; Jonathan Cope partnering Isabel McMeekan, who reveals special charm. But then Autumn brings on more men, a small but strong team led by Martin Harvey, and now Bintley lets rip to show all the men in powerful form, exuberant and soaring in their sustained leaps.The ballet would have looked more stylishly dazzling in the days when the Royal Ballet had more women of actual or potential ballerina manner, but Bintley has made the most of the soloists he has chosen. All the women benefit from Charles Quiggin's costume designs. From the way he ensures that many differently detailed skirts all go well together, you would scarcely believe that this is his first ballet. Quiggin and the set designer, Peter J Davison, cleverly provide an increase of colour at apt moments.Two other master works, also to exceptional scores, make up the show. Frederick Ashton was the greatest of all English choreographers, and we see too little of his work. The Stravinsky Sc?s de ballet is doubly welcome, as it contains arguably Ashton's most beautiful dance invention.

Likewise, Song of the Earth is Kenneth MacMillan's best ballet, full of true emotion and powerful patterns inspired by Mahler's score, in contrast to the overhyped pieces by him that have crammed programmes for too long. It's a strong cast, too, led by a real ballerina, Tamara Rojo, although the two fine singers, Jean Rigby and John Daszak, could have done with more power to cut through the large orchestra.This programme ought to have been dedicated to the company's founder, Ninette de Valois (born 105 years ago next month), who brought on all these choreographers. It's worth noting that it was devised by the big bad bogeyman, the ex-director Ross Stretton. Just one big snag: ludicrously few performances are scheduled, so there is little time in which to see the Royal Ballet at its present best.. The most keenly awaited event of the Hay-on-Wye literary festival approached yesterday, and the rumblings were felt for miles around. Eric Hobsbawm, the last relic of the pro-Soviet Union Communist left, was to be pitted against Christopher Hitchens, who has enraged the left in the past year with his support for George Bush's foreign policy.

Hobsbawm has published his autobiography, Interesting Times, which showed him to beunrepentant for his support for the Soviet Union. He wrote in the book that he would have spied for Joseph Stalin if only somebody had bothered to ask.Hitchens, by contrast, has been campaigning for a relentless war on terror, lecturing at the White House and agitating for Henry Kissinger to be tried for crimes against humanity.The debate, playing to a full house, began in a surprisingly affectionate key. Round one: Hitchens reminisced about his days as an Oxford student, when he would read Hobsbawm's work for "evidence of deviations from my Trotskyite line".He went on: "Pleasingly, there were few, and I learnt all I needed to know about historical materialism in the process. The fact that we now periodise history, not by the reigns of kings or queens but by eras and epochs is in large parts thanks to Eric.''Hobsbawm nodded at the compliment; clearly this verbal boxing match was not proceeding as he had expected. As Hitchens' polite questions began, Hobsbawm seemed almost irked His replies were peppered with small gibes at Hitchens. As he explained his distaste for empire - "in any form'' - he felt obliged to say, "but I know that [view] is not popular in this company.''He even managed a jab at Hitchens from the right, complaining that the modernisation of the Labour Party was necessitated by "your infiltrationist friends''.Round two: Enter Stalin. Hitchens asked - with the same lethal deference - if at any time Hobsbawm feared that he had tied his life's wagon to the wrong cause in the 1920s when he became a Communist.