Hay Festival 2025 Earlybirds

Robert Macfarlane

Is A River Alive?

Thursday 22 May 2025, 5.30pm –  Venue 1

From Ecuador and India to Canada, celebrated writer Robert Macfarlane explores the ancient idea that rivers are living beings; an idea that has taken on new relevance and urgency as we face a planet battling the effects of climate change.

Sharing stories and insights from his new book Is A River Alive?, Macfarlane shifts our perspective, making us see that our fate is tied into that of our rivers.

Macfarlane, a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, is internationally renowned for his writing on nature, people and place. His bestselling books include Underland, Landmarks, and The Wild Places, as well as a book-length prose-poem, Ness.

In collaboration with the artist Jackie Morris he co-created the internationally bestselling books of nature-poetry and art, The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. He is currently completing his third book with Morris: The Lost Birds.

Sponsored by The Rivers Trust

Alexander McCall Smith

Looking for You

Thursday 22 May 2025, 7pm –  Venue 3

Spend a lively evening in the company of Alexander McCall Smith as he introduces the latest instalment of his series The Perfect Passion Company.

McCall Smith is the author of the highly successful No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, which has sold over 25 million copies.

Daniel Kehlmann talks to Misha Glenny

The Director

Friday 23 May 2025, 7pm –  Venue 3

Austrian film director G.W. Pabst was one of the greatest directors of his era, but when the Nazis seized power he found himself forced to return to Germany, despite plans to emigrate to America.

Daniel Kehlmann’s new novel The Director fictionalises the story of Pabst, who made two films under Josef Goebbels, the minister of propaganda in Berlin.

Kehlmann talks to Misha Glenny about The Director, what literature is capable of, and writing about art, power and barbarism.

Kehlmann’s novels and plays have won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Doderer Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Welt Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. His novel Tyll was shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize, and Measuring the World has been translated into more than 14 languages and is one of the biggest successes in post-war German literature.

Billy Ocean

In Concert

Friday 23 May 2025, 8.30pm –  Venue 1

Get your groove on with British soul and R&B legend Billy Ocean as he performs all his greatest hits and fan favourites.

Ocean is one of the biggest recording stars Britain has ever produced, and has just released his 40th anniversary album, Suddenly.

Born in Trinidad and moving to London’s East End when he was just seven, Ocean has sold more than 30 million records and won awards including a Grammy and an Ivor Novello. In 2020 he was made an MBE for services to music.

Michael Rosen and Chris Riddell

Pocket Shakespeare: A Beginner’s Guide to the Best Bits of the Bard

Saturday 24 May 2025, 11.30am –  Venue 1

Two powerhouses of children’s literature captivate in this creative event bringing William Shakespeare’s work to life.

Poet Michael Rosen and illustrator Chris Riddell have collaborated on Pocket Shakespeare: A Beginner’s Guide to the Best Bits of the Bard, a celebration of the words of Shakespeare.

In this event, Rosen guides the audience through the Bard’s exploration of love, heartbreak, magic, superstition and more, including insults and one-liners, accompanied by Riddell, who draws live on stage.

Both Rosen and Riddell are former children’s laureates. Rosen has written more than 100 books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and more for children. His classic picture book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, won the Nestlé Smarties Grand Prize in 1989.

Riddell has won the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration three times, and received the Hay Festival Medal for Illustration at the 2015 Hay Festival. As well as writing and illustrating children’s books, he is a renowned political cartoonist whose work appears in The Observer, The Literary Review and The New Statesman.

Mike Berners-Lee

A Climate of Truth: Why We Need It and How to Get It

Saturday 24 May 2025, 1pm –  Venue 1

Truth is a much-debated concept in our modern world, but there’s nothing more important than honesty and certainty, Mike Berners-Lee argues in this event.

The climate and sustainability expert delves into his new book A Climate of Truth, which spells out why, if humanity is to thrive in the decades ahead, the most critical step is to raise standards of honesty in our politics, our media, and our businesses.

By turning our attention to the principle of truth, says Berners-Lee, we can all have much more impact on the issues we care about.

Berners-Lee thinks, writes, researches and consults on sustainability and responses to the challenges of the 21st century, and is a professor in the Institute for Social Futures at Lancaster University. He is the author of books including How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything, and There is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make-or-Break Years.

Emma Barnett and Stacey Dooley

A Love Letter to Remarkable Mothers

Saturday 24 May 2025, 2.30pm –  Venue 1

Award-winning broadcasters Emma Barnett and Stacey Dooley take a personal, political and cultural look at motherhood and the impact it has on women.

The pair’s honest and open conversation will look at the experience of becoming a mother and the physical and mental work required in motherhood, and celebrate mothers of all kinds.

Barnett’s new book Maternity Service was written in snatched moments after the birth of her second child, and is a heartfelt and reassuring look at what it really feels like to be on maternity leave, a period often viewed through rose-tinted glasses, which does a disservice to women and leaving them unprepared for the realities of the experience.

Barnett presents the BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme and hosts TV interviews and documentaries across the BBC. She was previously the chief host of Woman's Hour, the longest running women's programme in the world and a Newsnight presenter. Barnett writes a bi-weekly column for the I Paper and a Substack newsletter called Trying.

In Dear Minnie, written after she had her first child, Dooley brings her trademark empathy and investigative skill to an entirely new ‘frontline’, exploring the varied perspectives of mothers today. Using letters that each mother has written to their child as her starting point, Stacey’s frank, honest, and moving inquiry takes in experiences from pregnancy to birth and beyond.
Dooley has presented and produced over 100 documentaries on issues including sex trafficking, domestic abuse and prisons, along with several series of Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over. She has been awarded an MBE for her outstanding contribution to broadcasting and in 2024 was awarded a Grierson Trustees’ Award. Her first book, On The Frontline With The Women Who Fight Back was a double Sunday Times Bestseller in both hardback and paperback.

MC Grammar

The Adventures of Rap Kid

Saturday 24 May 2025, 2.30pm –  Venue 2

Drop the mic! Award-winning teacher, Sky Kids superstar, World Book Day ambassador and viral book-rapping sensation MC Grammar heads to Hay to introduce his brand-new series, The Adventures of Rap Kid.

Get ready to meet Z, his beatboxing sidekick SFX, their super-slick teacher Mr G, and his dawg Pup Smoke, in a story about friendship, the power of words and finding your voice.

Grab your bling and your shades and make your way to this epic event jam-packed with jokes, bangin' tunes, wicked rhymes, a sick rap battle, and the greatest dance-off of all time!

Tuppence Middleton

Scorpions

Saturday 24 May 2025, 4pm –  Venue 2

Often used as a shorthand for tidiness or as the punchline of a joke, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is one of society’s most misunderstood disorders.

Actor Tuppence Middleton has lived with OCD since the age of 11, struggling with obsessive thoughts and compulsions which she visualises as scorpions inhabiting her mind.

Hear Middleton discuss her diagnosis, how OCD manifests in her life, and her memoir Scorpions, a visceral and uncompromising look at living with OCD.

Middleton is a British actor and writer working in film, television and theatre. She starred in Netflix’s Sense8, and had roles in The Imitation Game, Shadowplay and more. She grew up in Somerset, South West England.

Kaitlyn Regehr

Smartphone Nation: Why We’re All Addicted to Screens and What We Can Do About It

Saturday 24 May 2025, 5.30pm –  Venue 2

When was the last time you really stayed away from your phone? Or picked it up just to do the one task you intended, and didn’t fall into scrolling through your apps for hours?

There is little doubt that we are addicted to our smartphones, but interacting with the online world is an essential component of modern life, so it’s difficult to work out how to step away and find a balance.

In this offline session Dr Kaitlyn Regehr discusses her book Smartphone Nation, in which she shows how to keep the advantages and joy of the internet while also identifying the often-hidden dangers, and gives tips on how to step away when we’re being over-reliant on our devices.

Covering subjects spanning misogyny, pornography, body image, advertising and violence, Smartphone Nation helps readers to think critically about the content we are consuming, and how it is ‘fed’ to us.

Regehr is an associate professor at University College London, lecturing on digital literacy and the ethical implications of social media and AI. As well as appearing regularly in the media as an expert on this subject, she has provided consultation in the House of Lords, to Members of Parliament, and to the Metropolitan Police.

Edi Rama and Hay Festival Guests talk to Misha Glenny

Europe after Trump

Saturday 24 May 2025, 7pm –  Venue 1

What does the return of Donald Trump to the US presidency mean for Europe in the short and long term? For a start, it’s bolstered his far-right allies, like Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, while a new era of American protectionism – including the possibility of tariffs – threatens an already divided Britain and Europe.

But it’s not just the economy that will be affected by Trump’s second term; there will also be an impact on Europe’s security and its efforts to combat climate change.

To discuss how Europe might respond, Misha Glenny, rector of the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, is joined by Edi Rama, the 33rd and incumbent prime minister of Albania and chairman of the Socialist Party of Albania, and leading politicians and foreign policy experts from the EU and the UK.

Coorganised with the Institute of Human Science in Vienna (IWM)

Al Murray

Stand-up: The Pub Landlord

Saturday 24 May 2025, 8.30pm –  Venue 1

Al Murray is back with his alter ego the Pub Landlord, making sense of the questions you probably already had the answers to but want to discuss anyway.

In Guv Island, the Pub Landlord takes a look at politics, TikTok addiction and more.

Murray has toured as the Pub Landlord for more than 20 years and won accolades including the Edinburgh Comedy Award.

As a writer, Murray has written books including Watching War Films with My Dad and, most recently, Command, an entertaining and sharp analysis of the key allied military leaders in WW2.

Naga Munchetty

It’s Probably Nothing: Critical Conversations on the Women’s Health Crisis (and how to thrive despite it)

Sunday 25 May 2025, 11.30am –  Venue 1

British broadcaster Naga Munchetty leads a candid discussion about women’s health and pain, exploring why the healthcare system can often feel rigged against women.

Munchetty, who co-hosts BBC Breakfast, spoke out in 2023 about her diagnosis of the gynaecological condition adenomyosis and her struggles to be taken seriously by healthcare professionals despite years of pain and symptoms. In response, scores of women shared their own stories of feeling dismissed by doctors, and Munchetty went on to campaign on the issue, including appearing at the House of Commons where she described the process of being diagnosed with adenomyosis as “infuriating”.

In her book It’s Probably Nothing, Muchetty talks to more than 80 women about their health struggles and explores the challenges of being heard, diagnosed and treated, as well as sharing her own story in detail.

In this event Munchetty looks at why women’s pain and health issues have historically been ignored – and why pain has been viewed as an innate part of being female – and highlights the things women need to do to advocate for themselves in the healthcare system.

Rebecca Solnit

No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain

Sunday 25 May 2025, 1pm –  Venue 1

From social change and hope to the climate crisis and masculinity, there’s not a subject Rebecca Solnit can’t turn her mind to.

She discusses No Straight Road Takes You There, a collection of essays revolving around the power of activism and covering subjects including women's rights, the fight for democracy, the trends in masculinity, and the rise of the far right in the West.

Solnit is the author of more than 20 books, including Recollections of My Non-Existence, which was longlisted for the 2021 Orwell Prize for Political Writing and shortlisted for the 2021 James Tait Black Award, and the collection of essays Men Explain Things to Me. She writes regularly for the Guardian, the London Review of Books and the Los Angeles Times.

Javier Cercas in conversation with Kirsty Lang

Terra Alta Crime Trilogy

Sunday 25 May 2025, 2.30pm –  Venue 2

Meet one of Spain’s most internationally renowned writers, Javier Cercas, as he discusses his crime trilogy Terra Alta.

Cercas opens up the world of Terra Alta, and delves into the series’ final book, Fortress of Evil, where Melchor – years before took revenge for his mother’s murder – finds his peace shattered when his teenage daughter Cosette discovers the truth behind her own mother’s death.

Angry and betrayed, Cosette escapes with her friend Elisa to Mallorca, but only Elisa returns.

Cercas’ awards include the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for Soldiers of Salamis (translated by Anne McLean), the European Book Prize for The Impostor (translated by Frank Wynne), and the 2023 Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation for Even the Darkest Night (translated by Anne McLean), the first book in the Terra Alta trilogy.

With the support of the Instituto Cervantes

Michael Morpurgo and Ben Murray

War Horse: In Concert

Sunday 25 May 2025, 4pm –  Venue 1

Spend a special afternoon with author Michael Morpurgo and musician and actor Ben Murray, as they retell War Horse in this moving concert.

First published in 1982, War Horse is one of Morpurgo’s best known and most beloved books. It has gone on to be adapted for the stage in an award-winning production by the National Theatre and for the screen in a Steven Spielberg film.

Told from the perspective of a young farm horse Joey, it follows his story as he is taken from the fields of Devon to the Western Front after being sold to the British Army in 1914. With his officer, Joey charges towards the enemy, witnessing the horror of the frontline.

In this event, Morpurgo retells an abridged version of War Horse accompanied by music and songs from Murray, who previously played the Songman in the National Theatre production of the book.

Anne Applebaum

AUTOCRACY, INC: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

Sunday 25 May 2025, 5.30pm –  Venue 2

Gone are the days when just one bad guy ran an autocracy; now, sophisticated networks prop up autocratic leaders and encourage a move away from democracy.

Celebrated historian and journalist Anne Applebaum has tracked the slide away from democracy for decades, and in her new book Autocracy, Inc takes a look at how financial structures, security services and technological experts providing surveillance, propaganda and disinformation are essential to autocracies.

From Russia to North Korea and Syria, Applebaum takes us on a tour of autocracies around the world, and explains how they operate like giant companies.

An essential event for anyone interested in the world we’re living in and what the future looks like for our governments.

Applebaum is the author of books including Gulag: A History, which won the Pulitzer Prize. She is a columnist for the Atlantic and a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University.

Fflur Dafydd

The House of Water

Sunday 25 May 2025, 7pm –  Venue 4

Placing that key in the lock was the last ordinary moment of her life. Iona returns home one evening to find her family murdered and her father missing. Her home is entirely submerged in water. An unnamed girl lies dead in her bed. As the police declare her father the main suspect, Iona is forced to confront how much she really knew about the man who raised her. Hidden in the fragments of her father’s final manuscript, recovered from the flood, an unimaginable secret slowly rises to the surface.

A haunting, boundary-pushing thriller told through the lens of a lyrical family drama, from a captivating literary talent, The House of Water will rush over you like a torrent from the opening page to the very last.

Fflur Dafydd is an award winning novelist and screenwriter who writes in Welsh and English. She launches her new novel The House of Water at Hay Festival.

Abdulrazak Gurnah in conversation with Elif Shafak

Conversation between writers

Monday 26 May 2025, 11.30am –  Venue 1

Grab a front row seat to an extraordinary conversation between two literary greats: Nobel Prize-winning author Abdulrazak Gurnah and award-winning writer Elif Shafak.

The pair talk about their writing, the role of literature in presenting diverse perspectives, and the power of storytelling to bring hope in times of crisis and in a deeply polarised and fractured world.

Gurnah is the 2021 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his latest novel is Theft, in which he explores the intertwined lives of three young people – Karim, Gauzia and Badar – as they come of age in postcolonial East Africa. Gurnah has previously been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orwell Prize for Fiction, among others, and was professor of English at the University of Kent.

Shafak is a British Turkish novelist, whose work has been translated into 56 languages. Her latest novel There are Rivers in the Sky is set across multiple timelines and locations, and follows a group of people who are connected by a single drop of water. Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and her book 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Gwyneth Lewis

Nightshade Mother: A Disentangling

Monday 26 May 2025, 4pm –  Venue 3

Until now, poet Gwyneth Lewis has kept the story of her painful upbringing at the hands of a coercive and controlling mother to herself.

In her memoir Nightshade Mother, the inaugural National Poet of Wales shares her story through revisiting her childhood diaries and looking back on her younger years.

Nightshade Mother is a book about the power of art and language, and a moving and questing look at parents and children.

One of the UK’s most acclaimed writers, Lewis was brought up Welsh-speaking in Cardiff. She was Wales’s first National Poet and composed the six-foot-high words on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre. Her non-fiction books are Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression and  Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage. Her 10th book of poetry, First Rain in Paradise, is out in March 2025. In 2023, Lewis was made an MBE for services to literature and mental health.

Tom Holland

Lives of the Caesars

Tuesday 27 May 2025, 1pm –  Venue 1

Historian and broadcaster Tom Holland introduces his new translation of Suetonius’ renowned biography of the 12 Caesars.

The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, thrill and dazzle. No biography invites us into the lives of the Caesars more vividly or intimately than Lives of the Caesars by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, written from the centre of Rome and power, in AD 121.

Suetonius places each Caesar in the context of the generations that had gone before, and it is his work that has contributed majorly to our understanding of the Roman empire.

Holland’s translation gives a deeper understanding of the personal lives of the Caesars and of how they inevitably informed what happened across the vast expanse of the empire.

Holland is the author of books including Rubicon: The Triumph and the Tragedy of the Roman Republic, which won the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History and Persian Fire, a history of the Graeco-Persian wars, which won the Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award in 2006. He is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Making History and has written and presented a number of TV documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4, on subjects ranging from ISIS to dinosaurs. He is also co-presenter of the top 10 podcast, The Rest is History.

Tweedy the Clown

Tweedy: The Clown Who Lost His Nose

Tuesday 27 May 2025, 1pm –  Venue 2

Clown around with the sensational Tweedy the Clown, who’ll bring the magic of the circus to life with his antics.

Tweedy’s new laugh-out-loud picture book adventure is Tweedy: The Clown Who Lost His Nose, illustrated by Daniel Duncan, in which Tweedy causes chaos as he tries to chase after his lost nose.

Julian Clary and Susie Dent

Mystery and murder

Tuesday 27 May 2025, 5.30pm –  Venue 1

Comedian Julian Clary and broadcaster Susie Dent discuss writing their new crime novels, and calling on their careers and experiences for inspiration.

Clary’s Curtain Call to Murder follows dresser Jayne as she tries to solve a murder that takes place on stage during the opening night of Leopard Spots at the London Palladium. Her challenge is made all the harder by the fact that the cast, including an ageing lothario, a national treasure and an amateur psychic, are all vying for the spotlight.

Clary is a comedian, entertainer and novelist, who has toured across the world with his one-man shows. His first book for children, The Bolds, is about a family of hyenas living undercover in Surbiton.

Dent’s Guilty by Definition takes place after an anonymous letter arrives at the offices of the Clarendon English Dictionary containing a challenge for the team of lexicographers working there. The letter hints at secrets, lies and a year. 2010. For Martha Thornhill, the new senior editor, that year can mean only one thing: the summer her brilliant, beautiful older sister Charlie went missing.

Dent is a writer and broadcaster on language. She recently celebrated 30 years as a co-presenter and the resident word expert on Channel 4's Countdown, and also appears on the show's comedy sister 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown.

Sayeeda Warsi

Anatomy of Prejudice

Wednesday 28 May 2025, 2.30pm –  Venue 2

As the first Muslim to serve in a British cabinet, there are few people better placed that Conservative peer Sayeeda Warsi to reflect on the position of Muslims in the UK, and the rising tide of Islamaphobia they face.

Discussing her book Muslims Don’t Matter, Baroness Warsi looks at the far-right riots that broke out in the UK in 2024, how more hatred has been directed at Muslims in public life during the war on Gaza, and how a network of media, commentators and more feed Islamaphobia. Using her political and personal experience, she urges us to change course and unite to dismantle this toxic bigotry.

Warsi is a lawyer and a businesswoman, and is one of five girls born to immigrant parents of Pakistani origin in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. She studied law and worked for the Crown Prosecution Service before setting up her own legal practice.

She has also been a racial justice campaigner for many years and was instrumental in the launch of Operation Black Vote, a not-for-profit national organisation that works towards greater racial justice and equality throughout the UK.

Rachel Shabi is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster who has reported extensively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She is the author of Off-White: The Truth About Antisemitism, picking apart the obscured and entangled histories of racism and antisemitism.

The first Muslim to serve in a British cabinet looks at the rising tide of Islamaphobia in the UK, and how we can tackle it.

Oliver Burkeman

Meditations for Mortals

Wednesday 28 May 2025, 5.30pm –  Venue 2

How do we embrace the reality of our finiteness? How do we make decisions and act with conviction when there is always too much to do and failure is inevitable? How do we find a deeper sense of purpose when we realise that life is not a problem to be solved? How does care for others make us more free?

Join Oliver Burkemann as he discusses how to navigate these big questions over the course of just four weeks, and encourages you to embrace your limitations, thrive in an age of bewilderment, and finally make time for what counts.

Burkeman is the author of the Sunday Times-bestselling Four Thousand Weeks and The Antidote, and his latest book Meditations for Mortals. For many years wrote a popular weekly column on psychology for the Guardian, 'This Column Will Change Your Life'.

Katherine Ryan

Stand-up: An Evening with Katherine Ryan

Wednesday 28 May 2025, 8.30pm –  Venue 1

Comedy powerhouse Katherine Ryan performs a routine that will make you laugh until you cry.

Ryan has recently been touring her new standup show Battleaxe, which includes discussions about her marriage and family, and looks at how male comedians reacted to revelations about sexual misconduct in the industry.

Award-winning comedian, writer, presenter and actor Ryan has starred in a number of television shows and performed the standup specials In Trouble and Glitter Room for Netflix. She is a regular on our screens, with multiple appearances on game shows including Celebrity Gogglebox, Never Mind The Buzzcocks and A League Of Their Own.

Her debut book The Audacity went straight into the Sunday Times bestseller list and her podcast Telling Everybody Everything frequently tops the charts.

Jojo Moyes

We All Live Here

Thursday 29 May 2025, 4pm –  Venue 2

Few contemporary authors are as adept as Jojo Moyes at combining intimate family stories with big emotions and topics, and her latest novel is no exception.

Moyes introduces We All Live Here, a story of family and love that follows Lila Kennedy, who is dealing with a broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in.

So when her real dad, who ran off to Hollywood 35 years before, turns up at her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But Lila soon realises that even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you.

Moyes is a novelist and screenwriter whose books include the bestsellers Me Before You, The One Plus One and The Giver of Stars. Her novels have been translated into 46 languages, have hit the number one spot in 12 countries and have sold over 57 million copies worldwide.

Richard Dawkins

The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie

Thursday 29 May 2025, 5.30pm –  Venue 1

Multi-bestselling author Richard Dawkins guides us through The Genetic Book of the Dead, a ground-breaking exploration of the untapped potential of DNA to transform our understanding of evolution.

Dawkins explains how the body, behaviour, and genes of every living creature can be read as a book – an archive of the worlds of its ancestors.

Dawkins is one of the world's most eminent writers and thinkers. He is the award-winning author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and The God Delusion, among others.

He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Literature.

Chris McCausland

Stand-up: Yonks!

Thursday 29 May 2025, 8.30pm –  Venue 1

Before comedian Chris McCausland wowed audiences on Strictly Come Dancing, he spent years honing his stand-up skills and appearing on some of the UK’s best-loved panel shows, from Have I Got News for You to The Last Leg.

And yet, he’s still often called an “overnight success”, despite being on the stand-up scene for years.

Join McCausland for a masterclass in stand-up comedy, one that has been yonks in the making!

Edith Hall

Epic of the Earth: Reading Homer’s Iliad in the Fight for a Dying World

Friday 30 May 2025, 11.30am –  Venue 1

Through an unprecedented reading of Homer’s Iliad, a story thousands of years old, the award-winning classicist Edith Hall helps us understand the history of the ecological disaster that threatens our planet.

The roots of today’s environmental catastrophe run deep into humanity’s past, and Hall looks at how – under the story of war and its effects – the Iliad documents the environmental practices of the ancient Greeks and betrays an awareness of the dangers posed by the destruction of the natural landscape.

Hall argues the Iliad can inspire activism to rescue our planet from disaster in this eye-opening event, after which you’ll never view the classic Greek tale the same way again.

Hall is a professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. She is the author of over 30 books, including most recently Facing Down the Furies: Suicide, the Ancient Greeks, and Me.

Levison Wood

The Great Tree Story

Friday 30 May 2025, 1pm –  Venue 1

Explorer Levison Wood has spent a lifetime exploring wild places and witnessing environmental challenges and conservation efforts around the world, and is now heading into the forest.

He shares insights from his book The Great Tree Story, which explores the profound influence forests have had on our planet and civilisation.

Wood is a bestselling author, photographer and explorer. He has written seven other books, including Walking the Himalayas, which won Adventure Travel Book of the Year at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards.

His television series to date have been broadcast and distributed in over 100 countries worldwide.

Wood served for several years as an Officer in the British Parachute Regiment, including an operational deployment to Afghanistan where he fought against Taliban insurgents in Helmand and Kandahar.

Kit de Waal

The Best of Everything

Friday 30 May 2025, 2.30pm –  Venue 3

Onjali Q. Raúf

The Letter with the Golden Stamp

Saturday 31 May 2025, 10am –  Venue 2

Children’s writer Onjali Q. Raúf celebrates a hidden army of young carers in this event, as she shares her Wales-set novel The Letter with the Golden Stamp.

The book introduces Audrey, who lives in Swansea and is keeping a big secret: she’s the sole carer for her increasingly sick mother, as well as for her two younger siblings. Oh, and she’s also a seasoned thief…

When a new neighbour threatens Audrey’s world, she must go on an adventure to save her family.

The Letter with the Golden Stamp delves into the fears and hopes of young carers everywhere, and looks at the invisible sources of kindness knocking on all our doors.

Raúf gives young attendees to this event an insight into the challenges faced by carers, explains her storytelling process, and provides an uplifting look at how we can all be there for each other.

Ben Macintyre

The Siege: The Remarkable Story of the Greatest SAS Hostage Drama

Saturday 31 May 2025, 11.30am –  Venue 1

On the last day of April 1980, six heavily armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy in London, taking 26 hostages.

A tense six-day siege ensued, and millions gathered around screens to witness the longest news flash in British television history, in which police negotiators and psychiatrists sought a bloodless end to the standoff, while the SAS – previously an organisation shrouded in secrecy – laid plans for a daring rescue mission: Operation Nimrod.

Historian Ben Macintyre draws on unpublished source material, exclusive interviews with the SAS, and testimony from witnesses including hostages to tell the drama-filled story of the Iranian embassy siege.

Macintyre is the multimillion-copy bestselling author of books including Colditz and Agent Sonya. He is a columnist and associate editor at the Times, and has worked as the newspaper's correspondent in New York, Paris and Washington. Several of his books have been made into films and television series, including Operation Mincemeat, A Spy Among Friends and SAS: Rogue Heroes.

Hallie Rubenhold

Story of a Murder

Saturday 31 May 2025, 1pm –  Venue 1

Infamous Edwardian wife-murderer Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen was brought to justice by an unlikely group of people: music hall women.

On 1 February 1910, the vivacious music hall performer Belle Elmore (real name Cora) suddenly vanished from her north London home, causing alarm among her circle of female friends, the entertainers of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild, who demanded an immediate investigation. What came to light was a gruesome secret, and the eventual conviction and hanging of Dr Crippen, a homoeopath and ear and eye specialist, for the murder.

Hear how historian Hallie Rubenhold gave voice to those who were never properly heard during the period: the women.

Rubenhold is the number one Sunday Times-bestselling author of The Five: The Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, a look at the lives of the women murdered by the famous serial killer. The book won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.

She is also the author of The Covent Garden Ladies, which was the inspiration behind the BBC show Harlots. Her biographical work, Lady Worsley's Whim, was dramatised by the BBC as The Scandalous Lady W.

Matt Haig

The Life Impossible

Saturday 31 May 2025, 2.30pm –  Venue 1

The author of The Midnight Library and How to Stop Time returns with his new novel The Life Impossible, a story of wild adventure and deep transformation.

When retired maths teacher Grace is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.

Haig, who writes for children and adults, introduces The Life Impossible in this event.

Haig’s memoir Reasons to Stay Alive was a number one bestseller, and his children’s book A Boy Called Christmas was made into a film starring Maggie Smith, Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent.

Philippe Sands talks to Juan Gabriel Vásquez

38 Londres Street

Saturday 31 May 2025, 4.00pm –  Venue 1

As a young lawyer, Philippe Sands was approached to advise a man facing arrest for his crimes: Chilean dictator Augustus Pinochet.

But instead of acquiescing to the request, Sands chose to act as a barrister for a human rights organisation, leading to an investigation that uncovered the chilling truth about Pinochet, a former SS officer, and an unassuming house at 38 Londres Street in Santiago, Chile, where people were taken to be disappeared.

Sands talks to writer and journalist Juan Gabriel Vásquez about his book 38 Londres Street, a unique blend of memoir, detective story and courtroom drama, and about his extraordinary career.

Sands is Professor of Public Understanding of Law at UCL, visiting professor at Harvard Law School and a practising barrister at 11 KBW.

He has been involved in many significant international cases in recent years, including Pinochet, Yugoslavia, Guantanamo and the Rohingya.

His book East West Street won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction, and he is a member of the board of the Hay Festival.

Pankaj Mishra talks to William Dalrymple

The World after Gaza

Saturday 31 May 2025, 5.30pm –  Venue 1

Israel’s war on Gaza and Lebanon has brought to light two competing narratives of the last century: the West’s triumphant account of victory over Nazi and communist totalitarianism versus the global majority’s frequently thwarted version of racial equality.

In his new book The World After Gaza, Indian essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra takes the war in the Middle East, and the bitterly polarised reaction to it, as the starting point for a broad reevaluation of these two narratives.

Mishra talks to historian William Dalrymple about how the world’s balance of power is shifting, and why it is critically important to enter the experiences and perspectives of the majority of the world’s population.

The pair look at key questions including why it seems some lives matter more than others, what is contributing to a far-right surge in the West, and how we go about creating a new history with a different perspective.

Mishra writes literary and political essays for outlets including the New York Times and the New York Review of Books. His books include From the Ruins of Empire and Age of Anger: A History of the Present.

Colin Greenwood

How to Disappear: a Portrait of Radiohead

Saturday 31 May 2025, 7.00pm –  Venue 1

Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood’s book How to Disappear has been two decades in the making.

Taking readers from the stage to the rehearsal room, How to Disappear illuminates the creative process of one of the 21st century’s most influential bands.

In this event, Greenwood tells stories from his career and guides the audience through some of the candid photographs he’s taken.

Greenwood has played bass in Radiohead since their formation in 1985. He has also recorded and toured with Tamino, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and has written for publications including the Guardian and the Spectator.

Radiohead has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide. Their many accolades include six Grammy and four Ivor Novello Awards. The group were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019 and their 1997 album OK Computer is archived in the US Library of Congress.

Juan Gabriel Vásquez and Erna von der Walde talk to Daniel Hahn

The Vortex

Sunday 1 June 2025, 10am –  Venue 3

Writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez, academic Erna von der Walde and translator Daniel Hahn discuss José Eustasio Rivera's classic Latin American novel The Vortex.

The book follows the young poet Arturo Cova and his lover, Alicia, as they elope from Bogotá and embark on an adventure through Colombia's varied and magical landscapes. When Alicia disappears, Arturo and his unstoppable ego must follow her. In pursuing her, Arturo becomes an inadvertent witness to the appalling conditions suffered by workers forced or tricked into tapping rubber trees.

Vásquez and von der Walde, who have both written a new forward for the book, talk to Hahn – one of the translators of The Vortex into English – about this inventive, funny, and wildly prescient novel about the human and environmental costs of extractive systems.

William Dalrymple

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World

Sunday 1 June 2025, 11.30am –  Venue 3

For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilisation, creating around it a vast empire of ideas that were exported across the world along a Golden Road stretching from the Red Sea to the Pacific.

Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the globe.

In his new book The Golden Road, historian William Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India's oft-forgotten position as the heart of ancient Eurasia, sharing stories of the Indian ideas that transformed both the ancient world and our modern societies, from the trade that helped fund the Roman Empire to the creation of the numerals we use today (including zero).

Dalrymple is the bestselling and prizewinning author of books including White Mughals, The Last Mughal and Return of a King. He has written and presented three television series and co-hosts, with Anita Anand, the podcast Empire.

Miranda Hart

I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest with You

Sunday 1 June 2025, 4pm –  Venue 1

‘Hello to you, I am with news. I have a new book: I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You. I know – what an intriguing title!’

Comedian Miranda Hart has been keeping a secret or two, but she’s ready to reveal all now. From surprising joys to challenging lows, via love and chronic illness, Hart shares the values and practical tools that led her to a sense of freedom, joy and physical recovery she never would have thought possible. Life now, amazingly, with what she will share, is – SUCH FUN!

Hart is a writer, comedian and actor. She is best known for her much-loved and multi-award-winning sitcom Miranda, as well as her BAFTA-nominated role of Chummy in Call the Midwife. She is the first female comedian to do an arena stand-up tour with her ‘My, What I Call, Live Show’.

Tim Rice

My Life In Musicals – I Know Him So Well

Sunday 1 June 2025, 8.30pm –  Venue 1

Multi-award-winning, internationally renowned lyricist Sir Tim Rice steps out from the wings and takes to the stage to reflect on his illustrious career at the heart of musical theatre.

This evening of music and anecdotes sees Rice sharing the stories behind some of the best-loved and best-known musicals of our time, from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar to Evita and the Disney productions The Lion King, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast.

A must for fans of musical theatre, performances will be by some of the UK’s leading West End singers, and will include Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, Any Dream Will Do and I Know Him So Well.