Hay Festival 2018

An unmissable, wild family game show with acclaimed French comedian Marcel Lucont, in which kids get to be pests, politicians and pétomanes (Google it) in order to be crowned the most awful child. See what happens when international insouciance meets infantile exuberance. A huge hit at Edinburgh Fringe and many other festivals, the award-winning comic channels his acerbic humour and quickfire wit into a series of tasks for the younger generation, which is every bit as entertaining for adults as it is for children. Très funny!

The author of The Midnight Library and How to Stop Time introduces 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.

When it comes to autism, girls and women have often been forgotten. Autistic girls are often misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression, personality disorders, or are missed altogether, and many women only discover they have the condition when they are much older, missing decades of support and understanding.

Renowned brain scientist Gina Rippon looks at why autism has historically been focused on men and how it manifests in them, and delves into the emerging science of female autism, asking why it has been systematically ignored and misunderstood for so long.

Author of The Gendered Brain, Rippon is Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Neuroimaging at the Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment, Aston University, where she has used brain-imaging techniques to investigate patterns of brain activity in developmental disorders such as autism. She talks to comedian and writer Robin Ince.

Magnum photographer David Hurn and cultural historian Richard King take a look at Welsh society over the last two years. Hurn has dedicated himself to documenting Wales over his decades-long career, and King is author of Brittle With Relics: A History of Wales 1962–1997.

Speaking to broadcaster Ceri Jackson, they discuss their collaboration on Wales, As It Is, a book of Hurn’s photographs accompanied by text from King. They consider the landscape of Wales, interpreting the land and contemporary Welsh society.

Hurn is one of the world’s most influential photographers. He covered the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, was at Aberfan in 1966, and has shot iconic portraits of people including The Beatles and Sean Connery. King was born into a bilingual family in South Wales and is author of Original Rockers, shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, and How Soon Is Now?, Sunday Times Music Book of the Year.

Hay Music presents an afternoon of music with one of the country’s leading contemporary classical and electric guitarists. Woodrow trained at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, and performs regularly as soloist and ensemble player with the London Chamber Symphony, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, BBC Symphony Orchestra and more. He was a founder member and co-composer of the group Just East of Jazz, and is a longstanding ​​member of both the Gavin Bryars Ensemble and Icebreaker.

Step into the open air and let the rhythm of nature fuel your creativity in Rhythms of the Wild, an electrifying fusion of poetry, rap and the great outdoors. Led by Casey Bailey – acclaimed poet, spoken word artist, rapper and educator from Birmingham – this immersive experience invites you to explore the deep connection between rhythm, storytelling and the natural world.

Experiment with form, flow and feeling – as you move through scenic landscapes, you’ll engage in dynamic writing exercises that merge the energy of rap with the introspection of poetry. Let the wind set your tempo, the rustling leaves inspire your metaphors and the sounds of nature shape your verses.

Bailey will share insights on how environment influences rhythm and lyricism, demonstrating how poetry and rap can be powerful tools for self-expression. The experience culminates in a captivating live performance, where Bailey’s words will bring the natural world to life through rhyme and rhythm.

Superstar author and illustrator Rob Biddulph is coming to share more #DrawWithRob activities with us at Hay Festival! In this fun-packed session, you can join in live with his draw-along. He’ll share tips using illustrations from his Peanut Jones trilogy, fizzing with magic, danger, friendship and art, and from Fantastic Food.

His latest Draw With Rob book, Fantastic Food takes a spin round everything we love to munch on. Cupcakes, pizza, fruit and ice cream?! Dive into the delicious world of food, with easy-to-follow drawing instructions that are perfect for all the family.

Please bring your own sketchbook and pencils to this event.

How do we write ourselves into the world at a time of domestic and global political upheaval? Do we own the pen we write with? Set in the context of award-winning poet and author Joelle Taylor’s literary career – from back street bars to Sydney Opera House – these questions will form the spine of a talk focusing on how marginalised writers and performers can create work and, ultimately, a career.

Join Joelle in one of this Hay Festival series of sessions delivered by inspiring producers and practitioners from the creative industries, giving their insights, experience and advice on progression in their field.

Please bring your own notebook and pen to this event.

Join author Hannah Gold on a thrilling Arctic adventure, as she introduces us to the sequel to The Last Bear (winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2022 and Blue Peter Book Award 2022). Pull on your rainbow snow boots and travel across icy glaciers, cross dangerous fjords, take a husky ride, be dazzled by the Northern Lights and best of all, come face to face with the most adorable tiny polar bear cub.

In this immersive event, perfect for animal lovers, you’ll encounter quizzes, jawdropping Arctic facts and breathtaking adventure guaranteed to leave you inspired! The only question is… are you ready to find Bear?

Please bring your own notebook and pen to this event.

Enjoy this twenty-minute open air performance between events. Come along and join Cantorion Y Gelli for some good old-fashioned Welsh hwyl! Cantorion Y Gelli is Hay’s mixed-voice, Welsh-language choir set up by musical director Gemma Woolford.

The majority of members are either learning Welsh or passionate about the language, with three first-language Welsh-speakers keeping a strict ear on pronunciation. They have a varied repertoire of traditional folk songs, hymns, male voice choir classics and even a football anthem.

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. He has been involved in many significant international cases, including Pinochet, Yugoslavia, Guantanamo and the Rohingya. His book East West Street won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction.

Lee Durrell, wife of the late Gerald Durrell, speaks to author and screenwriter Tiffany Murray about a new book on her husband, telling the unvarnished story of his life. Myself & Other Animals, edited and introduced by Lee, brings together unpublished autobiographies, uncollected pieces and previously published extracts from Durrell’s work and archives.

The book draws on a memoir that Durrell started writing before he became too ill to continue it, and an unfinished book from a trip to Australia in 1969 to the Great Barrier Reef, Northern Territory and Queensland.

Gerald Durrell’s first television programme, Two in the Bush, which documented his travels to New Zealand, Australia and Malaya was made in 1962. He went on to make 70 programmes about his trips around the world, and wrote several books about his work and life.

History is often shaped by those in power, leaving many voices unheard and ignored, and many stories untold. Acclaimed authors and historians Atinuke, Joya Chatterji and Kavita Puri come together in this panel, chaired by journalist Sonia Faleiro, to explore how narratives of empire, migration and identity are reclaimed through storytelling.

From personal histories to collective memory, they will discuss the power of literature and research in challenging dominant narratives and restoring silenced voices.

Atinuke is author of Africa, Amazing Africa, an introduction to Africa aimed at young people. Chatterji is Emeritus Professor of South Asian History at the University of Cambridge. Puri is a journalist whose latest BBC podcast Three Million won Gold at the British Podcast Awards. She is this year’s chair of the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. Faleiro is a writer who founded South Asia Speaks, a mentorship programme spanning eight countries.

One of Australia’s most celebrated writers bends fiction, essay and memoir to tell the story of a young woman, her relationship and her fascination with Virginia Woolf. Set in 1986, Michelle de Kretser’s Theory & Practice follows a woman who arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students – and Kit, who claims to be in a ‘deconstructed’ relationship. Meanwhile, a dismaying discovery throws her work on ‘the Woolfmother’ into disarray.

De Kretser, who has won multiple awards including the 2023 Folio Prize, talks to Toby Lichtig, fiction and politics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, about a book that examines what happens when life smashes into art.

A superb and searingly emotional debut film from Scottish writer-director Charlotte Wells. Aftersun juxtaposes a hopeful coming-of-age story with a poignant, intimate family portrait that leaves an indelible impression.

At a fading vacation resort in the late 1990s, 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) treasures rare time together with her loving and idealistic father, Calum (Oscar nominee Paul Mescal). As a world of adolescence creeps into view, beyond her eye Calum struggles under the weight of life outside of fatherhood.

Twenty years later, Sophie's tender recollections of their last holiday become a powerful and heartrending portrait of their relationship, as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn’t.

Aftersun is the winner of seven British Independent Film Awards including Best British Film.

“What a pleasure… ripples and shimmers like a swimming pool of mystery” – The Guardian

Film duration 1 hour 42 minutes. Certificate 12.

Highly-acclaimed actor David Harewood OBE discusses his journey from his birth in Birmingham to Barbadian parents of the Windrush Generation, to RADA and on to a stellar film and TV career. His on-screen presence, including Homeland, The Night Manager and Supergirl, is lauded equally in the US and the UK.

Harewood talks frankly to broadcaster and historian David Olusoga (author of Black and British), in a conversation ranging across the demands and opportunities of an acting career, the arts as a catalyst for cultural change and the role of celebrity in activism.

From making history playing the National Theatre’s first ever black Othello in 1997 to iconic screen roles, Harewood is a master of script-to-screen. He has recently stepped into a directing role, and is current president of RADA. A prominent activist, his work includes slavery reparations and mental health campaigning. His documentary Psychosis and Me, based on his own psychotic breakdown in his 20s, was BAFTA-nominated.

When 14-year-old Ronny’s life is struck by tragedy, his mum decides it’s finally time they move out of London. In his new city, as a Black teenager in a mostly white school, Ronny feels like a complete outsider and struggles to balance keeping his head down with his ambition of becoming a rapper. But when a local poet comes into class, Ronny discovers a world he’s never considered before.

Ashley Hickson-Lovence loves British hip hop, and it shows in his first Young Adult verse-novel. Wild East has been inspired by Ashley’s time as a secondary school English teacher, his own move from London to Norwich, and tutoring a group of asylum seekers.

Please bring your own notebook and pen to this event.

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 into the experiences and perspectives of the majority of the world’s population. His previous books include From the Ruins of Empire and Age of Anger: A History of the Present.

A diagnosis can seem like a blessing, helping us to understand what might be ailing us physically and mentally. But what if a diagnosis can actually do us more harm than good?

Neurologist Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan talks to geneticist and science communicator Adam Rutherford about how diagnoses can risk turning healthy people into patients, with no benefit to their long-term health.

They discuss how categories like depression and ADHD are constantly shifting and expanding, meaning what is considered ‘normal’ radically changes all the time, and how health screening is increasingly drawing previously ‘healthy’ people into the category of disease.

O’Sullivan specialises in the investigation of complex epilepsy and also has an active interest in psychogenic disorders. Her first book It’s All in Your Head won the Wellcome Book Prize and the Royal Society of Biology Book Prize.

Land is one of our most precious commodities, and yet our relationship and the way we take care of it is in desperate need of a reset. Writers Tom Heap and Guy Shrubsole discuss the damage done to our land, how we fix it to ensure we get the food, energy and housing we need, and the people working to restore the land.

In Land Smart, Heap tours the British countryside meeting the people who are solving the most pressing challenges facing our countryside, and transforming our world. He is a regular presenter on BBC1’s Countryfile, and has made many BBC Panorama documentaries on food, energy and the environment.

Shrubsole’s book The Lie of the Land looks at how a small number of landowners have laid waste to some of our most treasured landscapes. An environmental campaigner and writer, he is author of The Lost Rainforests of Britain, which won the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation.

Two writers discuss grief and writing about grief with the Monocle Radio books editor Georgina Godwin.

Peter Godwin’s Exit Wounds considers the life of émigrés, exiles and refugees, while telling the story of his mother’s death, his family’s secrets and the many meanings of home. Godwin is an award-winning foreign correspondent, author, documentary-maker and screenwriter.

Sigrid Rausing discusses finishing the memoir of her friend, the celebrated Swedish writer Johanna Ekström. When Ekström found out that she was dying from an eye melanoma she asked Rausing to finish her last book. And the Walls Became the World All Around showcases Ekström’s vivid imagination, writerly precision and psychological insight, interwoven with Rausing’s spare and sober reflections. Rausing is publisher of Granta magazine and Granta Books.

William Rayfet Hunter’s dazzling novel Sunstruck explores race, status and the parts of ourselves we risk losing when we fall in love.

Sunstruck follows a young man as he spends the summer with the Blake siblings: his carefree friend Lily, her rebellious younger sister Dot and the handsome and charismatic Felix. But when summer fades and the group returns to London, the cracks in the Blakes’ careful façade begin to show.

Hunter’s book won the #Merky Books New Writers' Prize 2022. They talk to author, activist and journalist Shon Faye.

Get a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s really like to judge one of the most beloved book prizes in the world. Kit de Waal (My Name is Leon) and Kavita Puri (Partition Voices), who are chairing the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction and Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction panels respectively, join Kate Mosse, novelist and founder director of the prizes.

The trio talk about the books that have most inspired and excited them this year, how they juggle all the books they have to read for the prizes, and what they’ve learnt as readers and as writers.

The Women’s Prize for Fiction has been running for three decades, and winners include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Zadie Smith and Ann Patchett. The Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction was first awarded in 2024, and won by Naomi Klein for Doppelganger.

Join our celebrated pizzaioli for an entertaining, hands-on workshop that will teach you everything that you knead to know about how to make pizzas. Since nothing complements pizza quite like a perfect glass of wine, let us pair and enjoy Italian wine together with your pizza creations.

This 90-minute session includes snacks, a 12” pizza of your own creation and complementary wine throughout. Dairy-free and gluten-free options available.

Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood’s book How to Disappear has been two decades in the making. Taking us from the stage to the rehearsal room, it illuminates the creative process of one of the 21st century’s most influential bands.

In this event, Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood tells stories from his career and guides us 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. He talks to scientist and broadcaster Adam Rutherford.

The changing world order and the movement towards a post-American world is having an effect on more than just politics. Established institutions across the West are grappling with the reordering of global power, and one of the biggest crises of confidence is in the mainstream media, which has seen trust and confidence in it rapidly erode.

Can media organisations meet the challenge of depicting and analysing a radically changed world order? Journalists Pankaj Mishra, Lydia Polgreen and Jonathan Shainin discuss how the media should approach the changing world, and what it can do to build back trust.

Mishra is an Indian essayist and novelist. His most recent book is The World After Gaza. Polgreen is a former international correspondent at the New York Times and a co-host of the Matter of Opinion podcast. Shainin founded the Guardian Long Read and was later the paper’s head of opinion and the editor of Cotton Capital, an award-winning investigation into its founders’ connections to slavery.

Novelist Gill Hornby takes us into the world of the Austen family, and introduces her latest fictionalisation of the lives of the Austens. In The Elopement, Mary Knatchbull’s life is changed when her widowed father marries Fanny Knight.

Fanny’s sisters become Mary’s first friends, and as Mary starts to bloom into a beautiful young woman, she forms a special bond with one Mr Knight in particular. Soon, they are deeply in love and determined to marry. Who would want to stand in their way?

Hornby is author of novels The Hive and All Together Now, as well as The Story of Jane Austen, a biography of Austen for young readers. Her novel Miss Austen has been adapted for screen on BBC One starring Keeley Hawes.

Poets Małgorzata Lebda and Joelle Taylor discuss the many and varied relationships between women, violence against women, and how women support one another.

Lebda’s novel Voracious follows a year in the life of a young woman caring for her dying grandmother. As her grandfather renovates a room for his wife, the women care for one another, for the plants and for the animals. Lebda is a poet with eight collections to her name. Voracious is the winner of Empik’s Best Newcomer in Poland and is shortlisted for the Angelus Prize, the Conrad Prize and the NIKE Award.

Taylor’s The Night Alphabet reveals interconnecting tales of a woman whose body is covered in tattoos. She reveals the story behind each tattoo to the artists linking all the art on her body together. It is a deep investigation into human nature and violence against women. Taylor is a queer, working class author of six plays and four collections of poetry, most recently C+nto & Othered Poems, winner of the 2022 TS Eliot Prize for Poetry and the 2022 Polari Prize.

Six occasions. Six wines. What’s the best bottle to pour in each scenario? Everyone talks about matching wine with food, but what about the situation? Time, place and people all have a huge bearing on the success of a wine. Sommelier Jane Rakison is here to navigate you through the perennial middle-class minefield – how to choose the right wine. In this tasting event she’ll talk you through her selection of six wines, and then you can try them for yourself.

An award-winning writer, broadcaster and author raised in South Wales, Jane is best known as a wine expert on BBC1’s Saturday Kitchen Live. She has penned two books, edited magazines and written columns over the years, and she loves to host events (especially at festivals). She is an international judge for both food and wine.

The Guardian’s global environment editor Jonathan Watts shares his exploration of James Lovelock, environmentalist and inventor, industrialist, NASA engineer and spy. Watts (author of When a Billion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save the World – or Destroy It) has drawn on hours of interviews, personal papers and scientific archives to paint his portrait in The Many Lives of James Lovelock.

Lovelock is best known as the father of Gaia Theory (that life on Earth is a self-sustaining system in which organisms interact with their environment for a habitable ecosystem). Pulling together the many influences which shaped his life and thinking, Watts discusses this fascinating, often contradictory man.

Award-winning filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki (Le Havre, The Other Side of Hope) makes a masterful return with Fallen Leaves, a timeless, hopeful and satisfying love story that won the Jury Prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Set in modern day Helsinki, the film tells the story of Ansa (Alma Pöysti) and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), two lonely souls whose chance meeting at a local karaoke bar is beset by numerous hurdles. From lost phone numbers to mistaken addresses, alcoholism and a charming stray dog, the pair’s path to happiness is as bittersweet as it is ultimately delightful.

Shot through with Kaurismäki’s typically playful, idiosyncratic style and deadpan sense of humour, this tender romantic tragicomedy is both a loving tribute to the filmmaker’s beloved contemporaries and a timely reminder of the potency of movie-going from one of cinema’s living legends.

“Gorgeous… A heartfelt cinephile ode to the possibility of love” – Little White Lies

PG Wodehouse, best known for creating Jeeves and Wooster, once had a record-breaking five musicals playing simultaneously on Broadway. In Play on Words, devised and directed by Hugh Wooldridge, Wodehouse’s step-great grandson Hal Cazalet and pianist Simon Beck transport us back to the Golden Age of stage and screen through stories, anecdotes and songs.

Wodehouse’s lyrics informed the way he crafted his novels and shaped his inimitable characters, as well as helping define the American musical. Celebrate the birth of the musical, with theatrical writing highlights of the last 120 years from Gershwin, Kern, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim and more.

Cazalet is an opera singer who has created leading roles in world premieres for composers across the world. Beck has been music director and pianist for a number of artists, and for the London debut of the Broadway institution Sondheim Unplugged.