Hay Festival 2024

What can tea and pyjamas tell us about Britain today? Carnegie-nominated author Shelina Janmohamed steers an interactive, mind-blowing journey through the centuries and lands of the British Empire, standing in the shoes of kids just like you. Hear the voices of children of the industrial revolution, enslaved children, the Home children and even the teenage match girls who went on strike and inspired a political movement. Understanding what happened during the British Empire helps all of us to make sense of the world we live in today. Not afraid to tackle big issues like racism and inequality, Shelina will ask perhaps the most important question of all: how can you be the author of your own (British Empire) story, and could your story change the course of history?

Please bring your own notebook and pen or pencil to this event.

An opportunity to get crafting! Activities differ every day, including everything from print-making to junk modelling with recycled materials, with today’s sessions focusing on rivers. Get messy and creative: your imagination is the limit.

Book for the session and you can drop in at any point during the 1.5 hour duration. Accompanying adults: please stay in attendance at all times, but you do not require a ticket.

Come to the Family Garden for a pizza masterclass with Kitchen Garden Pizza. In this one-hour session your imagination and creativity will be fed along with your belly! You’ll get your hands messy with freshly grown and foraged ingredients, make and top your own dough and observe the pizzaioli at work at the wood-fired oven. And while you wait for your pizza to cook, you can decorate your own pizza box!
Dairy-free and gluten-free options available

Rotoscope and remix! Leave your mark – help reanimate, reimagine and remix short films with visual artists MASH Cinema. During the workshop you’ll experiment with techniques pioneered by animator Max Fleischer to produce new moving image artwork in this fun, hands-on collaborative creative project. Completed animations will be available to view online.

Critically acclaimed comedian Sara Pascoe introduces her engaging debut novel. Weirdo follows Sophie, an existential Essex girl battling low-level paranoia in her search for happiness and truth. All Sophie wants to do is act like a normal, well-adjusted person and not say any of her inner monologue out loud. If she can suppress her pornographic visualisations and pathological lying, who knows, maybe she can get out of debt, dump her current boyfriend and try to enjoy Christmas with her awful family? Pascoe wrote and starred in the sitcom Out of Her Mind, hosts The Great British Sewing Bee and has written two non-fiction books – Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body and Sex Power Money. Pascoe talks to writer and presenter Matt Everitt.

“Quietly profound and laughing-in-public funny” – Caitlin Moran.

There will be a BSL interpreter at this event

The roots of Western civilisation lie in ancient Greek and Rome, and values like freedom, rationality, justice, democracy and tolerance originated in the West. But what if that’s not true? Covering 4,000 years of history, Josephine Quinn calls for a major reassessment of the West, arguing that many of the values we hold close are not only or originally western, and that the West is a product of longstanding links between a large group of cultures, from the Gobi Desert to the Atlantic Ocean, Scandinavia to the Sahara. Quinn, a professor of ancient history at the University of Oxford, puts forward a rich new narrative that has the power to change how we see the world.

Dive deep with physicist Helen Czerski and marine biologist Helen Scales as they speak to the Festival’s Sustainability Director Andy Fryers about our vast oceans. Czerski’s The Blue Machine illuminates the murky depths of the ocean engine, examining the messengers, passengers and voyagers that live in it, travel over it, and survive because of it. Scales’ What the Wild Sea Can Be is an optimistic view of the future of the ocean, looking at how fish populations and giant kelp and seagrass forests are being regenerated and expanded.

Michael Rosen is no stranger to Hay Festival. As the former Children’s Laureate and much-loved author, Michael presents Word of Mouth on BBC Radio 4, a series which explores the world of words. In this unique opportunity to see two great storytellers together, Michael will be interviewing War Horse writer Michael Morpurgo. Join this special exploration of words and language.

Tune in to BBC Radio 4 broadcaster Jeffrey Boakye to discover modern world history as you’ve never heard it before! The critically acclaimed author of Musical Truth presents Musical World, a new book and soundtrack charting pivotal historical moments from across the globe. Explore the cultural, political and societal impact of various music genres and musicians, including artists Bob Marley, Aretha Franklin, Lil Nas X and many more.

Go story mudlarking with Katya Balen, the Carnegie Medal-winning author of October, October, and discover her new heart-warming tale Foxlight. Explore the wild with twin sisters Fen and Rey – different and the same, separate and connected – as they follow a fox in search of answers.

Come to the Family Garden for a pizza masterclass with Kitchen Garden Pizza. In this one-hour session your imagination and creativity will be fed along with your belly! You’ll get your hands messy with freshly grown and foraged ingredients, make and top your own dough and observe the pizzaioli at work at the wood-fired oven. And while you wait for your pizza to cook, you can decorate your own pizza box!
Dairy-free and gluten-free options available

The singer-songwriter, record producer and former British Army officer regales us with tales loosely based on fact, from his questionable Norfolk roots, eccentric family, boarding school antics, misjudged military service, to his rise to music stardom and tour escapades. His 2004 debut album Back to Bedlam, featuring the single You’re Beautiful, sold over 11 million copies and was the best-selling album of the 2000s in the UK. His new album, Who We Used to Be is out in October. Blunt talks to writer and presenter Matt Everitt.

There will be a BSL interpreter at this event

What would a sustainable economy look like? How could we live within our environmental means? Sir Dieter Helm explains what it would take to properly maintain different types of capital, why polluters would have to pay, why the current generation would have to fund the necessary maintenance of our natural assets and why we would have to save to invest. Author of Net Zero and The Carbon Crunch, Helm is Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford. From 2012 to 2020 he was Independent Chair of the UK Natural Capital Committee, providing advice to the government on the sustainable use of natural capital. His latest book is Legacy: How to Build the Sustainable Economy and he is in conversation with Mark Lloyd, CEO of The Rivers Trust.

Artist and stage designer Es Devlin’s work is rooted in a lifelong practice of reading and drawing, whether she’s making fragile miniature paintings, paper cuts and small mechanical cardboard models, public sculptures and installations at Tate Modern and the V&A, or kinetic stage designs at the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre. Devlin’s book An Atlas of Es Devlin is a sculptural volume with foldouts, cut-outs and a range of paper types, mirror and translucencies. She speaks to journalist Kirsty Lang about her 30-year career.

Join Professor Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost for an illustrated talk about his new book, Fieldnotes from Celtic Palestine. He shares reflections on his field visits to Palestine over several years, including encounters such as being served tea by the daughter of a Hamas suicide bomber in the family apartment in Ramallah, and being taken to Jewish settlements regarded as illegal under international law. He explores aspects of the conflict in Palestine through the medium of art, casting a critical eye upon depictions of Gaza by the Welsh artist Osi Rhys Osmond and upon portrayals of the West Bank in the creative writing of Irish novelist Colum McCann. Chríost is Director of Postgraduate Research Studies at the School of Welsh, Cardiff University.

Girlo Wolf longs for something beyond the defunct slag heaps of post-industrial Wales and nurtures dreams of becoming a poet. But, struggling with mental health challenges and the repercussions of childhood trauma, she falls into a dark underworld of sex, drugs and alcohol. Poet and activist Gemma June Howell discusses her darkly comedic novel The Crazy Truth, which sheds light on the harsh realities of economic poverty and present-day oppression, with author Rachel Trezise. Howell is director of Women Publishing Wales/Menywod Cyhoeddi Cymru.

Bring your best ideas to this solutions-focused workshop session. Facilitated by sustainability entrepreneur Andy Middleton and joined by key speakers to be announced, we’ll look at the key issue of transport, discussing the scale of the issue and a range of solutions.

Speakers include remarkable individuals leading climate and biodiversity resilience projects, igniting hope and progress in their neighbourhoods and the wider community. We want you to share your ideas and to be inspired by those making a difference. Be part of the change in this two-hour thought laboratory.

Combative, provocative and engaging debate examining a moral issue of the day, chaired by Michael Buerk. On the panel at Hay Festival with Michael will be Ash Sarkar, senior editor at Novara Media; Giles Fraser, Anglican vicar; Inaya Folorin-Iman, journalist, commentator and TV presenter; James Orr, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Cambridge.

Only 628 people in human history have left Earth. Tim Peake traces the lives of some of these remarkable men and women, from Yuri Gagarin to Neil Armstrong, Valentina Tereshkova to Peggy Whitson. He describes the wondrous view of Earth, the surreal weightlessness, the extraordinary danger, the surprising humdrum, the unexpected humour, the psychological pressures, the physical toll, the thrill of launch and trepidation of re-entry. He also examines the surprising, shocking and often poignant stories of astronauts back on Earth, whose lives are forever changed as they readjust to terra firma. A former Apache helicopter pilot, flight instructor and test pilot, Peake was the first British astronaut to visit the International Space Station. In conversation with Andy Fryers, Sustainability Director, Hay Festival Global.

Faced with family dramas, political crises and questions about the future of the monarchy in Britain and elsewhere, the new King has had no shortage of challenges to face including, most recently, his cancer diagnosis. Robert Hardman, writer and co-producer of the BBC documentary Charles III: The Coronation Year, gives his insight into the life of our current monarch, including looking at the role played by Queen Camilla and the monarchy’s role on the world stage.

Hardman has been a member of the BBC commentary team at all the major state occasions of recent times and is the author of several international bestsellers, including Queen of Our Times: The Life of Elizabeth II. His latest book is Charles III.