Hay Festival 2024

Nitin Sawhney brings to Hay Festival his most recent album, Identity, packed full of collaborations with his favourite artists. Sawhney says: “I’m working and collaborating with artists who are proud of who they are and whose work is defined by that pride. This album is a sonic collage of music, strong voices and self-validation. The album is a love letter to who we all are.” Expect an eclectic set influenced by Indian and Spanish styles, along with blues, soul, funk, electronica and pop.

The Ivor Novello Lifetime Award-winning writer, composer and producer is one of the most distinctive and versatile musical voices around. He has worked with the likes of Paul McCartney and Sting and scored numerous films and television series. He’s established as a world-class producer, songwriter, touring artist, BBC Radio and club DJ, multi-instrumentalist, composer and cultural/political commentator.

David Baddiel discusses his new book, based on his long-running stand-up show My Family (Not the Sitcom). Like the show, the book covers the death of his mother and his turbulent relationship with his father, who suffered from an aggressive form of Alzheimer’s and died in 2022. Much of the stand-up covered his mother’s affair with a golfing memorabilia salesman – which Baddiel describes as “stuff that people don’t normally talk about with a recently departed parent”, but explained was a substantial part of her identity, “her way of saying she was not just a prim, suburban, Jewish housewife”. And the show portrayed his father as a difficult man who would aggressively criticise his sons, a trait amplified by his Pick’s disease. Baddiel talks to writer and editor Daniel Hahn.

Humans are capable of both love and hate, amazement and disgust, fun and misery. So why do we live in a world that constantly urges us to hate ourselves and others, to be repulsed by our own bodies, to be ashamed of pleasure, to be embarrassed by fun? In her new collection, the author and poet asks why we have been taught to hate, and if we might learn to love again. She won the Ted Hughes Award for Nobody Told Me, wrote the three poetry collections Plum, Cherry Pie and Papers, adapted the Greek tragedy Antigone and co-wrote the play Offside with poet Sabrina Mahfouz.