Start your day at Hay Festival with our daily news review. Join our leading journalists and special guests as they take us behind the headlines with insider perspectives, insights and an eye on what’s next. Strong coffee recommended!

Among today's guests is historian David Olusoga, Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester, and economist Kate Raworth, senior associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and a Professor of Practice at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Olusoga is author of Black and British: A Forgotten History, and presenter of Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners and documentary series Civilisation. Raworth is author of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist and a member of the World Health Organization's Council on the Economics of Health For All. They will be joined by social philosopher and internationally best selling author Roman Krznaric. Krznaric is Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, founder of the world’s first Empathy Museum and author of many books about the power of ideas to create change including The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World. Empathy, The Wonderbox and Carpe Diem Regained, and History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity. Chaired by writer and journalist Sarfraz Manzoor.

Three acclaimed thinkers and writers discuss the far-reaching effects of maternity, with author and journalist Candice Brathwaite. Women undergo a huge physiological, psychological and social metamorphosis during pregnancy, childbirth and early motherhood. There is no time other than adolescence that entails such dramatic change, yet the huge diversity in its effects go largely unrepresented and undiscussed.

Dr Pragya Agarwal is a behavioural scientist, University of Cambridge Fellow and author of (M)otherhood: On the Choices of Being a Woman. Lucy Jones is author of Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood, a radical new examination of how motherhood changes the mind and body. Clover Stroud is a journalist and author of My Wild and Sleepless Nights: A Mother’s Story and The Red of My Blood: A Death and Life Story.

For a country that is obsessed with class, no one in the UK seems to know what class is. Class is often reduced to cultural signifiers – our accent, what food we eat, what clothes we wear, how we decorate our houses. Or class is portrayed as if it is solely an economic matter. But these ways of thinking obscure more than they illuminate. Our panel explores the modern class structure in the UK. They discuss how class is lived and experienced; how class interacts with other identities such as race and gender; and the relationship between class and political behaviour.

Walkerdine is Professor at the Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, where Ryan Davey is a lecturer and Richard Gater is a research assistant at the Centre for Adult Social Care Research. Dan Evans is a researcher at Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data.

Dream team Julian Clary and David Roberts spill the beans on their fabulous series. Mr and Mrs Bold are just like you and me: they live in a nice house, they have jobs and they love to have a bit of a giggle. One slight difference: they’re hyenas. Yes, that’s right – they’re covered in fur, have tails tucked into their trousers, and they really, really like to laugh. So far, the Bolds have managed to keep things under wraps, even when their children Bobby and Betty were born. But when the nosy man next door smells a rat (or a hyena), could it spell the end of their well-kept secret? Whatever will the neighbours think?

Welcome to Happy Hills – it’s a place where anything can happen and always does! Join Sophy Henn, author/illustrator extraordinaire of the hilariously funny graphic novel series. She takes us on a journey through Happy Hills to meet the friendly and not-so-friendly residents, discovering lots of characters along the way who make you flex those creative muscles.

A real ambassador and a fictional one meet to discuss the world of diplomacy in this event, chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy. Jane D Hartley, the United States Ambassador to the UK, and Keri Russell, who plays the American ambassador in the TV series The Diplomat, speak about international relations, power and all those official receptions.

The internationally acclaimed Irish novelist’s Prophet Song won the Booker Prize 2023. On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish answers her door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police. They’re here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist. Ireland is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling. With literary journalist Alex Clark, Lynch discusses his devastating vision of a country at war and his deeply human portrait of a dystopia that could be just around the corner.

Mexican writer Aura García-Junco and British-Palestinian author Isabella Hammad talk to translator Daniel Hahn about writing on both sides of the Atlantic, in a continuation of a conversation that was held at Hay Festival Querétaro 2023, in Mexico. García-Junco is an author, screenwriter and occasional translator who, in 2021, was named by Granta magazine as one of the best young writers in the Spanish language. Her fourth book May God Blast the Woman Who Writes About Me has just been published in English. Hammad was included on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2023 list. She is author of Enter Ghost, about a woman who returns to Palestine after years away from her family’s homeland.

Find out how families begin and how you become a part of your family, with award-winning GP and presenter Dr Amir Khan (Good Morning Britain, You Are What You Eat). Dr Khan brings his incredible knowledge, and passion for sharing it, to the question of where babies come from and what happens to them next.

Delve into the secret world of wizardry with psychologist and Member of the Inner Magic Circle Professor Richard Wiseman. He reveals how learning magic tricks can boost your confidence, social skills, creativity, happiness and much, much more. Experience the world’s greatest optical illusions, have fun discovering how to perform magic, uncover the secret science of sorcery, and find out how to transform a tea towel into a chicken!

From the former Conservative Cabinet minister and co-presenter of 2022’s hit podcast The Rest is Politics, a searing insider’s account of ten extraordinary years in Parliament. From 2010 to 2019, Rory Stewart went from being a political outsider to standing for prime minister – before resigning from a Conservative Party he barely recognised. Tackling ministerial briefs on flood response and prison violence, engaging with conflict and poverty abroad as a foreign minister, and Brexit as a Cabinet minister, Stewart learned first-hand how profoundly hollow and inadequate our democracy and government had become, with cronyism, ignorance and sheer incompetence running rampant. Stewart talks to TLS Fiction and Politics Editor Toby Lichtig.

From the mystery of quantum physics all the way to the horrors of disruptions to world peace, we make the mistake of thinking in terms of individual entities. We forget that entities are made by their relations. Italian theoretical physicist and writer Carlo Rovelli suggests that trying to make sense of the world in terms of relations can help us make better sense of reality on all its levels.

Three experts discuss cultural exchange across the world. Wanjiru Koinange is a Kenyan writer and entrepreneur, founder of Book Bunk, which aims to change Nairobi by restoring some of the city’s most iconic public libraries into sites of inclusivity, heritage, public art, collective memory, knowledge production, shared experiences and cultural exchange. She is author of The Havoc of Choice. Nigerian poet and author Lola Shoneyin is a publisher, festival organiser and author of The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. Colombian writer Velia Vidal is a festival director, author of Tidal Waters and also a contributor to Untold Microcosms: Latin American Writers in the British Museum. In conversation with Georgina Godwin.

Meet Jack-Jack, the world’s coolest dog, who looks after orphaned chimpanzees in Africa; he’s about to embark on his biggest adventure ever. “I spend my days playing with baby chimps. When I meet Ben, suddenly, I have more baths than ever (previously none). I wave goodbye to my pet fleas, and prepare to fly thousands of miles. I’ve never been on a lead or in a car, so what will an aeroplane be like?”

Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard will be remembered for being the first woman in the role in that country’s history, but even more so for her misogyny speech to parliament, in which she called out politician Tony Abbott for his hypocrisy and sexism. She talks to human rights lawyer Baroness Helena Kennedy about one of the most iconic speeches in modern politics, her career in the Australian government and what is still to be achieved when it comes to equality.

A Brief History of Seven Killings exploded onto the literary scene in 2014, winning the 2015 Man Booker Prize. Ten years after its publication, Marlon James presents a new edition exploring the ongoing cultural and historical fascination with Bob Marley. In Jamaica, 1976, seven gunmen storm Marley’s house, machine guns blazing. The superstar survives but the gunmen are never caught. James’s novel reimagines an event that has become a modern myth, as he chronicles the lives of slum kids, one-night stands, drug lords, girlfriends, gunmen, journalists and even the CIA. James talks to novelist and literary director Adam Biles of Shakespeare and Company. A Brief History of Seven Killings is the Hay Festival Book Club pick for June.

Ideas and stories are limitless: our planet’s resources are not. The combined climate, biodiversity and nature emergencies are an existential threat to us all. So we all have a responsibility to help find solutions. Throughout Hay Festival we invite participants to contribute their ideas and concerns and to help build a combined mobilisation message for the future. Today we launch that message, encouraging everyone to be part of the change needed to secure a safe outcome for future generations.

Actor Julian Rhind-Tutt has appeared in Green Wing, Notting Hill and The Witcher. Documentary filmmaker Jack Harries is co-founder of Earthrise Studio. Environmental activist Jane Davidson is the former Welsh Government minister for Education, Environment and Sustainability. In conversation with Nicola Cutcher, investigative journalist, documentary maker, and freelance writer.

Worldbuilding is the key to captivating stories in films, television and gaming as well as books. You’ll have fun working together in this interactive session to help you create your own unique world. Gita Ralleigh is the author of The Destiny of Minou Moonshine and The Voyage of Sam Singh, both magical adventures set in a parallel colonial India.

The most talked about British story of the year so far has been the Post Office scandal, thanks to a television drama. ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office, starring Toby Jones as the titular Mr Bates, dramatised the case of hundreds of subpostmasters across the UK who were wrongly prosecuted after faulty computer software found money missing from post office branches.

Join Toby Jones to discuss both his role in this series, and his extensive TV and film career as one of the UK's most regarded stage and screen actors, and the unique power of television and film to shed light on human stories as he talks to author and broadcaster Viv Groskop.

The Nobel Prize-winning biologist and former president of the Royal Society explores the science of why and how we age and die. The knowledge of death is so terrifying that we live most of our lives in denial of it, and our fear has underpinned our religions, inspired our cultures, and driven our science. Today giant strides are being made in our understanding of death, and immortality might even be within our grasp. But what are the social and ethical costs of attempting to live forever? He talks to the Radio 4 broadcaster and president of the British Humanist Association.

Sarah Marsh discusses her accomplished debut, inspired by her experiences of growing up deaf and her family’s history of deafness. Receiving an unexpected visit from Alexander Graham Bell, Ellen Lark knows at once what he wants from her. Ellen is deaf, and for a time was Bell’s student, when he confided in her his dream of producing a device to transmit the human voice along a wire: the telephone. Now, Bell wants Ellen to speak up in support of his claim to the patent, which is being challenged by rivals. But she has a different story to tell: that of how Bell betrayed her, and other deaf pupils, in pursuit of ambition and personal gain. Marsh talks to historian Professor Suzannah Lipscomb.

There will be a BSL interpreter at this event

Dermot O’Leary, the popular presenter and author of the Toto the Ninja Cat series, swoops into Hay Festival to tell us all about his brand new action-adventure story with a feathery twist. Wings of Glory is a wartime tale guaranteed to make you laugh and cry – featuring courageous loop-the-loops, top secret plans and more than a smattering of bird poo!

Unlock the mystic art of curse writing in this hands-on ‘invocations’ workshop, where you’ll craft personalised spells with Krystal Sutherland, inspired by the witchy world of The Invocations. Join the bestselling author for an enchanting session of creativity and magic, and leave with your own bespoke curse. No humans are harmed in the making of this curse!

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

The botanist draws on her expertise and experience as an indigenous woman to show how other living beings offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. Her subjects range from the Native American legend of the Skywoman to the language of wild strawberries and squash, asters and goldenrod, algae and sweetgrass. Her collection of essays weaves together traditional ecological knowledge and scientific knowledge to examine the relationship people have, and can have, with the living environment. Kimmerer lives in New York where she is founder and director of the Centre for Native Peoples and the Environment. She talks about her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants with farmer and author James Rebanks.

Join Professor Susanna Lipscomb, chair of judges for the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, in conversation with Laura Cumming (Thunderclap) Noreen Masud (A Flat Place), Tiya Miles* (All That She Carried)and Madhumita Murgia* (Code Dependent), four of the writers shortlisted for the 2024 prize. They discuss selected books, their broader themes and the importance of this new prize as a platform to elevate women’s voices in non-fiction that have previously been overlooked.

The winner of the 2024 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction will be announced on Thursday 13 June. Brought to you by the Women's Prize Trust, the charity which enriches society by creating equitable opportunities for women in the world of books and beyond.

*Tiya Miles and Madhumita Murgia will appear digitally.

Three authors who share a personal history of displacement and violence discuss writing about their birth countries with lawyer and writer Philippe Sands. Pulitzer Prize winner Hisham Matar is an American-Libyan writer whose novel, My Friends, is about three friends in political exile and the emotional homeland that deep friendships can provide. Elif Shafak is a Turkish-British novelist, author of The Island of Missing Trees, shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022, which follows a romantic relationship between a Greek and a Turkish Cypriot. Palestinian writer Adania Shibli is the author of PEN Translates Award-winning and International Booker Prize-longlisted Minor Detail, a meditation on war, violence and memory that dissects the Palestinian experience of dispossession and life under occupation.

Journey back in time 700 years with Honey & Co chefs Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich, as they explore connections between the food of medieval Moorish Spain and the recipes they have championed and popularised as two of the UK’s best-loved chefs. They draw on medieval recipes as revealed in the 13th century Andalusian manuscript Best of Delectable Foods and Dishes from al-Andalus and al-Maghrib: A Cookbook by Thirteenth-Century Andalusi Scholar Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī (1227–1293). Watch the couple demonstrate a recipe from the book, and try some delicious tastings.

Honey & Co’s cookbooks include Chasing Smoke: Cooking Over Fire around the Levant and Food from the Middle East. Packer and Srulovich talk to Polly Russell, a food historian and curator at the British Library.

Travel between the Rocky Mountains and Trinidad with authors Kevin Barry and Ingrid Persaud, who discuss their new novels with critic Alex Clark. Barry’s The Heart in Winter is about Tom Rourke, a young poet and a degenerate in Montana in the late 1800s. When Polly Gillespie arrives as the new bride of the devout mine captain, Tom falls in love with her and they ride into the sunset, but a posse of deranged Cornish gunsmen is soon in hot pursuit. Persaud's The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh is the tale of four women, connected and controlled by one man: the notorious, charismatic gangster Boysie Singh.

Author Annabelle Hirsch delves into her collection of 101 objects that make up the neglected history of women, in conversation with writer and books journalist Caroline Sanderson. This quiet, intimate and particular history takes in everything from humble household items to objects of female pleasure and of female subjugation. Readings from Julia Gillard, Helena Kennedy, Miriam Margolyes and Aditi Mittal bring to life these fascinating, too-often-overlooked, manifold histories of women.

Hirsch is a writer and translator; Gillard is former prime minister of Australia; Kennedy is a barrister and a Labour member of the House of Lords; Margolyes is an actor of stage and screen; and Mittal is a comedian and actor.

What can the history of slave revolts teach us about the power of rebellion to tackle the climate crisis? How might understanding the origins of capitalism spark ideas for bringing AI under control? What could we learn from the coffee houses of Georgian London to tame social media? Social philosopher Roman Krznaric looks at 1,000 years of history to help us confront the challenges of the 21st century, from bridging the inequality gap and reducing the risks of genetic engineering, to reviving our faith in democracy and avoiding ecological collapse. In conversation with publisher and writer, John Mitchinson.

Comedians and writers Dom Joly and Danny Wallace take a look at conspiracy theories, fake news and more in this funny, frank and sometimes frightening discussion. Joly’s new book The Conspiracy Tourist: Travels Through a Strange World sees him meeting followers of QAnon in Cornwall, New Age-ers in Glastonbury and UFO hunters in Roswell, and taking a flat-earther to the edge of the world. In Wallace’s book Somebody Told Me he encounters families torn apart by accusations and fake news, journalists putting themselves on the frontline of the disinformation war, reformed conspiracy theorists and more. Joly and Wallace talk to author and tech researcher Carl Miller.

Building on years of creative collaborations with survivors of terror attacks, Yordanka Dimcheva and Dr Katharina Karcher tell the stories of six inspiring people through three objects. From the narwhal tusk used by MoJ employee Darryn Frost and prisoner Steven Gallant in 2019 to tackle an armed attacker on London Bridge, to the camera of David Fritz Goeppinger, who survived the hostage-taking in the 2015 Bataclan attack, and the knitted teddy bear made by Figen Murray after losing her son in the Manchester Arena bombing, Karcher illustrates how creative practice can be used to remember violent loss, (re)claim agency and work towards less violent futures. Dimcheva is a PhD candidate in French Studies, focusing on terrorism in France, and Karcher is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages, both at the University of Birmingham.

Looking for a new approach to life, a way to make your dreams reality and a stronger connection to yourself and those around you? Then author Candice Brathwaite (Manifest(o): Unlock the Life you Deserve) and consultant and coach Africa Brooke (The Third Perspective: Brave Expression in the Age of Intolerance) are here to help, in conversation with journalist Nichi Hodgson. Brooke shares her method for expressing yourself and embracing bravery, with the aim of placing you back in the driver’s seat of your own life. Brathwaite explores what manifesting looks like if you're not white, thin, traditionally pretty or able bodied. Prepare for a conversation that will leave you feeling inspired and ready to tackle any problem or achieve any dream.

Gain a rare insight into the life of the legendary, late comedian Barry Cryer, whose work included BBC Radio 4’s long-running I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. His son Bob Cryer speaks to actor Miriam Margolyes about the man behind the jokes. Filled with candour and warmth, this discussion is an ode to Barry Cryer’s incredible life and to the lessons he imparted on the art of comedy during his 60-year career.

Bob Cryer is an actor and writer best known for Coronation Street and Hollyoaks. With his father, he created the book series Mrs Hudson’s Diaries, which was adapted into a play for Wilton’s Music Hall. Mrs Hudson’s Radio Show soon followed for Radio 4 in 2018. Their joint podcast, Now Where Were We?, launched just before Barry Cryer’s death in 2022. His book Same Time Tomorrow? is about Barry Cryer's life and career. Cryer and Margolyes talk to Alex Clark.

Simon Armitage’s reinvention of a fairy tale, Hansel & Gretel: A Nightmare in Eight Scenes, was published in 2023. It’s the third book by the Poet Laureate to be illustrated by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, following Sir Gawain & the Green Knight in 2018 and The Owl and the Nightingale in 2021.

The Poet Laureate and the artist/illustrator hold a conversation with pictures, talking about their experiences of working together and reading favourite passages from the three books. Hicks-Jenkins directed and designed the music theatre production with actors and puppets of Armitage’s Hansel & Gretel when it premiered in 2018, and two members of the original cast make a special appearance.

Join the literary director of Shakespeare and Company Adam Biles (author of Feeding Time and Beasts of England), with journalist and novelist Hari Kunzru (The Impressionist, Blue Ruin) Isabella Hammad (author of The Parisian and Enter Ghost) and other guests for a far-ranging conversation on the role writers play in our cultural discourse, the art of the author interview and the importance of independent bookshops.

Shakespeare and Company, Paris, is one of the world’s most iconic and beautiful bookshops. Long favoured as a meeting place for writers and readers, it has hosted events with some of the greatest authors of our age. Highlights from these conversations are captured in the new Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews, bringing their insights together with warmth, sensitivity and humour.