Hay Festival 2014

Professor Robert Winston leads a scientific journey through human history, featuring fascinating facts, innovative inventions and daring discoveries. Learn how accidents have led to some of the greatest findings we’ve ever seen, and how anybody who dares to dream can be successful. Have you ever been asked when writing was invented? Or how electricity works?

Robert covers it all – from evolution and the first tools to exploring microchips and the internet. If you’re constantly asking ‘how’ and ‘why’ things happen, this event is for you, as he’ll be on hand with (almost) all the answers to the questions that even adults find tricky!

Rajiv has feelings for everything. He can feel confident. He can feel happy. He can feel silly. But today, he feels angry and he doesn’t know why. With the help of his father, he sets out on a journey to make sense of his feelings. It is a journey that will take him to a park, up into the branches of a tree, and all the way to the stars…

Join award-winning non-binary storyteller Niall to share this heartwarming story about understanding and embracing big emotions. Through captivating narrative and an engaging art activity, we’ll explore the beauty of self-expression and the magic of feelings.

Please bring your own sketchbook and pencils to draw along in this event.

The author of Inkheart and Dragon Rider, Cornelia Funke shares the magic in her new and exciting mystery set in the heart of New York City. Come and hear how Caspia’s summer in the city is transformed when she discovers a bundle of letters containing ten botanical riddles. She sets out to solve the riddles and, as she does, she meets friends she could never have imagined and discovers that anywhere can feel like home, if you are brave enough to put down new roots.

Please bring your own notebook and pen to this event.

Look out for the Scavenger Trail around the Festival site, inspired by Cornelia Funke’s The Green Kingdom.

An opportunity to get crafting! Activities differ every day, including everything from print-making to junk modelling with recycled materials. Get messy and creative in these interactive sessions delivered by artists and discover that your imagination is the only 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.

Step into the story with now>press>play! In between events, try out this immersive audio adventure for all the family. Hear every sound, move with the action and feel the magic of storytelling come alive around you.

After weeks going hungry in your stone house, you’re desperate to join your dad and sister, Etta, out on the hunt. But the hunt party is attacked by wolves, and in the confusion you and Etta get lost and discover a house made of wood. What other new technologies do these people possess, and how will they lead you back to your dad?

Head into the forest with explorer Levison Wood as he shares the profound influence forests have had on our planet and civilisation. Having spent a lifetime exploring wild places and witnessing environmental challenges and conservation efforts around the world, Wood now turns his attention to the forest in The Great Tree Story, and will discuss the book and his experiences of woodlands around the world.

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.

Join acclaimed writers and longstanding friends Kate Mosse and Jacqueline Wilson for an intimate chat encompassing their thoughts on life, writing and creative inspiration.

Both writers of strong female characters, the pair also share a sense of adventure in real life. Far from resting on their publishing laurels, Mosse recently toured a one-woman show of Labyrinth, while Wilson has just published Think Again, her first adult novel in a career spanning five decades. Similarly Mosse will also be publishing her first book for a young adult audience later this year.

They discuss revisiting characters many years after first creating them, how books can take on a life of their own, in adaptations and otherwise, and give insights into how their writing life changed following the success of their books. Mosse is founder director of the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction and Women’s Prize for Fiction, for which Wilson has been a judge.

From medicine, politics and travel to belief, economics and the role of women, art historian Amy Jeffs shares what the strange legends of saints tell us about the medieval world.

Today, many of the saintly heroes of medieval Britain are all but forgotten, and Jeffs sets out to right this wrong in her book Saints: New Legendary of Heroes, Humans and Magic, arguing that we should treat saints’ stories with the same reverence with which we treat myth or folklore.

Jeffs takes us on a deep dive into the earthy, visceral and unruly medieval cults suppressed when the saints’ shrines were torn down. As well as Saints, she is author of the bestselling Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain and Wild: Tales from Early Medieval Britain.

Mererid Hopwood – the Welsh poet and lyricist, currently serving as Archdruid of the National Eisteddfod of Wales – chairs a conversation with writers from Europe: Maarja Pärtna from Estonia, Gianna Olinda Cadonau from Switzerland and Pol Guasch from Catalonia. They explore the climate emergency’s threat to society, landscape and minoritised languages and how literature can awake ecological consciousness.

A culmination of a two-week residency for 14 writers, this event will explore their collective approach to addressing climate change through language and literature and celebrate cultural links between Wales and the rest of Europe.

Writer and filmmaker Xiolu Guo reimagines Moby-Dick from the perspective of a cross-dressed female sailor, in her latest work. Call Me Ishmaelle looks afresh at the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville’s great novel, through the eyes of a woman.

In 1843 Ishmaelle is born in a small village on the stormy Kent coast where she grows up swimming with dolphins. Later, abandoned and desperate for a life at sea, she disguises herself as a cabin boy and travels to New York, where she boards the Nimrod, a whaling ship led by the obsessive Captain Seneca.

Through the bloody male violence of whaling, and the unveiling of her feminine identity, Ishmaelle realises there is a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale. Guo discusses her dramatically different, feminist narrative that stands alongside the original while offering a powerful exploration of nature, gender and human purpose.

Join Queen of Historical Fiction Emma Carroll (Secrets of a Sun King, When We Were Warriors) as she introduces the magical world of her new novel. In The Houdini Inheritance, two children in the 1920s find themselves dragged into the seedy world of American amusement parks in the service of the world’s greatest escapologist…

Discover everything there is to know about the world-famous escape artist Harry Houdini and his suitcase full of secrets, and pick up tips on how to fire your imagination and write your own stories.

Please bring your own notebook and pen to this event.

Join Dr Punam Krishan, NHS GP and media medic (BBC Morning Live), to find out all about your body! Discover the maze that is the brain, the power of your muscles and the magic behind the gut – and how they are all connected. You’ll be invited to submit your questions to Punam ahead of time, and go on a head-to-toe tour of the human body.

Celebrate big decisions and messy relationships with Dean Atta as he launches his new coming-of-age novel-in-verse I Can’t Even Think Straight. Kai and his best friend Matt made a promise to each other to stay in the closet. Matt isn’t ready to come out, but Kai wants nothing more than to write his own story. He decides it’s time to break his promise…

Dean Atta has been named as ‘one of poetry’s greatest modern voices’ (Gay Times). His first novel The Black Flamingo was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the CILIP Carnegie Medal, the Jhalak Prize and the YA Book Prize.

Join Lizzie Lomax, this year’s Hay Festival Illustrator in Residence, at the mural wall in the Family Garden to create a big river mural. The collage will be inspired by rivers, including the River Wye, and what animals, insects, birds and plants live under the water and above it. All materials are provided, just bring your imagination.

Lizzie Lomax creates through made and found textures, drawing and collage, to create playful, bright and accessible illustrations. She is also co-founder and co-editor of Seed Magazeen – a magazine for kids who care about the environment.

Join us for an exclusive guided tour led by one of our passionate volunteer guides during Hay Festival 2025. Our knowledgeable guides will take you on a captivating journey through the castle, revealing tales of medieval knights, royal intrigue and the castle’s remarkable restoration. As you explore the castle you’ll gain unique insights into the lives of those who once called this place home. The tour also offers breathtaking views of the surrounding countryside, providing the perfect backdrop for your visit.

Guided tours run daily at 11am and 2pm. Tour price includes entry into the Castle for a year including the current exhibition: 20th Century Welsh Artists.

Enjoy a twenty-minute open air performance between events. Julia Hammersley and Anna Lockett of harp duo Harper Gardeners play professionally in classical orchestras. They’re passionate about how nature and music can promote well-being, and they also work in therapeutic settings, using music to support people. As Harper Gardeners, they have transcribed traditional tunes from Scotland, Ireland and England into their own arrangements. They’re also delighted to share their own compositions.

After eight years of political reporting in the US, journalist and podcaster Jon Sopel moved back to the UK, only to find he’d returned to a very different country than the one he’d left almost a decade before.

In Strangeland, Sopel takes a personal look at what it means to be British in a post-Brexit world. In this event he discusses how disconcerted he felt with the country he’d come home to, whether the UK has dramatically changed or whether it’s just him, and how he drew a new portrait of his homeland in chaos.

Sopel is a host of hit podcast The News Agents. He previously worked as the BBC’s North America Editor.

Two history-for-broadcast writers discuss their knack for uncovering the human truths behind familiar narratives, and for turning neglected lives into compelling, authentic stories, with history consultant David Olusoga. They consider the significance of history, and how the past should – and should not – be presented.

In The Secret History of the Blitz, Joshua Levine reveals a time of extremes of experience and behaviour. People were pulling together, but looters also prowled the night to prey on bomb victims. Levine was historical consultant for Steve McQueen’s new film Blitz.

Hallie Rubenhold (author of Story of a Murder) also homes in on the pitch-black streets of wartime London, which offer cover to a murderer as terrible as Jack the Ripper. In her new series of podcast Bad Women, she tells why the Blackout Ripper’s murders were swept from view.

David Olusoga presented the BBC’s Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners and is author of Black and British. He is a historical consultant and executive producer on Hulu’s A Thousand Blows.

Kit de Waal is author of My Name is Leon, which was adapted for BBC Two, and The Trick to Time, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. In this event she discusses her writing career and her luminous new novel.

Two crusading journalists from Britain and Mexico discuss their work reporting on worldwide conflicts with New Yorker staff writer Jon Lee Anderson, who has reported extensively from Latin America.

Iraqi-born Hind Hassan has broadcast for Al Jazeera from the West Bank, Lebanon and Washington DC, and is an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, covering conflicts and humanitarian crises. Mexican reporter Marcela Turati focuses on human rights, the impact of drug violence and its victims. She is a reporter for Proceso magazine and co-founder of the network Periodistas de a Pie (Journalists on Foot), dedicated to training journalists and defending freedom of expression.

This event is part of the Hay Festival and British Council’s Equity Series that pairs authors from the UK and around the world, and began with a conversation at Hay Festival Querétaro 2024.

Award-winning scientist and philosopher Cordelia Fine provides a sharp and clear-eyed analysis of how the gendered division of labour is built and why it persists.

The effects of gendered division is both cause and consequence of men’s greater status and power, and affects not just our workplaces, but contributes to poverty, undermining health, putting pressure on family life and preserving females’ second-class status, causing real harm and injustice for both sexes.

Fine, whose work analyses biological explanations of behavioural sex differences and workplace gender inequalities, explores the effects of gender-related attitudes and biases on judgements, decision-making and workplace gender equality.

In this pen-to-portrait workshop with author and illustrator Siôn Tomos Owen, you’ll explore creating a character by developing their personal history. Learn how to create the story of their life through exploring the events, hobbies and people in their lives. Finally, see how you can use these stories to describe how they look as an illustration.

An opportunity to get crafting! Activities differ every day, including everything from print-making to junk modelling with recycled materials. Get messy and creative in these interactive sessions delivered by artists and discover that your imagination is the only 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.

Enjoy a twenty-minute open air performance between events. Julia Hammersley and Anna Lockett of harp duo Harper Gardeners play professionally in classical orchestras. They’re passionate about how nature and music can promote well-being, and they also work in therapeutic settings, using music to support people. As Harper Gardeners, they have transcribed traditional tunes from Scotland, Ireland and England into their own arrangements. They’re also delighted to share their own compositions.

Join Robert Harris, pre-eminent writer of page-turning thrillers – most recently Precipice – as he casts a retrospective eye over his work on page and screen and shares insights into his current projects.

Nine of Harris’s bestsellers have been adapted for cinema and television, from Fatherland to Enigma and Archangel. For The Ghost Writer and An Officer and a Spy, Harris co-wrote the screenplays with director Roman Polanski. Most recently, his 2016 novel Conclave was adapted for cinema – the film came out to acclaim in 2024, starring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci.

Exploring the relationship between author, book and screen, Harris reveals the high points and the pitfalls of adapting books for film.

Furniture restorer Will Kirk and woodworker Callum Robinson celebrate the joys of working with wood and finding hope in longevity in a culture where everything seems easily disposable.

Kirk, who has appeared on The Repair Shop since 2017, is author of Restore, a guide to the principles of woodworking, restoration and maintaining items around your home. Robinson grew up as the son of a Master Woodworker, but lost touch with his roots when he set up his own business and began to chase more commercial projects. In Ingrained, he recounts how he returned to the workshop and to wood, handcrafting furniture and reconnecting with his craft.

They discuss how woodworking brings us closer to nature, the benefits of slowing down, and why working with our hands in the modern age can offer us peace.

How might AI change and supercharge medical advancement? And what does it mean for our healthcare? Kamran Abbasi, editor of the British Medical Journal, talks to lawyer Susie Alegre and doctor Rachel Clarke about how AI could solve the problem of disease and making vaccines, the role ChatGPT and robots could play in medical care, and how to successfully navigate the path between big business and personal health.

Abbasi is a doctor, journalist, editor and broadcaster. Alegre is a leading international human rights lawyer who has worked for NGOs including Amnesty International, and is author of Human Rights, Robot Wrongs. Clarke is a palliative care doctor and author of Dear Life, shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and chosen as a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.

Sarah Harman’s debut novel won the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize in 2023. Harman is a recovering journalist with over a decade of experience reporting on major breaking news around the world. She discusses her course change into fiction with Kiran Millwood-Hargrave, award-winning author of The Girl of Ink & Stars and Leila and the Blue Fox.

All the Other Mothers Hate Me is a witty novel about fitting in and starting over. Florence knows all about failure. After a dismal end to her 2000s girlband career, she’s moping around West London, single, broke and unfulfilled. The only things she’s proud of are her increasingly elaborate nail art choices – and her ten-year-old son, Dylan. But when Alfie, Dylan’s bitter class rival and the child heir to a frozen foods empire, mysteriously vanishes on a school trip, Dylan becomes a prime suspect, and Florence has to get her act together…

From celebrated filmmaker Mati Diop (Atlantics), Dahomey is a poetic and immersive work of art that delves into real perspectives on far-reaching issues surrounding appropriation, self-determination and restitution. Set in November 2021, the documentary charts 26 royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey that are due to leave Paris and return to their country of origin: the present-day Republic of Benin.

Using multiple perspectives Diop questions how these artifacts should be received in a country that has reinvented itself in their absence. Winner of the coveted Golden Bear prize at the 2024 Berlinale, Dahomey is an affecting though altogether singular conversation piece that is as spellbinding as it is essential.

“Invigorating and enlivening… An interrogative reverie about colonialism, culture, the past and the present” – The Guardian

In 1995, the London Review of Books ran the cover line ‘Was Jane Austen gay?’ Many people were horrified, including Terry Castle, the literary critic whose essay about Austen’s letters to her sister, Cassandra, led to the uproar. Castle hadn’t actually claimed this, but had examined ‘the primitive adhesiveness – and underlying eros – of the sister-sister bond’.

To mark Austen’s 250th birthday, the LRB returns to Castle’s essay in the latest of the magazine’s series of ‘live essays’. Actors will read from Castle’s piece and the texts it interrogates – Austen’s letters, novels, her nephew’s family memoir, her lesbian contemporary Anne Lister’s diaries – and consider the backlash.

A live musical counterpoint accompanies the readings, arranged by Isobel Waller-Bridge, whose works include the score for the 2020 film version of Emma starring Anya Taylor-Joy.

Save the date… for a killer wedding! Award-nominated BookTokkers Busayo Matuluko and Kemi Ayorinde bring the vibe, discussing Busayo’s slick and addictive mystery thriller ’Til Death celebrating the nuances and dramas of Nigerian family and culture. Busayo will break down all the elements of a gripping mystery as they guide you through building the perfect ‘whodunnit’. Bring your best plot twists and red herrings, and join in the conversation.

In ’Til Death, true-crime-obsessed Lara is heading to Lagos for her cousin Dérin’s wedding. It’s going to be a holiday filled with glitzy dress-fittings and glamorous parties. But everything isn’t perfect in Dérin’s world. Lara puts her sleuthing knowledge to work – and soon she’s uncovering a web of secrets and malicious crimes…

Please bring your own notebook and pen to this event.

The Queen of Historical Fiction, Emma Carroll (The Houdini Inheritance, Letters From the Lighthouse and many more) shares tips on how to fire your imagination in this fun, interactive workshop masterclass, searching out potential ideas and inspirations to encourage you to keep writing.

Please bring your own notebook and pen to this event.