Hay Festival 2014

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.

Return to the world of Greek myth with the ‘rock star mythologist’, as she examines the role of the goddesses. From Athene, who sprang fully formed from her father’s head, to Artemis, goddess of hunting and protector of young girls (apart from those she decides she wants as a sacrifice), through to Zeus’ long-suffering wife Hera, Haynes takes us on a rapid-fire journey through the power and might of the ancient goddesses who are as revered as their male counterparts.

Haynes is a writer and broadcaster. Her books include A Thousand Ships, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize. She has written and presented seven series of the BBC Radio 4 show Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics.

George Alagiah was one of the BBC’s most respected journalists. As a proud immigrant, he could see the world from the perspective of the Global South. He was a regular attendee of Hay Festival, and we honour him in this memorial lecture by exploring themes that were close to his heart.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hisham Matar delves into the world of Naguib Mahfouz, the first Arab winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and one of the Arab world’s best-known writers. Matar translated and wrote the intro to Mahfouz’s I Found Myself: Last Dreams, a surreal record of his dreams in his final years after an assassination attempt led him to become a recluse.

Diana Matar, the artist whose photographs illustrate the book, shares some of the images which, alongside Hisham Matar’s translation, combine to build a lush and complex picture of Mahfouz’ subconscious.

A BBC Radio 3 lunchtime concert series marking the 150th anniversary of Maurice Ravel’s birth. This first of three recitals recorded for broadcast explores the music of Ravel and others. Danny Driver (piano) performs a programme including Ravel, Debussy and Fauré.

Programme:

Claude Debussy Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir

Thomas Adès Darknesse Visible

Gabriel Fauré Barcarolle No 4 in A flat

Gabriela Lena Frank Nocturnoe Nazeueño

Maurice Ravel Gaspard de la Nuit

Recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Please arrive in good time.

Buckle in for a mind-blowing science ride with TikTok superstar Big Manny and children’s TV presenter Maddie Moate. Big Manny reveals all about physics, from sound waves to circuits and mad magnetism to fantastic friction. Want to bend water or build an electroscope? He’s your man. Maddie Moate takes a look inside everyday objects and marvellous machines to see how they work, from microwaves to smart speakers to supermarket checkouts, and explains why roundabouts make you dizzy!

Big Manny is a science-first content creator with a master’s degree in biomedical science. He has a combined following of 2.9 million on TikTok and Instagram. His latest book is Science is Lit: Awesome Electricity and Mad Magnets.

Maddie Moate is a BAFTA-winning presenter, star of CBeebies’ Do You Know? and non-fiction children’s author. Her new book is How Does it Work? Explore Machines and Objects, from Fridges to Fire Engines!

Have you ever wondered where animals live in nature? Author and illustrator Emma Carlisle will lead a gentle storytelling session based on her beautiful book A Home is a Nest, exploring homes and family in nature, from the cosiness of winter dens to the arrival of spring and bird’s first flight. She’ll show you how to draw your favourite woodland creatures, and there’ll be a chance for you to ask Emma questions and get your book signed.

Emma Carlisle is a highly acclaimed illustrator, artist and lecturer in Children’s Illustration at the University of Plymouth. Her book What Do You See When You Look at a Tree? was shortlisted for the 2022 Waterstones Children’s Prize.

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. Singing is fun with Hay Community Choir – good for mental health, feeling you’re part of a whole. Come along and have a listen as the Choir share their joy in music.

Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist Mona Chalabi delivers our inaugural John Caldon memorial lecture, remembering the investment banker, TV innovator and inspirational entrepreneur, who died in 2021.

Chalabi argues that journalists need to think differently about language – so that readers don’t feel hopeless in the face of wars, colonialism, the climate crisis and Nazi salutes in 2025. If we want to resist war and injustice, we need to resist the idea that resistance is futile.

From the 2003 Iraq War – when millions marched against going to war – to the invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing occupation of Palestine, we see how narratives of ‘freedom’ and ‘security’ continue to be weaponised to justify war and repression. The same playbook of media manipulation, selective outrage and suppression of dissent is at work. The sense of powerlessness many felt in 2003 persists, deepening into a broader crisis of defeatism. Maybe the issue isn’t just ‘manufacturing consent’ but rather manufacturing despair.

“I feel like there’s a leopard in my house, locked in a room. I’ve contacted the leopard authorities and they assure me they are used to dealing with leopards like this, and they have a plan for removing the leopard. It will take a while, though, and once in a while I can hear it growl. And that’s all very reassuring. Even so, several times a day I think to myself: ‘Hang on, there’s a leopard in my house.’”

One morning, while shaving, comedian Mark Steel noticed that one side of his neck seemed larger than the other. After a whistlestop tour of assorted medical professionals, a consultant delivered the ominous words that would define the next months of his life: “I’m afraid it’s not good news, Mr Steel.” And so began a journey into the heart of the NHS, as he embarked on the long and uncertain road to cancer recovery via a range of mildly tortuous and entirely miraculous treatments. What, if anything, might he learn about himself – and our capacity for coping with life when times get tough – as he becomes part of a club that one in two British people will ultimately join?

Head into the dark with Chris Chibnall and Ragnar Jónasson, as they introduce their new noir novels.

Chibnall, the creator of Broadchurch and showrunner of Doctor Who, makes his crime fiction debut with Death at the White Hart, about a detective who moves back to Dorset. There, she finds a grisly crime scene in the picturesque village of Fleetcombe. Chibnall is a Bafta, Royal Television Society, Broadcasting Press Guild and Peabody award-winning screenwriter, executive producer and playwright.

Jónasson’s The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer sees young detective Helgi investigating the case of Elín S Jónsdóttir, a bestselling crime author who has gone missing, and left no clues about her disappearance. Jónasson is the award-winning Icelandic author of the international bestselling Hulda series and the Dark Iceland series. He is also co-founder and co-chair of the literary festival Iceland Noir, held in Reykjavík.

For the second year running BBC Radio 4’s book lovers’ delight A Good Read comes to Hay Festival.

Harriett Gilbert is joined by two guests including broadcaster and comedian Kiri Pritchard-McLean choosing their favourite books to discuss with each other and you the audience. Guests in the last year on the show include Irvine Welsh and Andrew O’Hagan, Rachel Parris, Elif Shafak, Ian Rankin and Amy Liptrot.

If you’re a keen detective in the making, join the award-winning comedian and meet Montgomery Bonbon, the world’s finest detective. Learn how to walk, talk and detect like a sleuth in this event for ages 7–11 – anyone over 11 should get the permission of a child before booking!

Alasdair Beckett-King studied at the London Film School, and since then he has performed critically lauded solo shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, written for BBC Radio, appeared on comedy panel shows such as Mock the Week, co-written an award-winning video game and created numerous viral sketches for social media, including an interactive whodunnit.

Where do you get started in comedy, as a writer, creator or performer? And what do you do when the industry wants you to be one thing, but your best work is spread across disciplines? Rachel Parris is a Bafta-nominated comedian and writer (The Mash Report, Live at the Apollo, Have I Got News For You) with experience of writing stand-up, radio comedy, TV satire and songs, as well as fiction and non-fiction books. She’ll discuss carving out your own unique path in a complicated and changing industry. Bring your own questions!

One of a 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.

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.

We live in a world where uncertainty is inevitable. How should we deal with what we don’t know? And what role do chance, luck and coincidence play in our lives? Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter dissects data in order to understand risks and assess the chances of what might happen in the future. His The Art of Uncertainty: How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck guides us to live calmly with risk and uncertainty.

Join him at the Festival to learn how we can all do this better. He’ll take us through the principles of probability, suggesting that it can help us think more analytically about everything from medical advice to pandemics and climate change forecasts. He’ll explore how we can update our beliefs about the future in the face of constantly changing experience. We’ll also hear why roughly 40% of football results come down to luck rather than talent, and why we can be so confident that two properly shuffled packs of cards have never, ever been in the exact same order.

Family, friendships and love are the centre of new books by Holly Bourne (author of the Spinster Club series) and Lorraine Kelly (ITV’s Lorraine), and the two authors join forces to examine our love for fictional family dramas.

Bourne’s new novel So Thrilled for You is about four friends reunited at a baby shower on a sweltering hot summer day. When someone starts a fire at the house, everyone’s a suspect and the group’s relationship is changed forever.

Kelly’s The Island Swimmer follows Evie, who returns to Orkney after her father falls desperately ill. As she clears out her father’s neglected house to prepare it for sale, she is drawn to a group of cold-water swimmers led by her old friend Freya, who find calmness beneath the waves.

Until now, poet Gwyneth Lewis has kept the story of her painful upbringing at the hands of a coercive and controlling mother to herself. In her memoir Nightshade Mother, the inaugural National Poet of Wales shares her story through revisiting her childhood diaries and looking back on her younger years.

Lewis was brought up Welsh-speaking in Cardiff. She was Wales’s first National Poet and composed the six-foot-high words on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre. Her non-fiction books are Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression and Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage. Her tenth book of poetry, First Rain in Paradise, is out in March 2025. In 2023, Lewis was made an MBE for services to literature and mental health.
Lewis talks to broadcaster and presenter of A Good Read, Harriett Gilbert.

Nussaibah Younis discusses her darkly comic coming-of-age novel about a professor who accepts a job rehabilitating ISIS women in Iraq. In Fundamentally Nadia meets Sara, a precocious and sweary East Londoner who joined ISIS at just 15. When Sara confesses a secret, Nadia is forced to make a difficult choice.

Younis talks to broadcaster, journalist and filmmaker Bidisha about exploring love, family, religion and radicalism through comedy, writing, and what it’s like to be a first-time author.

Dr Nussaibah Younis is a peace-building practitioner and a globally recognised expert on contemporary Iraq. She was a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC, where she directed the Future of Iraq Task Force and offered strategic advice to US government agencies on Iraq policy. Bidisha is a critic and columnist for the Guardian and Observer and broadcasts for BBC TV and radio, ITN, CNN and Sky News.

A highly anticipated return to fiction feature filmmaking from Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire), Perfect Days takes the writer-director to Tokyo to tell a story celebrating the hidden joys and minutiae of Japanese culture.

Winner of the Best Actor award at Cannes 2023, Koji Yakusho (Babel, 13 Assassins) stars as Hirayama, a contemplative middle-aged man who lives a life of modesty and serenity, spending his days balancing his job as a dutiful caretaker of Tokyo’s numerous public toilets with his passion for music, literature and photography. As we join him on his structured daily routine, a series of unexpected encounters gradually begin to reveal a hidden past that lies behind his otherwise content and harmonious life.

Combining a refreshingly unstereotypical depiction of the Japanese capital with a soundtrack comprised of iconic hits from the ’60s and ’80s, this is a subtle, shimmering and ultimately life-affirming reflection on finding beauty in the everyday world around us. The film was nominated for the Best International Film award at the 96th Academy Awards.

“A humane, hopeful embrace of everyday blessings” – Variety

Join Lucy Worsley and the team from the hit BBC Radio 4 series Lady Killers for a rip-roaring exploration of murder by the book. In conversation with historian Professor Rosalind Crone and guest, Lucy brings you infamous murderesses from history and separates fact from fiction. This is where true crime meets literature, with a twist.

The activist and bestselling feminist writer introduces the second instalment in her epic Arthurian fantasy series. Sisters of Fire and Fury is a reimagining of the tales of the Arthurian Round Table through a feminist lens. Discover the Sisterhood of Silk Knights who live in a world of ancient feuds and glorious battles and who are determined to protect their community and right the wrongs of men.

Laura will share her original inspiration, her action-packed research at Knight school and why she hopes this novel will bring joy to feminists young and old. The founder of the Everyday Sexism Project has made waves in YA fiction with her Sisters of Sword and Shadow series, combining mythic elements with contemporary feminist themes.

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.

Dairy-free and gluten-free options available.

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.

Dairy-free and gluten-free options available.

Political sketch writer John Crace introduces his satirical memoir – written from the viewpoint of his beloved dog Herbie. Herbie is a Westminster veteran, with stories to share about all the prime ministers (and there are many of them) of the last decade.

Crace discusses writing Taking the Lead, and the state of our politics today. He has been the Guardian’s political sketch writer for the last ten years and has written books on everything from cricket, football and TV to literature, politics and himself. He talks to comedian Marcus Brigstocke.

A panel of experts assesses whether our current food system is fit for purpose, both now and in a changing world in which we may have to cope with a series of shocks and challenges.

Campaigner Minette Batters, academic Tim Lang, food grower Claire Ratinon and farmer James Rebanks tell us what we should be worrying about when it comes to food, and what solutions to problems of sustainability, social justice, public health and food security look like.

Batters is former president of the National Farmers’ Union, and was the first woman to hold the post. Lang is Emeritus Professor of Food Policy at City University London's Centre for Food Policy, and author of Atlas of Food. Ratinon is an organic food grower and writer, author of Unearthed: On Race and Roots and How the Soil Taught Me I Belong. Rebanks is a farmer based in the Lake District, author of The Shepherd's Life.

Christine Rosen draws on decades of research to build her philosophical defence of what makes us human, and makes an urgent call to reclaim our humanity in a digital world.

Human experiences are disappearing. Social media, gaming and dating apps have usurped in-person interaction. With headphones in and eyes trained on our phones, even boredom has been obliterated. But when we embrace this mediated life and conform to the demands of the machine, we risk becoming disconnected and machine-like ourselves.

There is another way – we must become more critical, mindful users of technology, and more discerning of how it uses us. We must return to the real world, while we still can. Rosen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, will show us how.

French novelist Mathias Énard has won many international awards including the Prix Goncourt for his novels Zone, Street of Thieves and Compass. He talks to writer and Guardian literary critic Chris Power about his latest novel The Deserters, which vividly lays bare the devastations of war.

Fleeing a nameless war, an unknown soldier emerges from deep within the Mediterranean scrubland, dirty and exhausted. A chance meeting forces him to rethink his journey, and the price he puts on a life.

Aboard a small cruise ship near Berlin, a conference of scientists pays homage to the late East German mathematician Paul Heudeber, a Buchenwald survivor and steadfast antifascist who remained loyal to his side of the Berlin Wall despite the collapse of the Communist utopia, unaware that a new era of violence is about to descend.

Out of the tension between these narratives, everything that is at stake in times of conflict comes to light: commitment and betrayal, loyalty and lucidity, hope and survival.

How do you get to the heart of the story you’re trying to tell? Experienced author Emma Jane Unsworth shares insights on structure, style and voice, with hands-on writing exercises to help you find your story.

Unsworth is an award-winning novelist and screenwriter, author of Animals, Adults and, most recently, Slags). Animals was adapted into a film, for which Unsworth wrote the screenplay.

Arvon is the UK’s leading creative writing charity. Founded in 1968, it is known for its diverse creative writing courses and events led by leading authors. An online programme, ‘Arvon at Home’ offers virtual writing weeks, writing days, masterclasses and readings. Residential five-day courses are set in historic writing houses in inspiring countryside locations. Courses cover a range of genres including fiction, poetry, theatre, YA, creative non-fiction and more.

Henry Normal presents the 12th instalment of his acclaimed BBC Radio 4 series. He tackles subjects so big only radio can contain them.

Henry is an award-winning writer, producer and poet. He co-wrote TV programmes including The Royle Family, The Mrs Merton Show and Paul Calf, and produced the Oscar-nominated Philomena, Gavin and Stacey and Alan Partridge.

How are we different from other animals? Is there such a thing as a soul? Just two of the unanswerable questions he’ll be unanswering once and for all.