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The Private Life of the Brain
Susan Greenfield
The most intriguing function of the human brain is to generate an inner world of feeling: emotions. Greenfield shows how both positive and negative emotions are with us all the time, but varying in degree. At the extreme she suggests that these entail an abrogation of a sense of self, the individual mind. She looks at what might actually be happening in the brain when you 'lose your mind', 'blow your mind' or 'let yourself go'.
Hay Festival 2000, Sunday 28 May 2000, 2.10pm
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Christopher Hitchens talks to Colin MacCabe
The iconoclastic journalist talks about the end of political correctness and ranges around sexual politics. Hitchens is the author of the savage and brilliant portrait of Bill Clinton, No-one Left to Lie to and the radical The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice. He is a feature writer for Vanity Fair and Washington correspondent of the London Evening Standard. Having recently appeared on the fly leaf of The Mating Season, as introducer, alongside the name of the author, PG Wodehouse, he may die happy. He talks to Colin MacCabe.
Hay Festival 2000, Monday 29 May 2000, 4pm
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Norman Mailer
An interview with one of the world's greatest living writers, author of The Naked and the Dead, Barbary Shore, The Executioner's Song, Harlot's Ghost, Ancient Evenings, The Time of Our Time, Oswald's Tale and The Gospel According to the Son. 'Mailer stands toe-to-toe with the heavyweights of literature, trading tale for tale.' He talks to Dai Smith.
Hay Festival 2000, Saturday 3 June 2000, 8pm
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Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600 - 1850
Linda Colley talks to Christopher Hitchens
The historian discusses her stories of the flipside if Imperialisim: the soldiers and settlers seized in India and North America, the men and women captured from Devon and Cornwall by Moroccan slavers, or taken at sea by Barbarycorsairs. She explores the parallels with empire today, and the West's relationship with Islam.
Hay Festival 2003, Sunday 25 May 2003, 11am
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Eric Hobsbawm talks to Christopher Hitchens
The great historian discusses his memoir Interesting Times: A Tewnieth Century Life. 'Autobiography does not come much more sumptuous than this. Eric Hobsbawm writes with elegant, witty precision. His memory - not just for people and dates, but looks and sounds and the feel of things - is prodigious.' (The Observer)
Hay Festival 2003, Sunday 25 May 2003, 1pm
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Christopher Hitchens
Late Night Hitch
The Christopher Hitchens stand-up gig. Lenny Bruce meets Wodehouse. Bullies beware.
Hay Festival 2003, Sunday 25 May 2003, 10pm
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Jon Snow talks to Rosie Boycott
The Channel 4 News anchor and author of Shooting History discusses broadcast news, conflict and the New World Disorder with Rosie Boycott.
London Events 2004, Tuesday 12 October, 5pm
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John Pilger
Tell Me No Lies
My Lai, Watergate, Hiroshima and Palestine. The heroic war correspondent and film-maker has collected the greatest investigative reporting of the last sixty years exposing the hidden agendas of oppressive regimes in Tell Me No Lies. He talks to Peter Florence.
London Events 2004, Tuesday 12 October, 6pm
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Anna Politkovskaya
Putin's Russia
A devastating appraisal by the country's leading radical journalist, admired for her fearless reporting on human rights issues, especially the wars in Chechnya. In Russian with simultaneous translation.
Hay Festival 2005, Saturday 28 May 2005, 4pm
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Stephen Fry, Christopher Hitchens and guests
The Blasphemy Debate
Joan Bakewell chairs a debate on the boundaries of freedom of speech, religious tolerance, multiculturalism and orthodoxy.
Hay Festival 2005, Saturday 28 May 2005, 9.50pm
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Roberto Fontanarosa
Roberto Fontanarosa speaks at Hay Festival Cartagena 2006.
Please note: This talk is conducted entirely in Spanish.Cartagena 2006, Thursday 26 January, 2pm
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Orson Welles – Hello Americans
Simon Callow
The actor introduces the second volume of his biography taking the American wunderkind through the career-disaster years from Citizen Kane to Macbeth.
Hay Festival 2006, Saturday 27 May 2006, 9.45am
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First Iraq, Next Iran?
Simon Jenkins
The Guardian's political columnist discusses the US strategy in the Middle East.
Hay Festival 2006, Saturday 27 May 2006, 10am
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George Saunders talks to Zadie Smith
Smith (White Teeth, On Beauty) in conversation with the American short story master of blackest comedy, and author of Pastoralia.
Hay Festival 2006, Saturday 27 May 2006, 11.30am
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One-stop Literary Festival
Craig Brown, Eleanor Bron, and imaginary friends
'If there were a Parodist Laureate, Craig Brown would step up unchallenged to the title' – The Observer. In this, his own one-stop literary festival, Brown conjures up forgotten works by, among many others, WG Sebald, Graham Greene, Jeanette Winterson, Martin Amis and Jilly Cooper. 'We love Craig Brown!' – Sir Elton John.
Hay Festival 2006, Saturday 27 May 2006, 11.30am
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Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore?
Bettany Hughes
The historical quest for the most desired and destructive woman that myth has ever known.
Hay Festival 2006, Saturday 27 May 2006, 2.30pm
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The Greenpeace Debate
Clare Short MP and Michael Codner, Director Military Service, RUSI
Is there a rationale for continuing Britain's nuclear force in the twenty-first century? Chaired by Stephen Tindale.
Hay Festival 2006, Saturday 27 May 2006, 2.30pm
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Reza Aslan
No God But God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam
Can an Islamic state be founded on democratic values? Aslan believes we are now living in the era of 'the Islamic Reformation'. He examines the roots of this reformation and the future of the Islamic faith.
Hay Festival 2006, Saturday 27 May 2006, 4pm
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Barbarians
Terry Jones
This isn't the imperial version of the Caesars' conquests, this is the story of Roman history as seen by the Britons, Gauls, Germans, Hellenes, Persians and Africans. And suddenly the Romans don't look at all familiar...
Hay Festival 2006, Saturday 27 May 2006, 4pm
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Cars Are Killing The Planet
The Economist Debate
Channel 4 News' Jon Snow chairs as freedom, practicality and pleasure are set against pollution, asthma, global warming and terrifying geopolitics. Will post-petrol tech save the day? Speakers include Jeremy Leggett of SolarCentury, Vijay Vaitheeswaran of The Economist and Edmund King, Executive Director, RAC Foundation.
Hay Festival 2006, Saturday 27 May 2006, 5.30pm
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