Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye

An evening with the legendary singer, guitarist and songwriter – Ireland's great folk hero and one of the world's most accomplished entertainers. His latest album is Listen (April 2009).

We are delighted to launch the first book in seven years from one of the world's great humourists.

It struck Bill Bryson one day that we devote a lot more time to the Wars of the Roses or the Normandy Landings than considering what most of history really consists of: centuries upon centuries of people quietly going about their daily business – eating, sleeping, having sex, endeavouring to be amused. So he started a journey around his house, an old rectory in Norfolk, wandering from room to room considering how the ordinary things in life came to be. Along the way he allowed himself delightful digressions on the history of everything from architecture to epidemics, from food preservation to the discovery of electricity, and from crinolines to toilets. And to his dismay, he also encountered a terrifying variety of dangers to our health and happiness. Where the prizewinning A Short History of Nearly Everything was a sweeping survey of Earth, the universe and everything, At Home is an inwards look at all human life through a domestic telescope. Because, as Bryson says, our homes aren't refuges from history. They are where history begins and ends.

In his first visit to Hay, the Booker Prize winning novelist discusses the final part of his Henry Smart trilogy, which maps C20th Ireland through A Star Called Henry, Oh, Play That Thing and now The Dead Republic.

The legendary Cuban jazz ensemble play Hay.

A Village Lost and Found presents an exquisite set of stereo photographs showing the life of a single Oxfordshire village 150 years ago. These beautifully reproduced photographs by pioneering stereographer TR Williams show a rural idyll which was fast disappearing. Presented by the authors, lifelong stereograph enthusiast and world renowned musician Brian May and photographic historian and conservator Elena Vidal.

The 2009 winner of the Man Booker Prize discusses her fictional portrait of Thomas Cromwell.

'Lock Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,' says Thomas More, 'and when you come back that night he'll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks' tongues, and all the gaolers will owe him money.'

England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages.

From one of our finest living writers, Wolf Hall is that very rare thing: a truly great English novel, one that explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion and suffering and courage.

The creator of His Dark Materials discusses his new novel The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ with Peter Florence.

In this inaugural London Library Dialogue the playwright and screenwriter makes his first visit to Hay to discuss his work with Peter Florence. His plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Jumpers, The Real Thing, Night and Day, Arcadia and Rock 'n' Roll. Screen work includes Professional Foul, Brazil, Empire of the Sun, Shakespeare in Love and The Bourne Ultimatum.