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Download 2013 Programme
History

Welcome to our programme

box office: 01497 822 629

The Hay Festival 2013 programme is now on sale to Friends for exclusive booking until midnight on Friday 29 March.

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History

Click here to see a list of sold out events

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Owen Sheers and Friends

The Two Worlds of Charlie F

Event 21 • • Venue: Digital Stage

In January this year 15 wounded soldiers took to the West End stage in The Two Worlds of Charlie F, a play written by Owen Sheers based on their experiences of serving, injury and recovery. Members of the cast and the playwright talk to Alan Yentob.
This event has taken place

Peter Stead, Richard Marsden and Guto Harri talk to Huw Bowen

Heroes and Villains 1 – History

Event 35 • • Venue: Digital Stage

In this first of six conversations about Heroes and Villains the team ask does Welsh history need its heroes and villains? If so, who are they and why do they matter?
 
In association with The Western Mail
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Wade Davis

Into the Silence

Event 42 • • Venue: Llwyfan Cymru – Wales Stage

The adventurer explores the story and significance of the 1924 Himalayan expedition in his majestic The First World War, Mallory and Mount Everest.
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Orlando Figes

Just Send me Word

Event 52 • • Venue: Llwyfan Cymru – Wales Stage

The letters of two young Muscovites in Stalin’s Soviet Union tell A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag.
This event has taken place

The Hamlin Lecture 2012 - Harry Belafonte talks to David Lammy

My Song - An American Life

Event 62 • • Venue: Barclays Pavilion

The actor, singer and Civil Rights hero, who acted as a conduit between Martin Luther King and the Kennedys, launches his memoir.
 
He began as an actor—and has always thought of himself as such—but was quickly spotted in a musical, began a tentative nightclub career, and soon was on a meteoric rise to become one of the world’s most popular singers. Belafonte was never content to simply be an entertainer, however. Even at enormous personal cost, he could not shy away from activism. At first it was a question of personal dignity: breaking down racial barriers that had never been broken before, achieving an enduring popularity with both white and black audiences. Then his activism broadened to a lifelong, passionate involvement at the heart of the civil rights movement and countless other political and social causes. The sections on the rise of the civil rights movement are perhaps the most moving in the book: his close friendship with Martin Luther King, Jr.; his role as a conduit between Dr. King and the Kennedys; his up-close involvement with the demonstrations and awareness of the hatred and potential violence around him; his devastation at Dr. King’s death and his continuing fight for what he believes is right.
 
But My Song is far more than the history of a movement. It is a very personal look at the people in that movement and the world in which Belafonte has long moved. He has befriended many beloved and important figures in both entertainment and politics—Paul Robeson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Sidney Poitier, John F. Kennedy, Marlon Brando, Robert Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, Tony Bennett, Bill Clinton—and writes about them with the same exceptional candor with which he reveals himself on every page. This is a book that pulls no punches, and turns both a loving and critical eye on our country’s cultural past.
This event has taken place

Ben Curtis, Alun Withey and Tyrone O’Sullivan join Huw Bowen

Heroes and Villains 2 – The Unsung

Event 91 • • Venue: Digital Stage

Miners, smelters, teachers, and Mams have been the quiet unsung heroes of Welsh history. But there have been hidden villains as well – disease, poverty, inferiority, and hypocrisy. Are these the real heroes and villains of Welsh History?
 
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Simon Singh

Alan Turing and Enigma

Event 537 • • Venue: Llwyfan Cymru – Wales Stage

The science writer celebrates the centenary of the genius mathematician and code-breaker, who deciphered the German naval cables in WWII, and demonstrates the encryption techniques on his own, original Enigma Machine.
This event has taken place

Niklas Frank talks to Philippe Sands

In The Shadow of the Reich

Event 94 • • Venue: Big Tent

A remarkable interview with the writer whose father, Hitler’s lawyer, Hans Frank, was hanged at Nuremberg.
 
This event has taken place

Tom Asbridge

The Crusades - The Siege of Acre 1189-1191

Event 129 • • Venue: Sky Arts Studio

The historian tells the story of the key turning-point of the Third Crusade, and the first clash of Saladin and Richard the Lionheart.
This event has taken place

Simon Singh

Alan Turing and Enigma

Event 136 • • Venue: Big Tent

The science writer celebrates the centenary of the genius mathematician and code-breaker, who deciphered the German naval cables in WWII, and demonstrates the encryption techniques on his own, original Enigma Machine.
This event has taken place

Courtney Pine Band

Europa

Event 138 • • Venue: Llwyfan Cymru – Wales Stage

The inspiring jazz hero draws back in time to Gregorian Chant, Scandinavian, Celtic, Spanish, Hungarian, Mediterranean melodies and rhythms that show like a geographical map, the scope, width and growth of the Continent. Robert Fordjour - Drums, Darren Taylor - Double Bass, Zoe Rahman - Acoustic Piano, Cameron Pierre - Mandolin and Acoustic Guitar, Courtney Pine - Bass Clarinet.
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Meriel Larken talks to Revel Guest

The Ship, The Lady and The Lake

Event 144 • • Venue: Big Tent

The recovery and restoration of the steamboat Yavari, built on the Thames 150 years ago, then dismantled and carried in thousands of pieces 12,500 ft up the Andes to Lake Titicaca - where she was used by traders until 1985.
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Chris Williams and Robin Barlow join Huw Bowen

Heroes and Villains 3 – Soldiers

Event 145 • • Venue: Digital Stage

Waterloo, Rorke’s Drift, Mametz Wood, and the Falklands have all provided Wales with its military heroes. But what makes a Welsh military hero, and who are the villains of the piece?
 
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Jon Gower in conversation with Mary-Ann Constantine, Phil George and David Anderson

The Story of Wales

Event 148 • • Venue: Sky Arts Studio

How the nation has been formed by the land, and how the country has connected with the world. Jon Gower chairs a discussion spanning 30,000 years with an historian, a TV programme maker and the Director of The National Museum of Wales.
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Paul Preston

The LSE Lecture: The Spanish Holocaust - Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain

Event 176 • • Venue: Llwyfan Cymru – Wales Stage

The world’s foremost historian of C20th Spain charts how and why Franco and his supporters set out to eliminate all ‘those who do not think as we do’ – some 200,000 innocent men, women and children across Spain.
 
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Chris Parry talks to Guto Harri

Down South

Event 185 • • Venue: Starlight Stage

Fascinating and deeply alarming, Down South: A Falklands War Diary is an intimate story of heroism, extreme weather and chaos.
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Dan Jones

The Plantagenets

Event 198 • • Venue: Llwyfan Cymru – Wales Stage

The historian introduces his tales of eight generations of the greatest and worst kings and queens this country has ever seen – from the White Ship to the Lionheart, bad King John to the Black Prince and John of Gaunt. This is the dynasty that invented England as we still know it today.
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Michael Tavinor

Saints and Sinners of the Marches

Event 199 • • Venue: Sky Arts Studio

The Dean of Hereford pitches Ethelbert, Dubricius, Clodock against Herbert Armstrong, Roger Mortimer, Hugh Depenser and a fantastic cast of both and in-betweens.
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Dai Smith, Madeleine Gray, Alan Edmunds and Ceri Gould join Huw Bowen

Welsh Heroes and Villains 3 – Culture

Event 202 • • Venue: Digital Stage

Bards, poets, writers, actors, and musicians populate Welsh history to an extraordinary degree. So too do the icons of modern popular culture from the Manic Street Preachers to Gavin and Stacey. Why has Wales been so blessed with creative talent? And what is distinctively Welsh about our cultural heroes?
 
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Rebecca Stott

Darwin’s Ghosts: In Search of the First Evolutionists

Event 205 • • Venue: Big Tent

The story of Darwin’s many predecessors back to Leonardo and Aristotle, who advanced theories of evolution in times when it was exceptionally dangerous to do so.
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ABOUT US

hay festival

Hay Festival runs for ten days with a packed programme of debates and conversations with poets and scientists, novelists and historians, artists and gardeners, comedians and musicians, film makers and politicians.

hay fever

Hay Fever - our festival for families and children, runs across the ten days of the festival where children have the chance to meet and talk to their favourite writers and take part in workshops to create wonderful memories and develop new skills in imaginative thinking and self expression.

Hf2 is our festival for teenagers - with an awesome line-up featuring the movers and shakers of Young Adult writing, Hf2 is a mind-blowing experience for 13-plus.

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We care passionately about our environment. Hay-on-Earth debates the latest thoughts on climate change and environmental awareness.

In 2006 we started the Hay-on-Earth Project to audit, address and change our ecological sustainability.