Ever thought life was hard? Sir Tony Robinson goes back in time to when being a child was no excuse for idleness, bringing alive the stinking, back-breaking jobs that children did as jigger-turners, turnip-pickers, matchbox-makers and more.
Winnie The Witch gets involved in a prehistoric adventure with a rather surprised Triceratops, brought to life with Korky Paul’s high-energy live drawing.
5+ years
Is equality law working to deliver equality for women? If not, what’s it going to take? Bates is the founder of the Everyday Sexism project. Nimko Ali is a social activist, an FGM survivor and campaigner, co-founder of Daughters of Eve. Journalist and writer Sonia Faleiro is the author of Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars and 13 Men.
In an age of obesity where sugary, fatty food is available 24/7, will it ever be possible to control our appetites? The Professor of Metabolism and Medicine describes how the brain and not the stomach controls what and how much we eat; and how scientists are working to conquer the many triggers for overeating. Chaired by Rosie Boycott.
The Director of Hay Festival talks to the author of War Horse and Private Peaceful. They discuss in particular his latest book Flamingo Boy, set during the Second World War in the Camargue region of France. The book is inspired by his grandson.
The wars since 9/11, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, have generated frustration and an increasing sense of failure in the West and the blame has been attributed to poor strategy. Strachan, one of the world’s leading military historians, reveals how these failures resulted from a fundamental misreading and misapplication of strategy itself. He argues that the wars since 2001 have not in reality been as ‘new’ as has been widely assumed and that we need to adopt a more historical approach to contemporary strategy in order to identify what is really changing in how we wage war.
Is there any sex in Austen? What do the characters call each other, and why? What are the right and wrong ways to propose marriage? And why is it risky to go to the seaside? Mullan shows that you can best appreciate Austen’s brilliance by looking at the intriguing quirks and intricacies of her fiction.
The Turkish novelist reimagines the concept of honour, also the title of her 2015 novel. How has the word come to be understood in different communities? Can it be rescued from the grotesque association with the world “killing”? What might a truer application of honour mean for men and for women, for society and humanity? Chaired by A. C. Grayling.
Contributors to a ground-breaking new book, Roald Dahl: Wales of the Unexpected, discuss the vital presence of Wales in the work of ‘the world’s number one storyteller’. This is Dahl wonderfully defamiliarised in his centenary year through the lens of the country of his birth and early life.
Presented by The Welsh Academy