Hay Festival 2015

Nature writer Roger Deakin helped popularise wild swimming with Waterlog, published in 1999. He was a polymath, adventurer, romantic and rebel who embraced self-sufficiency, teaching and environmentalism, acquiring a 16th-century farmhouse in the 1970s and rebuilding it from the oak beams up. Discover more about Deakin’s inner life with the Guardian’s natural history writer Patrick Barkham, author of this definitive biography. The Swimmer is told primarily in Deakin’s own words, with Barkham drawing on notebooks, diaries, letters, recordings and more to access his work.

The British-Ghanaian writer and photographer Caleb Azumah Nelson introduces us to Stephen, whose problems are forgotten in music and dance. Dancing at church, with his parents and brother, the shimmer of Black hands raised in praise; he might have lost his faith, but he does believe in rhythm. Dancing with his band, making music that speaks to the hardships and the joys of their lives. Dancing with his best friend Adeline, two-stepping around the living room, crooning and grooving, so close their heads might touch. Dancing alone, at home, to his father's records, uncovering parts of a man he has never truly known. But what becomes of him when the music fades? When his father begins to speak of shame and sacrifice, when his home is no longer his own? Set over the course of three summers in Stephen's life, from London to Ghana and back again, Small Worlds is an expansive novel about the worlds we build for ourselves, the worlds we live, dance and love within. Nelson’s first novel, Open Water, won the Costa Book Award for First Novel and Debut Novel of the Year British Book Award. Join him as he talks to journalist and editor Alex Clark about creating the novel’s music-filled world.

Reach for the stars with real-life astronomer Dr Sheila Kanani as she introduces her new book Can You Get Rainbows in Space?, a compendium of space, science and light, told through the colours of the rainbow.

Learn lots of amazing facts such as: why is the world ‘going green’? Is the sky really blue? And what is ultraviolet light? – before being blown away by some colourful science demonstrations and even taking part in one yourself! Dr Sheila will introduce you to all the amazing jobs in the world of space and science to encourage you to dream big.

Enjoy this half-hour open air performance between events. A crew of landlubbers singing rollicking shanties here on the East Coast of Wales. Enjoyment is guaranteed or else you’ll walk the plank!

Hay Shantymen have been together for over six years, raising over £7,000 for the RNLI. Last year their many performances included Latitude, Falmouth International Shanty Festival and a sell-out gig in Hay Castle. They're proud to have recorded their first album this year: Songs from the Shedis available from their website hayshantymen.com.

Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived. Alison Weir’s Six Tudor Queens series covered the lives, loves and deaths of Henry VIII’s wives; now, she turns her attention to the monarch himself in her newest book. The novel recounts Prince Harry’s life as a second son, and his ascendance to the throne when his older brother dies an untimely death. Weir discusses her most ambitious Tudor novel yet, which reveals the captivating story of a man who was by turns brilliant, romantic, and ruthless, and was undoubtedly a king who changed England forever.

Fleeing war, economic difficulties, the effects of climate change and more, contemporary refugees and migrants get a bad press in the UK, yet society commemorates historic refugees, celebrating their successes and their contributions to all aspects of life. Andrea Hammel explores comparisons between refugees and migrants who arrived at different times during the 20th and 21st century and looks at what we can learn from history about overcoming the challenges our society and the migrants and refugees face. Hammel is reader in the modern languages department and director of the Centre for the Movement of People at Aberystwyth University.

BBC Radio 3’s Lunchtime Concert series is presented by Sarah Walker and explores the music of Schubert and others. This second of four recitals broadcast during the Hay Festival week offers a selection of songs by Schubert, Schumann, Strauss, Wolf and Kashani, performed by Soraya Mafi (soprano) and Ian Tindale (piano).

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

Patrick Kane was just nine months old when he contracted meningococcal septicaemia in 1998, leading to him becoming a triple amputee. In 2010, he became the youngest person in the world to be fitted with a bionic arm, and has gone on to carry the Olympic torch as part of the London 2012 Olympic Games and speak at TEDxTeen. Now a motivational speaker and campaigner, Kane’s Human 2.0, illustrated by Sam Rodriguez, looks at the leaps in medical engineering and the people he’s met, including Paralympians Richard Whitehead and Blake Leeper, and the world’s first ‘cyborg’ Neil Harbisson.

Transform your drawings and collages of minibeasts into a cacophony of colour using a Risograph machine. You’ll come out of this session with your own prints to take home. Risograph is a method of printing using a stencil printing machine originating in Japan and printing on 100% recycled paper. The workshop is led by Jess Bugler RCA, a contemporary print artist based in Hereford and Print Technician at Hereford College of Arts (jessbugler.co.uk).

An opportunity to get crafting! Activities differ every day, including everything from print-making to junk modelling with recycled materials. Get messy and creative: your imagination is the limit.

Book for the session and you can drop in at any point during the 2.5 hour duration. Accompanying adults: please stay in attendance at all times, but you do not require a ticket.

Enjoy this half-hour open air performance between events. A crew of landlubbers singing rollicking shanties here on the East Coast of Wales. Enjoyment is guaranteed or else you’ll walk the plank!

Hay Shantymen have been together for over six years, raising over £7,000 for the RNLI. Last year their many performances included Latitude, Falmouth International Shanty Festival and a sell-out gig in Hay Castle. They're proud to have recorded their first album this year: Songs from the Shedis available from their website hayshantymen.com.

How can we better understand our history through our country houses and estates? How do we make these places of tradition and inheritance relevant and ensure we’re getting a true view of their role in the formation of our society? And how do we do so without descending into disagreement? Four history experts – historians Suzannah Lipscomb (What Is History, Now?) and Alice Loxton (UPROAR! Satire, Scandal and Printmakers in Georgian London), presenter and film-maker David Olusoga (Black and British: A Forgotten History) and writer Sathnam Sanghera (Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain) – speak to René Olivieri, chair of the National Trust, about how we engage with the many layered stories of country houses, and why as Britain changes we need to broaden our perspectives.

Our planet is in peril, and we can no longer dodge the arrival of disastrous, all-pervasive, climate breakdown that will come as a hammer blow to global society and economy. Bill McGuire, professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, offers a post-COP26 perspective on the climate emergency, acknowledging that it is now practically impossible to keep this side of the 1.5°C dangerous climate change guardrail, and presenting a blunt but authentic picture of the sort of world our children will grow old in, and our grandchildren will grow up in. In conversation with Jane Davidson, Chair of Wales Net Zero 2035, Pro Vice-Chancellor Emeritus at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and author of #futuregen: Lessons from a Small Country.

The novelist, musician and screenwriter, who writes in Welsh and English, presents the story of twins Ana and Nan, lost after the death of their mother, a renowned author who seemingly killed herself by jumping out of a window, naming her biographer and critic Eben as being responsible for her death. During a night shift in their job at the labyrinthine National Library of Wales, the twins plan to enact their revenge on Eben by locking down the building. But when one rogue security guard starts upsetting the plan and freeing captives, Ana, Nan and Eben find themselves pushed to the limit and what began as a single-minded act of revenge blooms into a complex unravelling of loyalties and motives. Fflur Dafydd is a former Hay Festival International Fellow and has been nominated for several BAFTA Cymru awards for her screenwriting work.

Dafydd is in conversation with writer and broadcaster Hannah French.

Bring your intuition to this interactive event and learn about the storytelling power of tarot cards. Podcaster, screenwriter and journalist Caroline O’Donoghue will show you how to use the ancient magical tool for creating stories, characters and situations. O’Donoghue is author of the New York Times bestselling ‘Gifts’ trilogy, an Irish supernatural adventure about a gang of friends who find special powers through the tarot cards. She’ll perform lighthearted tarot readings – expect revelations and lots of laughs.

Transform your drawings and collages of minibeasts into a cacophony of colour using a Risograph machine. You’ll come out of this session with your own prints to take home. Risograph is a method of printing using a stencil printing machine originating in Japan and printing on 100% recycled paper. The workshop is led by Jess Bugler RCA, a contemporary print artist based in Hereford and Print Technician at Hereford College of Arts (jessbugler.co.uk).

Rising sea levels are threatening the coastal communities around the globe, forcing communities to move inland; but what if there is no ‘inland’. Small, low-level islands are at real danger of disappearing under the waves, what happens to the people and their culture. Diwigdi Valiente is an indigenous leader from the Guna peoples of Panama with more than 10 years of experience as a social entrepreneur and consultant on sustainability. A passionate protector of the ocean, they founded the Burwigan Project, an art collective that inspires actions against climate change and plastic pollution within the Panamanian population and indigenous communities. Farah Faizal is the High Commissioner of Maldives to the UK and Ambassador of Maldives to France, Ireland and Spain.
They are in conversation with Hay Festival's Sustainability Director, Andy Fryers.

The Mesta River is one of the oldest inhabited rivers of Europe and a nexus for plant gatherers. Kapka Kassabova introduces us to the river via her book Elixir, an unforgettable exploration of the deep connections between people, plants and place. She urgently calls for us to rethink how we live, in relation to one another, to the Earth and to the cosmos. The lecture will be followed by a Q&A chaired by writer and translator Daniel Hahn. Kassabova is a Bulgarian poet and writer of fiction and non-fiction.

George March’s dutiful wife relishes the lifestyle his latest smash hit novel brings, until a shopkeeper assumes that the protagonist in his new book – a sex worker who is more a figure of derision than desire – is based on Mrs March. The casual remark robs Mrs March of the belief that she knew everything about her husband, and sends her on an increasingly paranoid journey…one that starts within the pages of a book but may very well uncover both a killer and the long-buried secrets of Mrs March’s past. In conversation with Xiaolu Guo (author of Radical: A Life of my own), Virginia Feito discusses her razor-sharp exploration of the fragility of identity and the smothering weight of expectations.