Hay Festival 2016

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. An accompanying adult must attend at all times but does not require a ticket.

The Repair Shop’s Jay Blades presents a new edition of his emotional story, Making It. Jay, whose upcoming show is The Streets Where I Lived, talks about his experiences of racism and police brutality, his struggles with mental health and the events that led to him being homeless. His honesty offers hope that no matter what struggles you’re going through, change is possible.

Jay explores themes of friendship and family, male vulnerability and dyslexia. He reflects on the satisfaction he finds in jobs that help others, his children, the joy he finds in working with charities and social enterprises across the country and how his passion for upcycling and restoring furniture began at home.

Shakespeare’s world is never too far from our own – permeated with the same tragedies, existential questions and domestic worries. Acclaimed biographer Jonathan Bate queries with TLS Editor Michael Caines whether, if you persevere with Shakespeare, he can offer a word of wisdom or a human insight for any time or any crisis.

We owe it to our fellow humans – and other species – to save them from the catastrophic harm caused by climate change. The philosopher approaches climate justice as something that should motivate us all. Starting from irrefutable science and uncontroversial moral rules, she explores our obligations to each other and to the non-human world, unravels the legacy of colonialism and entrenched racism and makes the case for immediate action. Cripps is a senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh and author of Climate Change and the Moral Agent. ​In conversation with Andy Fryers, Sustainability Director at Hay Festival.

Pens at the ready! You can draw Tom Gates and a host of other characters with writer and illustrator Liz Pichon. Liz brings to life her brand new Tom Gates drawing book, and is ready to answer all your questions about her books. Bring your own notebook and get ready to doodle.

Cats are the best! Acclaimed children’s poet Simon Mole celebrates their beauty, acrobatic prowess and the undeniable sense of achievement that comes from a cat deciding your lap is worthy of curling up on. Hot on the wheels of the success of his book I Love My Bike, Simon returns to Hay with a sequel that is sure to leave you feline good!

Poetry meets geolocation and augmented reality in this creative writing workshop with a digital dimension. Head4Arts and the multi-talented Rufus Mufasa invite you to come in and find your happy place, inspired by what3words.

Everyone attending requires a ticket

In Miles Jupp’s satirical, tragi-comic story about a man on the edge, Clive Hapgood is feeling stuck. The private school he teaches at is consuming his life, the gentle country life he envisaged has stifled him and left his marriage on the brink. What he needs is something to remind him and Helen what life used to be like. But when an incident at school weighs heavy on his head, his life starts to unravel. Has he got it in him to turn things around? Miles Jupp played Nigel in the sitcom Rev, and John Duggan in Armando Iannucci’s The Thick of it.

As the BBC turns 100, Boris Johnson’s government is slashing our national broadcaster’s budget and threatening the licence fee – cheered on by newspaper owners who think they stand to gain. But what is the role of the BBC in 2022? And how can we stand up for it? Speakers include Jean Seaton, Professor of media history at the University of Westminster, and author of a volume of the official history of the BBC, and AC Grayling, philosopher, author and the Founder and Principal of New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University. Chaired by Alan Rusbridger, Editor of Prospect magazine.

A recent report from the charity Student Minds revealed that 74% of students felt the pandemic had had a negative impact on their mental health. How can we help individuals and colleges to tackle this issue? A new book, Preventing and Responding to Student Suicide – A Practical Guide for FE and HE Settings, offers a variety of approaches.

Tim Jones is Acting Pro Vice Chancellor Students at University of Worcester, where Jo Smith is Emeritus Professor; Nic Streatfield is Director of Student Life and Wellbeing at the University of York, ​Sarah Gordon, is a member of Student Minds’ Student Advisory Committee and Rosie Tressler is CEO of Student Minds.

TikTok users are sharing their passion for books with millions and reshaping the publishing world in the process, all in under a minute. Join some of the community’s leading creators for a dynamic introduction to what’s trending.

In the last of our four BBC Radio 3 lunchtime recitals broadcast at Hay Festival this week, presented by BBC Radio 3 presenter Sarah Walker, Ruby Hughes (soprano) and Huw Watkins (piano) play a programme featuring a selection of popular songs by Dvořák and folksongs by Britten, as well as Echo by the pianist Huw Watkins and the UK première of four Romances by Kashperova.

Do you have a puzzling science question that you have always wanted to know the answer to? Professor Robert Winston explains the science behind some of the most bizarre and intriguing questions he has ever been asked. Find out the answers to questions such as ‘why is the sky blue?’, ‘does space ever end?’ and ‘could human life ever be created in a laboratory?’ Whatever your interest, get ready to learn about science in a fun and exciting way. Perfect for quizzical young readers wanting to know more about the world we live in.

Circus Maximus, the greatest sporting stage of the ancient Roman world, where the best horses and charioteers compete in an exhilarating race, and one girl dreams of glory. Annelise Gray introduces that one girl, her heroine Dido, and reveals the true history behind her thrilling adventure series.

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. An accompanying adult must attend at all times but does not require a ticket.

Hay Community Choir is joined by members of the Hay Festival Chorus to perform Vivaldi’s Gloria in celebration of being able to sing together again. During the pandemic Hay Community Choir worked on Zoom and practised songs written specifically for this time of being together again in person. The programme includes songs by Dominic Stitchbury and Anna Tabbush as well as two African songs. Come and listen to this joyful selection of music and rediscover the importance of singing as part of a community experience.

In a year in which making sense of the numbers has become a matter of life and death, David Spiegelhalter has stood out as a calm voice of authority. This timely, accessible book offers insight into one of the greatest upheavals in history. Never have numbers been more central to our national conversation, and never has it been more important that we think about them clearly.

Soaked in rain and old magic, Storyland is the history of Britain through medieval eyes. Grounded in meticulous research by art historian Amy Jeffs, related as fiction, it is filled with places we know, and can still visit, and characters half-remembered: Lear in Leicester, Merlin in Stonehenge, Grim in Grimsby, St Columba on the River Ness. Each episode is illustrated with an original linocut print by the author. This landmark publication rooted deep in the ancient British landscape will delight lovers of history, art, myth and stories. The author talks to journalist Julia Wheeler.

The author of Late in the Day discusses her new novel with Toby Lichtig, Fiction and Politics Editor of the Times Literary Supplement. In 1967 during the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability: dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their children are Colette, a bookish teenager, and Hugh, the golden boy. But when the 20-something son of an old friend visits and kisses Phyllis after dinner, something in her catches fire and she makes a choice that defies all expectations of her as a wife and a mother. Nothing in these ordinary lives is so ordinary after all, it turns out, as the family’s upheaval mirrors the dramatic transformation of the society around them.

Join Adam Biles, literary director of the iconic Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris, for a special edition of their top-charting weekly books podcast with special guests.