Thank you for coming to Hay Festival 2017

What’s hot and what’s not in today’s newspapers? How do you decode the qualities’ agendas and how far can you trust the red tops? Why did this make the news and that make chip-wrapping? The comedians spend an hour in the human zoo, tearing up stories, making mad the guilty and appalling the free…

We own radiation-emitting phones, regularly get diagnostic x-rays, and submit to full-body security scans at airports. We worry and debate about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the safety of nuclear power plants. Jorgensen introduces key figures in the story of radiation, from Wilhelm Roentgen, the discoverer of x-rays, and pioneering radioactivity researchers Marie and Pierre Curie, and Thomas Edison to the victims of the recent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident. Tracing the most important events in the evolution of radiation, Jorgensen explains exactly what it is, how it produces certain health consequences, and how we can protect ourselves from harm.

A conversation about our relationship with food: what we choose to eat, and how the world can feed itself today. Wilson’s book First Bite: How We Learn to Eat looks at how we form our tastes and diets. Fresco’s Hamburgers in Paradise explores macro questions of surplus and obesity, the productivity of agriculture and how best we can aim to feed 8 billion people around the world. Boycott is the Mayor of London’s Food Commissioner.

At a time when migrations and borders are again central to our politics and national identity, the archaeologist looks back in time, to the creation of what was then Europe’s largest earthwork, Offa’s Dyke. He examines the role of the Mercian kingdom as a European power, and the ways in which Alfred and the Saxon kings rewrote that history. Chaired by Jesse Norman, MP for South Herefordshire, through which Offa’s Dyke approaches Hay.

UN peacekeepers are bound, at the very least, to do no harm. But what happens when the peacekeepers bring untold suffering to those they are sent to protect? In 2010 a contingent of Nepalese peacekeepers brought cholera into Haiti, a country where the disease had not existed for more than 100 years. More than 800,000 people have been infected and more than 9,000 have died. Yet no remedies have been made available to the victims, and the UN has relied on legal immunity to resist any claims being brought to court.  Freedman and Lemay-Hebert are Senior Lecturers at Birmingham University’s Law School and International Development Department.

photo courtesy of Justin Griffiths-Williams

Turn the page back to the 19th and early 20th centuries and discover a selection of delightful and intriguing stories from the 15 million newspaper articles digitised by the National Library of Wales. Tudor is its Head of Digital Access.

The KiVa anti-bullying programme is a Finnish evidence-based programme currently being researched in Wales. Dr Sue Evans, Consultant Child Psychologist at Powys Teaching Health Board, looks at the mechanisms being developed to prevent bullying and tackle cases effectively. Participants will have an opportunity to experience KiVa in an interactive way. Assisting will be Claire Jackson of Wye Valley Mediation, who is introducing Peer Mediation to schools in Herefordshire.

This year the BBC launched the #LovetoRead campaign to celebrate the pleasures of reading. Jonty Claypole, BBC Director of Arts, will chair an event to explain the campaign, preview some of the BBC's programmes that are supporting it and talk to authors about the books that have changed their lives and ask them to share their strategies for persuading reluctant readers to pick up a novel. Novelists include Owen Sheers and Deborah Moggach.

The lovable mouse has delighted young children and parents for more than 25 years. Join her birthday celebrations with a professional storyteller and hear all about Maisy’s adventures with her friends.

Cerrie Burnell, CBeebies presenter, brings to life her magical tale of Harper, a resourceful little girl who lives in the City of Clouds with her beloved cat Midnight and her Aunt Sassy.

Please drop in to our new Compass venue, quiz leading academics about their subject and engage in some critical thinking. As part of Hay Festival 2016 and with help from the Welsh Government we have invited a range of university lecturers and speakers to drop in, talk about their subject areas and about university life.

Mick Donovan is Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor & Head of Institute of Sport & Exercise Science at the University of Worcester.

McMullan and Mair have carefully selected the nine most fascinating documents held by The National Archives relating to Shakespeare’s life. Presented together for the first time, these are some of the most significant documents in the world that track Shakespeare’s life as a citizen of London, a businessman, a family man, a servant to the King, and even possibly a thief and a subversive. They explore both his domestic and professional lives, what it meant to live in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, and the social impact of his plays. McMullan is also the editor of the new digital Norton edition of the complete plays.

Civil war has been a recurring feature of human societies throughout history, and an essential catalyst for major international conflict. Focusing on the numerous civil conflicts that have occurred throughout the world since the Second World War, Kissane asks what the recent social science literature adds to what we already know about civil war. The LSE professor uses insights from historical sources from the ancient Greeks onwards, to explain the extreme violent experience of so many parts of the world today. Chaired by Sarfraz Manzoor.

How will Earth’s climate respond to rising concentrations of carbon dioxide? Wolff uses records of the past, including those from Antarctic ice cores, to see how climate has responded to natural disturbances in the past. He is the Royal Society Research Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences and one of the world’s leading experts on polar ice-cores and Palaeoclimate.

Harris’ new novel tells the story of a veteran Latin teacher in a Yorkshire Grammar school, facing all the changes of modern education and the disruption of reconnecting with a former pupil from his past. Chaired by Laura Powell, Features Commissioning Editor at the Daily Telegraph and author of The Unforgotten.

The Iranian-Dutch writer’s previous novels include the European best-sellers The House of the Mosque and The King. He discusses his new novel The Messenger: A Tale Retold that retells the life of the prophet Mohammad and his new translation of The Qur’an.

Learn about the art of cartooning and comic illustration from two top creators of characterful creatures. Northfield’s Julius Zebra is back with a new mad-cap adventure in Bundle with the Britons and Milway’s adventurous pig and his hamster sidekick return in Pigsticks and Harold and the Pirate Treasure.

The World Book Day illustrator captures the delight of finding kindness everywhere and anywhere, even in the smallest things. Watch her draw the animals live on stage, including a monkey and a penguin, as she tells this enchanting story. There will be arts and crafts element where all the children will make their own 3D Chuckling Octopus. 

Ever wondered what would happen if Richard III met Bottom? Or if Cleopatra met Falstaff?
Some of Shakespeare’s best known and loved characters will be the inspiration for this iPad filmmaking workshop, where you can create your very own stop motion animation.