Hay Festival 2020 is cancelled

The poet, whose work appears on several syllabuses examines some of his ‘set text’ poems. The event is suitable for year 9 and 10 GCSE students. Places are limited.

A magical making and listening event with a professional storyteller. Hear all the best stories about the loveable Clangers in an event that includes the official Clangers whistle. Following the story there will be the chance to design new Clanger finger puppets and to hear and act out a special new story.

BBC Introducing in Hereford & Worcester supports unsigned, undiscovered and under-the-radar musicians from both counties. Since 2011, the radio station has been taking the show out on the road, showcasing the very best musicians in the area. This recording session features four acts the station has been playing. This is your chance to see how they capture live music on tape, while being able to enjoy some of the hottest new acts in the region. None of these knew they were being considered for a live session – they were chosen based on the tracks here: bbc.co.uk/herefordandworcester/introducing.

These sessions will be broadcast each Saturday throughout June from 8pm.

The former Doctor Who show-runner talks about his passion project, the BBC film of Shakespeare’s play he’s wanted to make his entire life. With a cast that includes Maxine Peake as Titania and Matt Lucas as Bottom, the Dream is set in the tyrannical court of Athens and the magical forest around the city. Screenwriter and star talk to Clemency Burton-Hill.

Are there limits to what we can discover about our physical universe? Are some regions of the future beyond the predictive powers of science and mathematics? Is time before the big bang a no-go arena? Are there ideas so complex that they are beyond the conception of our finite human brains? Can brains even investigate themselves or does the analysis enter an infinite loop from which it is impossible to rescue itself? The Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science asks: Are there true statements that can never be proved true?

The lawyer and writer explores how personal lives and history are interwoven. Drawing from his acclaimed new book – part historical detective story, part family history, part legal thriller – he explains the connections between his work on crimes against humanity and genocide, the events that overwhelmed his family during the Second World War, and an untold story at the heart of the Nuremberg Trial. Chaired by Helena Kennedy.

If we are to increase social mobility, redress economic inequality and create a balanced and fair distribution of wealth and opportunity, we need to understand the roots of the problems. Three recent books by members of the LSE’s new International Inequalities Institute aim to do this. Mike Savage is the author of Social Class in the 21^st Century, looking at the way new class divides have opened up in the UK, with his work generating the Class Calculator that became a viral phenomenon in 2013. John Hills is the author of Good Times, Bad Times: The Welfare Myth of Them and Us, which uses vignettes of families and how they are affected by inequality, the welfare state and austerity over their lives alongside results of large-scale data analysis. Laura Bear specialises in the anthropology of the economy, and is the author of Navigating Austerity, which tells the story of how austerity policies resulting from seemingly technocratic accounting decisions have dramatically changed the lives of those living and working on the Hooghly River in India.  The authors  discuss parallels between their findings, and exchange thoughts on how inequality can be challenged by public debate and policy.

The arts and ideas programme comes to Hay to record a special edition. Novelist Lionel Shriver, Booker Prize- winner Marlon James and scientist Steve Jones join presenter Rana Mitter for a Free Thinking discussion about inheritance, ranging from family relationships to the planet we are leaving for future generations, from money to morality, from genius to ideas about goodness and evil.

Broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Wednesday 1 June at 10pm

Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult over 18 years

The second of three events commemorating the 400^th anniversary of the deaths of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare in which three of the writers commissioned introduce their work. Leyshon is the author of the novels The Colour of Milk and Memoirs of a Dipper, and Bedlam, the first play by a woman ever to be performed at Shakespeare’s Globe; Brook’s most recent novel is The Aftermath; Molina Foix is one of Spain’s most distinguished novelists and film directors. Chaired by Daniel Hahn.

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.

Ashley Moffett is a professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge.

The great Jacqueline Wilson, the most-borrowed children’s author from libraries, reveals the inspiration behind her latest book, Rent a Bridesmaid. She discusses her inspiration and love of books with the HAYDAYS Director.

The author and actor’s  hilarious picture-book takes a kindly look at all sorts of interesting and entertaining bods, and shows that being different can be fun. Come and find out more about the Odd Bods and join Steven as he acts out their very special characteristics.

A conversation with the Australian novelist who has won the Booker Prize twice – with Oscar and Lucinda in 1988 and True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001.

His latest novel is Amnesia: A Novel. When Gaby Baillieux, a young woman from suburban Melbourne, releases the Angel Worm into the computers of Australia’s prison system, hundreds of asylum-seekers walk free. Worse: the system is run by an American corporation, so some 5,000 US prisons are also infected. Doors spring open. Both countries’ secrets threaten to pour out. Was this intrusion a mistake, or has Gaby declared cyberwar on the US?

Felix Moore – known to himself as “Australia’s last serving left-wing journalist”– has no doubt. Gaby’s act was part of the covert conflict between Australia and America that dates back decades. While she goes to ground, Felix begins his pursuit of her in order to write her story; to save her, and himself, and maybe his country. 

In 1570, when it became clear she would never be gathered into the Catholic fold, Elizabeth I was excommunicated by the Pope. On the principle that my enemy’s enemy is my friend, this marked the beginning of an extraordinary English alignment with the Muslim powers fighting Catholic Spain in the Mediterranean, and of cultural, economic and political exchanges with the Islamic world of a depth not again experienced until the modern age. England signed treaties with the Ottoman Porte, received ambassadors from the kings of Morocco and shipped munitions to Marrakesh. By the late 1580s hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Elizabethan merchants, diplomats, sailors, artisans and privateers were plying their trade from Morocco to Persia.

These included the resourceful mercer Anthony Jenkinson who met both Süleyman the Magnificent and the Persian Shah Tahmasp in the 1560s, William Harborne, the Norfolk merchant who became the first English ambassador to the Ottoman court in 1582 and the adventurer Sir Anthony Sherley, who spent much of 1600 at the court of Shah Abbas the Great. The previous year, remarkably, Elizabeth sent the Lancastrian blacksmith Thomas Dallam to the Ottoman capital to play his clockwork organ in front of Sultan Mehmed. The awareness of Islam which these Englishmen brought home found its way into many of the great cultural productions of the day, including most famously Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and The Merchant of Venice. The year after Dallam’s expedition, the Moroccan ambassador, Abd al-Wahid bin Mohammed al-Annuri, spent six months in London with his entourage. Shakespeare wrote Othello six months later. Brotton shows that England’s relations with the Muslim world were far more extensive, and often more amicable, than we have appreciated, and that their influence was felt across the political, commercial and domestic landscape of Elizabethan England.

#TALKINGABOUTSHAKESPEARE

The former Governor of the Bank of England analyses the causes of the global financial crisis. He proposes revolutionary new ideas to answer the central question: are money and banking a form of alchemy or are they the Achilles heel of a modern capitalist economy?

When an intrepid young British woman volunteered to help rebuild Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, she had little idea what she was letting herself in for. It was only supposed to last three months but instead spanned a decade. Sky provides unique insights into the US military, and the complexities, diversity and evolution of Iraqi society. With sharp detail, tremendous empathy and respect for those who served, The Unravelling is an intimate portrait of how and why the Iraq adventure failed despite the best and often heroic efforts of its young men and women on the ground.

CBBC presenter Katie Thistleton talks to the children's author, cast and creatives about CBBC's adaptation of the novel Hetty Feather. A fast-paced and thrilling story featuring a feisty new heroine, Hetty Feather brings the realities of the Victorian age to life through the eyes and adventures of the children who inhabit the Foundling Hospital.

Not for broadcast. 50 mins

Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult over 18 years

Many of our everyday activities, such as looking up information on the internet and journey planning, are supported by sophisticated algorithms. Some of our online activities are supported by the fact that we don’t have good algorithms for some problems: the encryption scheme that supports the privacy of credit cards in online transactions is believed to be secure precisely because there is no known fast algorithm for factoring large numbers. The Oxford Computer Science Professor explains a little of what we know about the limitations of algorithms, and also the famous P vs NP problem. This is the most important open problem in computer science and is one of the seven Millennium Problems of the Clay Mathematics Institute, which has offered a million-dollar prize for its solution.

Four brilliant European writers under the age of 30 are commissioned to write a story on the theme of Much Ado About Nothing, each of which is then translated into Italian, German and English. The writers visit the three partner festivals (Mantova and Berlin in September, Hay this week) to discuss their work.