Join Welsh wine critic and broadcaster Jane Parkinson to pour and score your way through six wines that have her peers frothing with excitement. The author of Wine & Food discusses the styles we’re tasting and explains why some naturally lend themselves to rave reviews. But would you give them the same reviews? And is the role of the wine critic a help or a hindrance? Are professional reviews insightful or intimidating?
Don’t miss the Fontanas’ debut performance at the Festival – you can expect a well-oiled band, ready to hit the heights and have you up and dancing! Soaked in funky Latin and Brazilian influences, the band has found the sweet spot between tight funk grooves and swinging Latin rhythms.
Taking influence from the likes of the Dap Kings and Banda Black Rio, they’re graced with the inimitable Kay Elizabeth on vocals. Alongside her prowess as a vocalist, Kay is a professional dancer showcasing her skills on the global stage from Rio to Notting Hill, where she has earned the title ‘Queen of Carnival’. Shimmy into a world of rhythm infused with samba swing and electrified by the band’s intoxicating stage presence.
Join comedian Robin Ince for his unique Book Club, in which he chats with guests about the weirdest books and strangest stories they have read, and their secret reading obsessions. He brings along many of his favourite pulpy horrors, awkward romances and most eccentric self help guides. Expect an exhilarating tour around these books, where readings from Crabs on the Rampage will be twinned with Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin. Robin was named Author of the Year by the Booksellers Association and his most recent book, Bibliomaniac: An Obsessive’s Tour of the Bookshops of Britain was described by the TLS as “a tonic”. Don’t miss this event exclusively designed for Hay Festival 2024.
Start your day with an hour of yoga blending movement, mantra, meditation and breathwork. The classes support detoxification and regeneration – physically, emotionally and spiritually. Our daily yoga classes are brought to you by a collective of ten highly skilled practitioners, all local to Hay-on-Wye. Each practitioner has their own style, but with all you can expect a mindful, student-focused practice with clear cueing and functional sequencing.
Whether you need grounding and recharging before a busy day at the Festival, an opportunity to stretch and move your body, or simply an hour to focus on your breathing, these classes are open and accessible to all. Practitioners will adapt to different levels of experience, providing options for deepening or softening within poses so that each student takes what they need from the practice. Beginners and experienced students are most welcome. Yoga mats are provided.
Please contact Clare Fry at hello@larchwoodstudio.com with any questions relating to these classes. As capacity is limited, we recommend booking in advance to avoid disappointment.
A fantastic opportunity to see behind the scenes of this unique and historic building. Visit at a time of your choice during Castle opening hours.
Hay Castle’s executive director Tom True introduces the key moments and characters from the castle’s past followed by a continental breakfast.
Explore the ancient world with Bettany Hughes, who tells it through its seven greatest monuments: the Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt; the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Iraq; the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Greece; the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, Turkey; the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos, Turkey; the Colossus of Rhodes, Greece; and the Lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt. All were staggeringly audacious, and demonstrated the reaches of human imagination. Now only the Pyramid remains, yet the scale and majesty of these seven wonders still enthral us today. The author of Venus & Aphrodite and Helen of Troy asks: why do we wonder, why do we create and why do we choose to remember the wonder of others?
Start your day at Hay Festival with our daily news review. Join our leading journalists and special guests as they take us behind the headlines with insider perspectives, insights and an eye on what’s next. Strong coffee recommended!
Among today’s guests are activist and journalist Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, journalist and author Peter Pomerantsev, and Labour MP and Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
On 3 January 2020, Iranian General Qassem Soleimani was killed by a drone strike ordered by then US President Donald Trump. The Trump Administration, while taking credit for the killing, denied that it amounted to an assassination. Dr Luca Trenta, US Foreign Policy specialist and associate professor of International Relations at Swansea University, gives an overview of the US government’s involvement in the assassination of foreign officials from the early Cold War to Soleimani. In conversation with journalist Oliver Bullough, he discusses The President’s Kill List: Assassination in US Foreign Policy Since 1945, detailing the assassination plots, the methods (from poisoned cigars and airplane accidents to the support of local proxies), the justifications and the denials.
Warden Toby Small from the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park leads a walk through the beautiful surrounds of Hay-on-Wye, with BBNP Head of Communications Bronwyn Lally. Learn more about the challenges facing the River Wye and what must be done to save it.
Hay-on-Wye is based within 520 square miles of beautiful landscape that makes up the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park. The National Park is driving change to bring about a sustainable future, meeting our needs within planetary boundaries. Their Hay Festival series of walks take you into the town’s local environment while offering the opportunity to learn more about the Park’s work and its treasured landscape.
Take a deep breath and jump in with Greg Jenner for a totally chaotic trip to ancient Egypt! The historian and chart-topping You’re Dead to Me podcaster busts myths, unravels fascinating facts and uncovers mind-boggling surprises about everything from pharaohs and Egyptian gods to mummies and the pyramids. In a whirlwind event, Greg brings ancient Egypt to life to show you what it would really have been like to live in this extraordinary era. So hold on tight for a history-packed, hilarious and entertaining ride.
Please bring your own notebook and pen or pencil to this event.
Sue Hendra, co-creator of the bestselling Supertato picture books, will be in Hay to celebrate the 10th birthday of our favourite supermarket superhero.
If you’re looking for fun and giggles galore, this veggie adventure-fest is the family show for you. There will be stories, silliness and everyone will get a chance to make their own veggie super-hero to take home.
Get your Hay day off to a brilliant start with our daily Ready, Steady, Music workshops! With different activities each day, these interactive, fun-filled sessions for mini musicians will have you tapping sticks, roaring like dinosaurs, flying with unicorns, dancing with scarves, playing with parachutes and much more. Come and meet our puppets, explore our instruments and be accompanied by the beautiful sound of the cello.
Come to the Family Garden for a pizza masterclass with Kitchen Garden Pizza. In this one-hour session your imagination and creativity will be fed along with your belly! You’ll get your hands messy with freshly grown and foraged ingredients, make and top your own dough and observe the pizzaioli at work at the wood-fired oven. And while you wait for your pizza to cook, you can decorate your own pizza box!
Dairy-free and gluten-free options available
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 1.5 hour duration. Accompanying adults: please stay in attendance at all times, but you do not require a ticket.
Put on your walking boots, grab a notebook and join creative producer Kathryn Tann on a writing ‘walk-shop’, using the landscape to shape your stories. Practice using all your senses and surroundings to create memorable and transporting pieces of writing, with a focus on creative non-fiction. You don’t need to be an outdoors expert to bring nature and place into your creative work.
Starting from and returning to the Festival site, the walk covers around 1km in the environs of Hay-on-Wye, with regular stops and writing exercises along the way. Tann’s book Seaglass blends creative non-fiction with nature writing and memoir, portraying the journey of a young woman navigating modern adulthood.
Come to the Family Garden for a pizza masterclass with Kitchen Garden Pizza. In this one-hour session your imagination and creativity will be fed along with your belly! You’ll get your hands messy with freshly grown and foraged ingredients, make and top your own dough and observe the pizzaioli at work at the wood-fired oven. And while you wait for your pizza to cook, you can decorate your own pizza box!
Dairy-free and gluten-free options available
Is AI something we need to be terrified of, or something that will provide an answer to all our ills? The truth is somewhere in the middle, as our panel of experts tells author and scholar Carl Miller. Hear about how AI will affect humans: take a look at the past, present and future potential of the technology, as well as how and where we live alongside AI, and where and how we resist its presence.
Miller speaks to Madhumita Murgia, the first artificial intelligence editor for the Financial Times; David Runciman, professor of politics at Cambridge University; Stuart Russell, director of the Center for Human Compatible Artificial Intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley; and Carissa Véliz, an associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford.
David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas burst onto the literary scene in 2004. A novel comprised of six interconnected tales, each written in a unique style and told from a differing perspective, this genre-defying ‘Russian doll’ epic remains one of the most original, unusual and polarising works of recent times. Shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize, in 2012 it was adapted for film with a stellar cast including Tom Hanks and Halle Berry. Mitchell has been nominated for the Booker Prize five times as well as winning the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, given in recognition of a writer’s entire body of work. Twenty years after publication, Mitchell reflects on the past, present and future of his novel.
For hundreds of thousands of years our ability – and willingness – to move over vast distances has allowed humans to escape existential threats and thrive as a species. Yet human mobility today faces ever stronger barriers that not only harm the lives of potential migrants, but also threaten our own societies. The migration impulse is a core facet of the human condition: in attempting to suppress it, governments are sacrificing the future of humanity for the sake of short-term political gain. Visionary thinker Ian Goldin tells the millennia-spanning story of the movement of peoples, offering a powerful set of tools to understand the present as well as the past. Goldin is Oxford Professor of Globalisation and Development. His books include Terra Incognita, Age of Discovery and Age of the City.
Much-loved storyteller Michael Morpurgo, creator of such popular stories as War Horse and Kensuke’s Kingdom, invites a new generation of readers to discover the magic of Shakespeare. He and a cast of special guests bring ten of his favourite Shakespeare plays alive for a young audience, in warm and accessible retellings. From Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Winter’s Tale, this is the perfect introduction to the Bard. In his own words, “I thought it was important for young people to know these stories, to read them told in a language they will readily understand, and in a way they can enjoy so that they might be all the more likely to want to read the great plays of Shakespeare and go to see them on stage.”
What’s your favourite long word? Peter the Cat, a favourite character from Zeb Soanes’ Gaspard the Fox picture book series, always has the right one for any particular situation. Bring your thinking cap to join the author and Classic FM broadcaster as he introduces his feline friend and explains some of Peter’s favourite ‘big words’.
Please bring your own notebook and pen or pencil to this event.
Rotoscope and remix! Leave your mark – help reanimate, reimagine and remix short films with visual artists MASH Cinema. During the workshop you’ll experiment with techniques pioneered by animator Max Fleischer to produce new moving image artwork in this fun, hands-on collaborative creative project. Completed animations will be available to view online.
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 1.5 hour duration. Accompanying adults: please stay in attendance at all times, but you do not require a ticket.
The front-bench Labour MP grew up on a council estate in Stepney, East London, the son of teenage parents. His maternal grandfather Bill, an unsuccessful armed robber, spent time behind bars, as did his grandmother, who was also a political campaigner. He brings to life the struggle and heartache of his parents’ and grandparents’ lives in poverty; the choices they had to make between feeding the meter and feeding the family. He is also passionate about the life-changing power of education. Encouraged by a series of inspirational teachers, he won a place at Cambridge, and later became head of education at Stonewall. He talks to BBC broadcaster Samira Ahmed about his journey to become an elected MP in 2015 and now Shadow Health Secretary.
Propaganda, fake news and the fight for the narrative define contemporary and past wars and society. How do we identify and combat propaganda, and how should we move forward from it? Our panel discuss how to deal with biased and misleading communication with Oliver Bullough, author of Butler to the World.
Peter Pomerantsev is author of How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist who Outwitted Hitler. A Soviet-born British journalist and TV producer, he is Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics’ Institute of Global Affairs. Nobel Peace Prize-winner Maria Ressa is author of How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future. Co-founder and CEO of the Filippino online news site Rappler, she is a Fellow at Columbia’s new Institute of Global Politics.
The Indiana Jones of the botanical world recounts his quest to find and save Rafflesia, the world’s largest flowers, from extinction. Talking to writer, photographer and broadcaster Robert Penn, botanist Chris Thorogood offers a fantastic glimpse into the world of extreme fieldwork, with local guides and foresters, braving leeches, kidnap, monitor lizards and lethal forest swamps.
Finding Rafflesia completes Thorogood’s childhood obsession with these plants. From the age of eight he was growing vines up his curtain pole. Today that boy is a world specialist on parasitic plants, Deputy Director of Science at the Oxford Botanic Gardens and a regular panellist on Gardeners’ Question Time.
The American and British novelists discuss their latest work. Téa Obreht won the Orange Prize in 2011 for The Tiger’s Wife. Her new novel The Morningside follows Silvia and her mother, expelled from their ancestral home, to a crumbling luxury tower in a dystopian future. Silvia knows nothing about why she and her mother came to be here, but an aunt offers glimpses of her demolished homeland. Sarah Perry’s Enlightenment is a story of love and astronomy told over the course of 20 years through the lives of two improbable best friends, torn between their commitment to religion and their desire for more. They develop an obsession with the 19th-century female astronomer said to haunt a nearby manor. Could astronomy offer as much wonder as divine or earthly love? Perry’s previous novels include The Essex Serpent, which was adapted into an Apple TV series starring Tom Hiddleston and Claire Danes.
Well known to Hay Music audiences and acclaimed as a “pianist of extraordinary gifts” (Gramophone) and “immense power” (The Times), Clare Hammond is recognised for the virtuosity and authority of her performances. In 2016, she won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist Award in recognition of outstanding achievement. In the fine setting of St Mary’s Church, Hammond plays a programme comprising: Clara Schumann: Three Romances Op. 21; Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2 ‘Moonlight’; Samy Moussa: Al’assaut des jardins; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sonata in D major, K. 311 and Cécile Chaminade: ‘Impromptu’ Étude de Concert, Op. 35 No. 5 and Étude Romantique, Op. 132.
Are you a fan of Norse myths? Have you ever wondered what Loki, the mischievous shape-shifter and cunning trickster god would be like if they were banished to Earth in the form of an 11-year-old? Well, look no further – this is the event for you! Join author and Norse myth super fan Louie Stowell to hear all about her bestselling series Loki: A Bad God’s Guide to… Discover how to draw Loki and even create your own Norse gods in this interactive event packed full of humour and cool facts.
Please bring your own sketchbook and pencils to draw along in this event.
Rotoscope and remix! Leave your mark – help reanimate, reimagine and remix short films with visual artists MASH Cinema. During the workshop you’ll experiment with techniques pioneered by animator Max Fleischer to produce new moving image artwork in this fun, hands-on collaborative creative project. Completed animations will be available to view online.
Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion and the UK’s first and only Green Party MP, delves into our literary heritage to explore what it can teach us about the most pressing issues of our time, from the toxic legacy of Empire to the struggle for constitutional reform and the accelerating climate emergency. Today the dominant story of English nationhood is told by cheerleaders for Brexit, exceptionalism and imperial nostalgia. Focusing on stories of the English people’s radical inclusivity, their deep-rooted commitment to the natural world, their long struggle to win rights for all, Lucas sketches out an alternative Englishness: one that we can all embrace to build a greener, fairer future.