Hay Festival 2019 Programme

A special storytime session with some of Wales’ finest librarians. Join BookTrust Cymru to share and celebrate some of the titles shortlisted for the new BookTrust Storytime Prize (Best Book for Sharing), as well as some of our favourite bilingual Bookstart books. This is a bilingual session in English and Welsh – suitable for Welsh learners.

Cook School is pitching up at Hay Festival to offer hands-on, fun cookery sessions, preparing a couple of Italian classics to take home for dinner along with an easy step-by-step recipe card, written by renowned children’s cookbook author Amanda Grant. Cook School is on a mission to teach as many children and young people to cook as possible. Head to cookschool.club to find out more.

Come and join Rooted Forest School (rootedforestschool.co.uk) for an outdoor family session inspired by the Forest School approach. We will be making charcoal on the fire, using natural pigments to create our own paint, making brushes from found materials and creating communal land art. These sessions are aimed at families and will run whatever the weather, so make sure you’re wrapped up for the conditions.

We celebrate the 500th anniversary of the death of the incomparable Renaissance man – artist, scientist, inventor and lover. Brotton and Fletcher are Renaissance historians, Critchlow is a neuroscientist and Greer is a scholar and art historian. Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most inspiring figures of European history.

Brexit has almost wholly been confined to discussions of economic consequence. But what will happen to the constitution? And what does sovereignty mean? The distinguished professor of government looks at the impact of Brexit and the constitutional consequences of Britain’s EU membership, raising the question of just how the United Kingdom is to be preserved. At the time of going to press…

Reading maps or reading emotions? Barbie or Lego? We live in a gendered world where we are bombarded with messages about sex and gender. On a daily basis we face deeply ingrained beliefs that your sex determines your skills and preferences, from toys and colours to career choice and salaries. The neuroscientist interrogates what this constant gendering means for our thoughts, decisions and behaviour. And what does it mean for our brains? Chaired by Bronwen Maddox.

On the morning of 26 April 1986 Europe witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine. In the end, less than five per cent of the reactor’s fuel escaped, but that was enough to contaminate over half of Europe with radioactive fallout. Plokhy’s Baillie Gifford Prize-winning account recreates these events in all of their drama, telling the stories of the fire-fighters, scientists, engineers, workers, soldiers and policemen who found themselves caught in a nuclear Armageddon and succeeded in doing the seemingly impossible: extinguishing the nuclear inferno and putting the reactor to sleep. While it is clear that the immediate cause of the accident was a turbine test gone wrong, Plokhy shows how the deeper roots of Chernobyl lay in the nature of the Soviet political system and the flaws of its nuclear industry. Plokhy is Professor of History at Harvard University and a leading authority on Eastern Europe. Chaired by Nik Gowing.

Guto Harri and guests explore more cutting-edge literature and ideas from this year’s Hay Festival. Poet Jonathan Edwards reads from his latest collection Gen and Amitav Ghosh ponders our inability to grasp the consequences of climate change. Plus human rights barrister Philippe Sands on the threat to writers and thought around the world, plus broadcaster and columnist Grace Dent on the endless pursuit for a magical food experience.

Celebrated children’s author and former CBeebies presenter Cerrie Burnell presents her magical novel The Girl with the Shark’s Teeth. Meet Minnow, a seafaring girl with an incredible underwater ability, who goes on a journey from Brighton to Iceland to Barbados with her friend Raife on a mission to rescue her mother. Follow the call of the wild deep and be immersed in an event with mermaids, sharks and a magical mystery to be solved. Cerrie will share fascinating shark facts, reveal her top storytelling tips, and inspire children to go on their own creative writing adventures.

Cook School is pitching up at Hay Festival to offer hands-on, fun cookery sessions, preparing a couple of Italian classics to take home for dinner along with an easy step-by-step recipe card, written by renowned children’s cookbook author Amanda Grant. Cook School is on a mission to teach as many children and young people to cook as possible. Head to cookschool.club to find out more.

Come and join Rooted Forest School (rootedforestschool.co.uk) for an outdoor family session inspired by the Forest School approach. We will be making charcoal on the fire, using natural pigments to create our own paint, making brushes from found materials and creating communal land art. These sessions are aimed at families and will run whatever the weather, so make sure you’re wrapped up for the conditions.

Radio Platfform hosts a debate with a panel of young adult Hay Festival-goers. Hay Festival is a hub of creative thought, and this is your chance to discuss the topics of the day and express your opinions. We want to hear what you’ve got to say… Radio Platfform: Your Voice, Your Sound, Your Platfform.

John Julius Norwich had to withdraw from his Hay Festival event last year and died on 1 June. His family and friends offer this celebration of his work on Sicily, Venice and the Mediterranean, Byzantium and the Kings of England. With readings from his books and from his edition of his mother’s letters Darling Monster: The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper To Her Son John Julius Norwich.

D-Day and the 76 days of bitter fighting in Normandy that followed have come to be seen as a defining episode in the Second World War. Its story has been endlessly retold, and yet it remains a narrative burdened by both myth and assumed knowledge. Drawing on unseen archives and testimonies from around the world, the war historian challenges much of what we think we know. He reveals how the sheer size and scale of the Allies’ war machine ultimately dominated the strategic, operational and tactical limitations of the German forces. 

Come rain or shine, flowers feature perennially in the landscape of human history. Their beauty has inspired some of the greatest works of art and literature, captivating creative minds from Wordsworth to Van Gogh, Botticelli to Beatrix Potter. Flowers have also played a key part in forming the past, and may even shape our future. Some have served as symbols of monarchs, dynasties and nations – from the Wars of the Roses to the Order of the Thistle. And while the poppy is often associated with WWI, it was the elderflower that treated its wounded soldiers, joining a long line of healing flowers that have developed modern medicine, including lavender and foxgloves. The right rose, according to the Victorian language of flowers, might mend a broken heart, while sunflowers may just save our planet. Stafford is Professor of English at the University of Oxford. 

“To outsiders, my mom and I should have been enemies. Our house should have been divided – North vs South, red vs blue, conservative vs progressive, or however you want to put it. Instead, my mom and I fuelled each other. Her oil lit my lamp, and eventually mine lit hers.” Dustin Lance Black wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for Milk and helped overturn California’s anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 in the United States Supreme Court. He grew up in a conservative Mormon household outside San Antonio, Texas. This is his story.

From the genetics of insects and groundbreaking x-ray technology to measuring the world’s forests with lasers, three Royal Society Research Fellows discuss their work at the forefront of science with neuroscientist and broadcaster Hannah Critchlow.

A conversation with two very experienced and acclaimed writers venturing for the first time into fiction. Loudon’s My House is Falling Down is a vivid and compelling novel about a modern love triangle that asks some provocative questions: what happens when you tell the whole truth in marriage? Is it still infidelity if nobody lies? Can you really love two people at once? Rahim’s Asghar and Zahra is a funny, sympathetic and very human novel about the first year of a marriage, and the difficulties of reconciling the sometimes conflicting demands of family, religion and society.