Hay Festival 2020 is cancelled

Join an action-packed kitchen adventure with catapults, explosions and edible slime. Nanotechnologist Dr Michelle Dickinson shows you how to be a top scientist in your own kitchen. Using everyday equipment such as marshmallows and nuts, string and balloons, her experiments demonstrate principles of science and chemistry the whole family will find fascinating.

Join us in NMiTE’s Studio 1, a hi-tech refurbished shipping container, to explore ideas through making. Experience how highly creative and technological engineering can be. NMiTE is located in Hereford and aims to be the city’s first university with a focus on engineering.
Sign up at the venue for 10am, 11.30am or 1pm. Ingenuity Studio 1 free drop-in sessions for families take place between 2.30pm and 5pm, Sunday 26 May – Saturday 1 June. 

In Sweden, children and young people are recognised as an important part of society. Swedish children’s culture is open-minded and doesn’t shy away from difficult topics. This has fostered a generation of young people who express their opinions, are listened to and speak up to claim their rights, from Pippi Longstocking to Greta Thunberg. Join us to explore the power and potential of children changing the world. Illustrator, Cecilia Heikkilä, will lead a workshop related to climate change, nature and taking better care of the planet.

Almost seventy-five years have passed since D-Day, the day of the greatest seaborne invasion in history. The outcome of the Second World War hung in the balance on that chill June morning. If Allied forces succeeded in gaining a foothold in northern France, the road to victory would be open. But if the Allies could be driven back into the sea, the invasion would be stalled for years, perhaps forever. An epic battle involved 156,000 men, 7,000 ships and 20,000 armoured vehicles. The desperate struggle that unfolded on 6 June 1944 was, above all, a story of individual heroics – of men who were driven to keep fighting until the German defences were smashed and the precarious beachheads secured. Their authentic human story – Allied, German, French – has never fully been told until now.

Ben Jonson famously accused Shakespeare of having “small Latin and less Greek”. But he was exaggerating. Shakespeare was steeped in the classics. Shaped by his grammar school education in Roman literature, history and rhetoric, he moved to London, a city that modelled itself on ancient Rome. He worked in a theatrical profession that had inherited the conventions and forms of classical drama, and he read deeply in Ovid, Virgil and Seneca. Revealing in new depth the influence of Cicero and Horace on Shakespeare, Bate offers striking new readings of a wide array of the plays and poems. The heart of the argument is that Shakespeare’s supreme valuation of the force of imagination was honed by the classical tradition and designed as a defence of poetry and theatre in a hostile world of emergent Puritanism. Bate is the author of Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare and is co-editor of The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works.

Matt Morgan is an intensive care doctor; that is to say, a person in whose hands you may find yourself one day – as one in five of us will – when something has gone seriously wrong. It may be down to an accident, following a major operation, or you may have succumbed to serious illness. Being critically ill means that one or more of your vital organs has failed. At such times you’ll need faith in the ability of the medical team looking after you to make life-or-death decisions under extreme pressure or to unravel the mysteries of the human body and diagnose unexplainable illnesses urgently. On this day of his book’s launch, Morgan draws on his time spent with real patients on the brink of death, and explains how he and his colleagues fight against the odds to help them live. Baroness Finlay is a professor of palliative medicine.

Celebrate the 25th anniversary of this ever-popular character. Join author Francesca Simon to find out what Henry gets up to in his latest mischievous adventure Up, Up and Away – a brand new collection of wickedly funny and totally brilliant stories.

Join the author and illustrator of this gloriously silly story for a fun-filled event packed with songs and games. Laura Hughes and John Dougherty will sing and sketch their way through what happens when little Natalie enlists the help of her classmates after waking up one day with a pig up her nose. The story is the 2018 winner of Oscar’s Book Prize, which celebrates the best pre-school book of the year. Named after Oscar Ashton, a book-loving boy who died aged three-and-a-half, it is supported by Amazon and the National Literacy Trust.

Hop into a fantasy adventure with Blue Peter award-winning author Kieran Larwood. Hear about the inspiration behind the fearsome warrior rabbits of the Five Realms series and help Kieran create a new land in an interactive map-making experience.

Have a go at green woodwork, pottery and weaving and find out what our craft-based Practical Skills Therapeutic Education brings to autistic young people. Talk with students, craft tutors and staff. Ruskin Mill Trust is a unique educational charity for learners with complex needs.

2Join the University of Worcester illustration team to make bird masks in response to the Migrations – Open Hearts, Open Borders exhibition. Find out how artists can change attitudes and help us to empathise with people who face dangers in their struggle to find a safer and better place to live. We will provide postcards and colours; please bring kindness and imagination to show that a small gesture can make a difference.

In Sweden, children and young people are recognised as an important part of society. Swedish children’s culture is open-minded and doesn’t shy away from difficult topics. This has fostered a generation of young people who express their opinions, are listened to and speak up to claim their rights, from Pippi Longstocking to Greta Thunberg. Join us to explore the power and potential of children changing the world. Performer Sara-Jane Arbury will run a Pippi Longstocking-themed workshop involving dressing-up.

Europe has for two millennia been a remarkably successful continent. Jenkins tells the story of its evolution from a battlefield of warring tribes to peace, wealth and freedom – a story that twists and turns from Greece and Rome, through the Middle Ages, Reformation and French Revolution, to the two world wars and the present day. He celebrates Europe’s makers – from Julius Caesar and Joan of Arc to Wellington and Angela Merkel, as well as cultural figures from Aristotle to Shakespeare and Picasso. 

Join us for a fascinating talk that weaves the personal and the cultural, the social and the political, and explores what it means to be human in our age of uncertainties and conflicts. The novelist reflects on identity, gender and belonging, looking at a range of nations and cultures from Turkey to Hungary, from America to Brazil and Russia. How can writing nurture the markers of democracy, tolerance, the acceptance of diversity and progress? Where do we look for balance and truth, for clarity and hope?

The Wellcome Book Prize lecture aims to celebrate the place of medicine, science and the stories of illness in literature, arts and culture, and how these stories add to our understanding of what it means to be human. Elif Shafak is chair of judges for the 2019 prize, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary, and an advocate for women’s rights, LGBT rights and freedom of speech. Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and the most widely read female author in Turkey. She writes in both Turkish and English, and has published seventeen books, eleven of which are novels. Her work has been translated into fifty languages. In 2017 she was chosen by Politico as one of the twelve people who will "make the world better".

Chaired by Claire Armitstead.

The historian introduces the fourth book in her Six Tudor Queens novel series, in which she transforms Henry VIII’s much-maligned fourth wife into a woman of passion, courage and mystery. The King is in love with Anna, the German princess’s portrait, but she has none of the accomplishments he seeks in a new bride. She prays she will please Henry, for the balance of power in Europe rests on this marriage alliance. But Anna’s past is never far from her thoughts, and the rumours rife at court could be her downfall…

What is the difference between reading in print and onscreen? How is our reading experience affected in a digital age where we are prone to endless distractions? Writer, editor and researcher Tyler Shores explores his latest research.

Calling all members of the Heroes’ Alliance! There’s been a dramatic jailbreak at a top secret prison and the planet’s most dangerous supervillains are on the loose. Luckily Kid Normal and the Super Zeroes are on hand to chase them down, but will they find Magpie and his dastardly shadow machine in time, before they bring about the end of the Heroes’ world as we know it?

Join award-winning broadcasters Greg James and Chris Smith for an action-packed Kid Normal event with musical accompaniment from Dave Cribb. Help create a brand-new superhero story and prepare for lots of games, singing and audience fun.

Our poor Earth is drowning in plastic. But it’s not too late to save it. Join conservationist, author and vet Jessica French to learn all about waste and how we can revolutionise our relationship with it to help make our planet a nicer place for everyone. Find out what is being done to fix the problem and how the smallest, simplest change can make a world of difference.

Have a go at green woodwork, pottery and weaving and find out what our craft-based Practical Skills Therapeutic Education brings to autistic young people. Talk with students, craft tutors and staff. Ruskin Mill Trust is a unique educational charity for learners with complex needs.

Join the University of Worcester illustration team to make rubber stamps in response to the Migrations – Open Hearts, Open Borders exhibition. Find out how artists can change attitudes and help us to empathise with people who face dangers in their struggle to find a safer and better place to live. We will provide the rubber and inks; please bring kindness and imagination to show that a small gesture can make a difference.