Award-winning author, playwright and screenwriter Alex Wheatle’s work often explores themes of identity, race and social injustice, drawing on his own experiences as a black British man. Alex was born in Brixton, South London, in 1963. His parents were Jamaican immigrants and he grew up in a children’s home after being placed there by social services at the age of six. In 1981, Alex went to prison for his involvement in the Brixton riots: this transformational period in his life was adapted for screen in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe production. Alex discusses his life experiences and how they have shaped his writing, including the final book in his bestselling Crongton series – In The Ends.
You’ll be inspired to get growing, get cooking and get plant-powered eating in this hands-on workshop led by green-fingered duo Darryl Gadzekpo and Ella Phillips. Their passion for gardening and cooking with their children has spurred them to write From Plant to Plate, a visual feast full of all the tips you need to transform seeds into mighty fruit, vegetables, and herbs, and to cook your home-grown ingredients.
In our modern world democracy and ethics aren’t always a perfect pair. Throw in the financial markets, and societies built on supposed meritocracy and the result is rising inequality, anger and frustration. Philosopher Michael J Sandel, who teaches political philosophy at Harvard University, gives an insight into how we reconfigure our thinking and our societies. Sandel’s course ‘Justice’ was the first Harvard course to be made freely available online and on television and has been viewed by tens of millions of people. He is author of What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? and The Tyranny of Merit.
Driving with a donkey stuffed in the back seat; jackdaws pecking brains out through the roof of a confessional box; cat piss and astronauts. This is the world not as you see it, but as it is, twisted from the maverick mind of Blindboy. Stories of the strange unsettlings in the souls of men caught in between the past and the possible; stories of heart-blinding rage and disquieting compassion. The satirist and musician reaches 1.2 million monthly listeners through his show The Blindboy Podcast, which the New York Times has called “a cultural phenomenon”. His new book takes its title from a twelfth-century English manuscript, which dehumanised the people and culture of Ireland to facilitate domination.
Doctor and aid worker Lynne Jones, and lawyer and climate activist Farhana Yamin, a key architect of the Paris climate agreement, discuss the rise and methods of nonviolent action for political change. In Jones’ book Sorry for the Inconvenience but This is an Emergency she offers a ground-level account of the past five years of UK protests, exploring how and why ordinary citizens have adopted extraordinary methods to confront the climate and nature crises. As one of the world’s most accomplished movement lawyers, Yamin provides both inspiration and a compass for the way movements can use the law – and must sometimes break it – to bring about social justice. The concept of movement lawyering was first proposed by the US Center for Constitutional Rights a decade ago. She shares her expertise in an essay in the collection The Revolution Will Not Be Litigated.
Immerse yourself in the inspiring Welsh countryside with poet, playwright and rapper Ashleigh Nugent, Creative Director of RiseUp, a Manchester-based organisation that empowers individuals to better their circumstances, prospects and wellbeing. In a unique event curated by the Black British Book Festival, you’re invited to write lines that capture the essence of the natural world, inspired by your surroundings, allowing nature to infuse depth into your writing. Let Nugent’s live poetry performance transport you to new realms of imagination under the open sky of the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park.
Join the award-winning and much-loved author, comedian and actor for a fun-filled event centred on his action-packed children’s books, The Boy With Wings and The Book of Legends. His latest title, Clash of the Superkids, sees the return of Tunde Wilkinson, an ordinary boy who happens also to be a winged superhero. Lenny chats to compère Mic Lord, a theatre maker, MC and recording artist, all about Tunde’s impossible mission and super powers, and reveals an extract from the book.
You’ve heard of Pandora’s box and the story of Mulan, but what about Melusine’s curse or the Wawalag Sisters’ travels? The award-winning Dr Jean Menzies, author of Greek Myths, is back with Goddesses and Heroines – a sparkling introduction to key female figures from cultures all over the world. Discover some of the lesser-known stories of legendary women from across the globe, from Japanese goddess of the dawn Ame-no-Uzume to Tuonetar, Finnish queen of the Underworld.
How do stories start? Where can we find them? And how do we know whether or not what we’ve written is even good enough? Sarah Crossan, award-winning author of The Weight of Water, Apple and Rain, will lead you in a series of poetry and prose exercises designed to build confidence and get your pen moving. This workshop is for all writers, from beginners to experienced.
Please bring your own notebook and pen or pencil to this event.
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.
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
Enjoy a half-hour open air performance by the Brecon-based choir, with songs inspired by the Nonsense Alphabets of Edward Lear. Lear’s alphabet verses are the perfect size and shape for rounds and ditties, and have been set to music by the choir’s leader, jazz musician Rod Paton. This fun and frolicking performance will be supported by the original improvisations of cellist Sonia Hammond and various other jazzy instruments.
As a Bolton teenager with a paper round, Clive Myrie read all the newspapers he delivered from cover to cover and dreamed of becoming a journalist. Now with a long standing career in reporting, the BBC news anchor, award-winning presenter and host of Mastermind tells how his family history has influenced his view of the world. He introduces his Windrush generation parents, a great grandfather who helped build the Panama Canal, and a great uncle who became a prominent detective in Jamaica. He reflects on how being Black has affected his perspective on issues he’s encountered in thirty years reporting on some of the biggest stories of our time.
His novel One Day (recently adapted for Netflix) was an international publishing phenomenon and the iconic love story for a generation, while Us placed him on the Man Booker Prize long list. His latest novel, You Are Here, is a love story which unfolds on a walk across the north of England. It’s the story of two lonely people, both a little lost and wary of new company. But, over many miles, as they start to talk and share stories, the possibility of a new beginning opens up before them. Witty and thoughtful as ever, David Nicholls talks to BBC broadcaster Samira Ahmed about first encounters, second chances and finding the way home.
Two professional women discuss the triple-whammy of discrimination faced by women over 50 in work: they are not male, young or linear in their career paths. As a result, they are leaving corporate life, and taking their abundant wisdom, energy and ambition with them.
Leadership coach Dr Lucy Ryan conducted a unique doctoral research project into professional women at midlife. In her book Revolting Women, she argues that assumptions about declining midlife motivation and energy are often not true for women, highlights why women walk out of corporate life and shows how businesses can retain and develop this invaluable talent pool. Dorothy Byrne, President of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge (a college for women), was previously Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4, where she produced films on rape, domestic violence, ageism at work, fertility and the effects of poverty. She is author of Trust me, I’m not a Politician.
The funniest author-illustrator, brother-sister duo is back to raise the roof with games, draw-alongs and silly stories. The bestselling creators of The Fart that Changed the World present their hilarious new adventure, The Day I Fell Down the Toilet. Find out what happens when timid Timothy Trench is plunged down a toilet into the land where jokes come from and is challenged to find the funniest joke in the land – or else… Laugh-alongs guaranteed!
Please bring your own sketchbook and pencils to draw along in this event.
An unmissable wild family gameshow with acclaimed French comedian Marcel Lucont, in which kids get to be pests, politicians and pétomanes (Google it) in order to be crowned the most awful child. See what happens when international insouciance meets infantile exuberance. A huge hit at Edinburgh Fringe and many other festivals, the award-winning comic channels his acerbic humour and quickfire wit into a series of tasks for the younger generation, which is every bit as entertaining for adults as it is for children. Très funny!
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
Academic and broadcaster Professor Alice Roberts (Channel 4’s Time Team, BBC2’s Digging for Britain) brings us face to face with individuals who lived and died between ten and five centuries ago, giving a brilliant and unexpected portrait of modern Britain. The stories she tells in Crypt are not comforting tales; there’s a focus on pathology, on disease and injury, and the experience of human suffering in the past. Most of the dead will remain anonymous but, thrillingly, she introduces an individual whose life and bones were marked by chronic debilitating disease – and whose name might just be found in history.
Delve beneath panicky headlines about China and our relationship with it in this discussion between James Curran, Kevin Rudd and Yuan Yang. The panel discusses what a future relationship between the UK, Europe and China looks like, and the best ways in which to both push back and quietly stabilise relationships with the Asian country.
James Curran is the Australian Financial Review’s International Editor and professor of modern history at Sydney University. Kevin Rudd is a former Prime Minister of Australia. Yuan Yang is deputy Beijing bureau chief at the Financial Times, and has been a reporter in China since 2016. Her first book is Private Revolutions, which explores inequality in China through the lives of five women.
In a wide-ranging conversation with Welsh-Jamaican reggae artist and presenter Aleighcia Scott, DJ Huw Stephens (BBC Radio 6, BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio Cymru) reveals how he selected 100 Welsh records for his new book, and how these artists have influenced Wales’ culture, past and present. He analyses highlights in the careers of the most important recording artists Wales has produced, singing in English or Welsh – including Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, Dafydd Iwan, Max Boyce, Manic Street Preachers, Super Furry Animals, Adwaith and Mace the Great.
Debut novelist Rose Wilding talks to author Jeanette Winterson about her multi-layered thriller. Seven women stand in shock in a seedy hotel room; a man’s severed head sits in the centre of the floor. Each of the women – the wife, the teenager, the ex, the journalist, the colleague, the friend, and the woman who raised him – has a very good reason to have done it, yet each swears she didn’t. In order to protect each other, they must figure out who did. Against the ticking clock of a murder investigation, each woman’s secret is brought to light as the connections between them converge to reveal a killer.
Bring your best ideas to this solutions-focused workshop session. Facilitated by sustainability entrepreneur Andy Middleton and joined by key speakers to be announced, we’ll look at the key issue of the economy, discussing the scale of the issue and a range of solutions.
Speakers include remarkable individuals leading climate and biodiversity resilience projects, igniting hope and progress in their neighbourhoods and the wider community. We want you to share your ideas and to be inspired by those making a difference. Be part of the change in this two-hour thought laboratory.
Charlotte Church’s childhood and teenage years were a jumble of global superstardom, financial wealth, tabloid intrusion and the accompanying personal strain. Now, she has taken her experiences of chaos and her passion for wellbeing and is a tenacious campaigner for climate action, economic equity, integrated education and political accountability. Church talks to writer and theatre producer Mary Loudon about her campaigning and The Dreaming, her house in mid-Wales which hosts retreats to provide healing, inspire change and cry hope in a troubled world.
Surrounded by a necklace of crises from Ukraine via the Middle East to the Maghreb, Europe has been signalling that it must play a more active role on the global stage, but it has sat passively as China and the US direct the course of events. As we approach the US presidential election, does Europe have the strength, ability and will to assert itself against an unpredictable mixture of populism, war, technological advance and economic uncertainty? Misha Glenny, journalist and Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, asks the EU’s former Vice-President, Baroness Catherine Ashton, political scientist Ivan Krastev and Rafał Trzaskowski, Polish politician and current city mayor of Warsaw, whether Europe can weather the approaching storms.
The International Booker Prize celebrates the world’s best fiction in translation. It’s awarded annually for a single book and celebrates the vital work of translators, with the £50,000 prize money divided equally between author and translator. The prize will be announced in May, and we present the winners in conversation with Booker Prize Foundation Director Gaby Wood and one of the judges, Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist Romesh Gunesekera.
Born in Belize, brought up in London’s Tottenham, singer/songwriter/composer Errollyn Wallen talks about her life and work in jazz, pop and classical music. Her book Becoming a Composer combines memoir, observations, diary entries, poems and essays, demystifying the world of composing. Her output includes more than 20 operas and numerous orchestral, chamber and vocal works. She has composed pieces for the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games in 2012, for Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees and a reimagining of Parry’s Jerusalem for the Last Night of the Proms. She talks to choir director Juliet Russell.
It is now indisputable that we are in a climate emergency. Soaring levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, particularly methane, mean more extreme weather events at greater frequency. As tipping points are exceeded, some irreversible changes have already been triggered in our climate systems. Join us on a deep dive into the pivotal moments of the climate crisis. David King will identify the tipping points that could shape our planet’s future and in response, Ed Miliband will lay out the decisions ahead and the opportunities we have to create a sustainable, fairer future for all. Professor Sir David King is Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, Chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group and Founder of the Centre for Climate Repair in the University. He was the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser, 2000–07, and the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative on Climate Change, 2013–17. Ed Miliband is MP for Doncaster North and Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.
St Mary’s Church in Hay, with its excellent acoustics, is the perfect setting for Hereford Chamber Choir’s performance of its critically acclaimed Dymock Poets Reimagined. This innovative concert focuses on seven contemporary composers and their choral settings of works by the Dymock Poets (who included Robert Frost, Rupert Brooke and Edward Thomas, all connected with the Gloucestershire village). Founded in 1983, Hereford Chamber Choir consists of 25 exceptional mixed voices. Under music director Simon Harper, the choir has a reputation for performing exciting programmes of choral music from the medieval era to newly commissioned works.
Ruby Wax’s rawest, darkest, funniest and most compelling stage show returns, documenting the extreme journeys she took in order to find an antidote to living a frazzled life. Along the way she hoped to find meaning, peace, happiness – the stuff everyone is chasing. However, after some transcendent experiences, she ended up in a mental institution.
Take a tour of the 88 constellations and explore the science, history and romanticism behind these celestial bodies with the science communicator and presenter of The Sky at Night. Maggie Aderin-Pocock considers looking up at the night sky from different cultures across the globe rather than just focusing on the Western Greek interpretation of the stars. Join her to share in the tranquil joy that is stargazing, reconnecting with both the natural world and our ancestors. You’ll learn how to identify stars, the basics of naked-eye observation, and advice on the best kit and ‘dark sky’ locations.
The winner of the Sky Edinburgh Comedy Award returns with a show about family, immigration, marriage, history, politics – and beans. Shah has appeared on Mock the Week, The Mash Report, QI, Live at the Apollo, Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, Have I Got News for You and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. “Intricately crafted, profoundly moving, howlingly funny… he’s a blazing talent firing on all cylinders” – The Daily Telegraph.