Hay Festival 2019 Programme

Stacey Dooley is one of Britain's most loved documentary presenters and investigative reporters. Fashion conscious Stacey's life took an unexpected turn when she travelled to India in 2007 for the BBC3 series 'Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts' to live and work alongside the people in the Indian fashion industry making clothes for the UK High Street.

Upon her return to the UK, Stacey began campaigning against child labour, organising events to raise money for charities and even appearing on BBC2's Newsnight to raise awareness, and has since embarked on a series of investigations to become one of BBC3’s most celebrated presenters.

Through the course of her documentary making, Stacey has covered a variety of topics, from sex trafficking in Cambodia, to Yazidi women fighting back in Syria. At the core of her reporting are incredible women in extraordinary and scarily ordinary circumstances – from sex workers in Russia, to victims of domestic violence in Honduras. In her first book, On the Front Line with the Women Who Fight Back, Stacey draws on her encounters with these brave and wonderful women, using their experiences as a vehicle to explore issues at the centre of female experience. From gender equality and domestic violence, to sex trafficking and sexual identity, Stacey weaves these global strands together in an exploration of what it is to be women in the world today.

She won Strictly 2018.

Imogen Walford is senior producer of BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Cadwalladr has won the Orwell Prize and the Reporters Without Borders Award for her investigative journalism in The Observer into the subversion of the democratic process and the impact of big data analytics and interventions on the EU Referendum and the American Presidential Election. She discusses her work with Oliver Bullough.

The New Yorker’s frontline journalist reports from the most volatile and dynamic region in the world. He introduces the graphic version of his biography Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life and explains what’s happening today in Venezuela.

How do we counter fake news and can we inoculate public opinion against misinformation? Dr Van der Linden is Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab and is investigating the psychological mechanisms behind the spread of misinformation.

Seventy years after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, and thirty years on from the Tiananmen Square massacre, the editor of Index on Censorship hosts a debate about China’s contemporary society and the leadership’s attitude to freedom of expression. Xinran is author of the global bestseller The Good Women of China, based on her groundbreaking radio show. Her latest book is The Promise. Karoline Kan is a former New York Times reporter who writes about millennial life and politics in China. She’s currently an editor at China Dialogue. Her new book is called Under Red Skies: The Life and Times of a Chinese Millennial.

Britain’s institutions and democracy have been envied around the world for centuries – the mother of parliaments, the centre of an administrative empire that pinked in the world. Are parliament, Whitehall, the City of London, the devolved assemblies, the press, the political parties, the Trades Unions and the traditional powers of the land still fit for purpose? Who runs Britain? How’s that going? Abell is editor of the TLS and author of How Britain Really Works.

The BBC News at Ten anchor takes us behind the scenes of a rolling news operation that is trying to make sense of a world gripped by crises of every kind.

The polarised intensity of Brexit can seem like a very British civil war. What might healing and reconciliation look like? What can we learn from the past, and from present examples? Classicist Bettany Hughes reflects on her 2014 documentary series What’s The Point of Forgiveness? and takes a long view of ancient historical paths to peace. War correspondent Jon Lee Anderson discusses the political wrangling of peace terms and treaties he’s witnessed, the amnesties and the long recovery from totalitarian oppressions. Olusoga is an historian and author of Black and British: A Forgotten History. Paul Dolan is Professor in Behavioural Science at the LSE, where he works on measures of happiness and subjective wellbeing that can be used in policy and by individuals looking to be happier.

When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming a grown-up, journalist and former Sunday Times dating columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In her memoir she vividly recounts falling in love, wrestling with self-sabotage, finding a job, throwing a socially disastrous Rod Stewart themed house party, getting drunk, getting dumped, realising that Ivan from the corner shop is the only man you’ve ever been able to rely on, and finding that that your mates are always there at the end of every messy night out. Alderton’s captivating memoir is about bad dates, good friends and – above all else – about recognising that you and you alone are enough.

Ahmed’s childhood was very British in every way – except for the fact that he was brown. Half English, half Sudanese, he was raised in 1970s London at a time when being mixed-race meant being told to go home, even when you were born just down the road. The memoir by the Editorial Director of BBC News makes the case for a new conversation about race in Britain through personal stories, political analysis and a passionate belief in the ultimate good of this country. He talks to Thea Lenarduzzi of the TLS.

The writer discusses his magnificent 2014 Siberian novel The People’s Act of Love and his new work of reportage Dreams of Leaving and Remaining – an anatomy of Britain on the edge of Brexit. He previews his forthcoming novel To Calais in Ordinary Time, a 14th century epic narrative.

O’Toole examines how trivial journalistic lies became far-from-trivial national obsessions; how the pose of indifference to truth and historical fact has come to define the style of an entire political elite; how a country that once had colonies is redefining itself as an oppressed nation requiring liberation; the strange gastronomic and political significance of prawn-flavoured crisps; the dreams of revolutionary deregulation and privatisation that drive Arron Banks, Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg; and the silent rise of English nationalism, the force that dare not speak its name. O’Toole is an investigative journalist, historian, biographer, literary critic and political commentator. His acclaimed columns on Brexit for the Irish Times, the Guardian and the New York Review of Books have been awarded both the Orwell Prize and the European Press Prize. Chaired by Sarfraz Manzoor.

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. 

The legendary BBC World Affairs Editor discusses his new thriller and the way in which, in fact as in fiction, so many of the most improbable or extraordinary stories and trails all lead back to Moscow.

How do we guard against fake news about true science? President Trump tweeting “HIV is cured” isn’t anywhere close to the story. How do we ensure that the science that is published is robust and stands up to scrutiny as well as ensuring that this science is accurately and responsibly reported? Boycott is a cross-bench peer, who has edited both tabloid and broadsheet newspapers; Critchlow is a neuroscientist; Fox is Director of the Science Media Centre; Maddox is a journalist and Director of the Institute for Government; Skipper is Editor of the scientific journal Nature, which celebrates its 150th anniversary at Hay.

A little light ridicule, mockery and fun to start the day as the satirists read the tabloids and surf the social media storms for an irreverent look at what’s tickling the nation’s fancy – and driving it to splenetic fury – today.

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. Their murderer was never identified, but the name created for him by the press has become far more famous than any of these five women. Now, in her devastating narrative of five lives, historian Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, and gives these women back their stories. Chaired by the historical thriller writer SJ Parris.

A little more light ridicule, mockery and fun to start the day as the satirists read the tabloids and surf the social media storms for an irreverent look at what’s tickling the nation’s fancy – and driving it to splenetic fury – today.

A little light ridicule, mockery and fun to start the day as the satirists read the tabloids and surf the social media storms for an irreverent look at what’s tickling the nation’s fancy – and driving it to splenetic fury – today.

Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. The historian and journalist takes testimony from Viet Cong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bar-girls and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina and Huey pilots from Arkansas to create an epic narrative of an epic tragedy. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people, informed with deep understanding and a sweeping narrative.