Politics

Trolls are to be found on every social media platform, and few have as intimate an experience and knowledge of trolling than Marianna Spring, the BBC’s first disinformation and social media correspondent. She discusses her book Among the Trolls, in which she tracks down both trolls and their victims, trying to work out where people’s vitriol comes from, why the information battle threatens society as a whole and how people get caught up in trolling and misinformation. Spring presents podcasts and documentaries investigating disinformation and social media for BBC Radio 4 podcasts, as well as for BBC Panorama and BBC Three.

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 Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, former Shadow Attorney General and author of On Liberty and Of Women, and the Director of the AI & Geopolitics Institute at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge Verity Harding and award-winning senior reporter, author, and host of climate podcast Zero Akshat Rathi.They talk to Bronwen Maddox, CEO of think tank Chatham House.

Two experts on green capitalism discuss its limits and possibilities with Bronwyn Wake, Editor in Chief of Nature Climate Change. Rathi is an award-winning senior reporter for Bloomberg News and host of climate podcast Zero. In Climate Capitalism: Winning the Global Race to Zero Emissions he looks at stories that bring people, policy and technology together, suggesting that the green economy is not only possible, but profitable. Dr Ritchie is senior researcher in the Programme for Global Development at the University of Oxford, as well as deputy editor and lead researcher at the highly influential online publication Our World in Data, which brings together the latest data and research on the world’s largest problems and makes it accessible for a general audience. Her latest book is Not the End of the World: How We Can be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet.

Politics can often seem devoid of compassion, with the focus on systems over people, on making money over the needs of the vulnerable. With voter distrust of politics at an all-time high, it’s clear that our existing political systems are failing to deliver solutions to the multiple interlocking crises that our world faces. In this event, our panel members talk to journalist Jennifer Nadel about everything from the refugee crisis to wars across the world, how we can renew support for democratic ideals and what role compassion can play in creating a new political settlement that is inclusive, cooperative and effective in improving the lives of us all.

Butler is Labour MP for Brent South. Dorling is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Oxford. Grayling is a philosopher and principal of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London. Phillips is Labour Party MP for Birmingham Yardley.

Ukraine’s most celebrated novelist transports us to early 20th-century Kyiv during the turmoil following the Russian Revolution, with his new book The Silver Bone. This mystery introduces rookie detective Samson Kolechko in Kyiv as he tackles his first case, involving two murders, a long bone made of pure silver and a suit of decidedly unusual proportions tailored from fine English cloth. Inflected with Kurkov’s (Death and the Penguin) signature humour and magical realism, the novel takes inspiration from the archives of crime enforcement agencies in Kyiv, crafting a propulsive narrative with rich historical detail. Kurkov talks to writer and editor Daniel Hahn.

Australia is now facing the truth of its past – the slaughter of Indigenous peoples as the British conquered the continent with unique brutality. Two truth-tellers of today discuss how the country is reckoning with its history. Larissa Behrendt is an award-winning author, a filmmaker and host of Speaking Out on ABC Radio. Journalist David Marr is author of Killing for Country, a personal reckoning with his family’s role in the slaughter.

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 neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow, author of Joined-up Thinking, Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford and author of Shattered Nation and AC Grayling, philosopher and Master of the New College of the Humanities at Northeastern University, London.

Three women journalists covering the Israel-Palestinian war speak candidly about their work in the Gaza strip and the challenges and difficulties of reporting from a conflict zone. Iraqi-born Hind Hassan began her career with Al Jazeera Media Network, worked as a reporter for Sky News and then joined VICE news (HBO). Dalia Hatuqa writes on Middle East politics for the Washington Post, Time, The Economist and the New York Times, dividing her time between the US and the West Bank. Lindsey Hilsum is Channel 4 News’ International Editor. Chaired by the British-Lebanese editor of the Financial Times.

Libraries are a lifeline for many, but they are all too often damaged or destroyed during times of conflict, either deliberately as repositories of cultural heritage or simply as collateral damage in a war zone. The attack on the National Library in Sarajevo, the bombing of Mosul University’s library and the ongoing devastation of libraries across Ukraine and Palestine are all recent examples of this shocking destruction.

Writers Priscilla Morris and Elif Shafak talk to Lord Paul Boateng, vice patron of charity Book Aid International, about what is lost when libraries are targeted or when people are displaced and access to libraries is taken away. They look at the role that libraries can play both during conflict and as a country begins to repair and consider why, even when people are displaced, books and libraries remain important.

This year, more people around the world will have the opportunity to vote than any single year before, with major elections in a number of countries. To mark this historic milestone, our panel shares their unique perspectives on democracy and its relevance, fragility and value. Roula Khalaf, editor of the Financial Times, speaks to writers Aditi Mittal, Elif Shafak and Lola Shoneyin about the vital role of the media, of culture and of the participation of women in this critical year for the future of democracy.

In Nandini Das’ fascinating history of Britain’s first ambassador to the Mughal Empire Thomas Roe, Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire she offers an insider’s view of a Britain in the making, a country whose imperial seeds were just being sown. In conversation with historian David Olusoga she discusses her story of palace intrigue and scandal, lotteries and wagers that unfolds as global trade begins to stretch from Russia to Virginia, from West Africa to the Spice Islands of Indonesia.

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 is historian David Olusoga, Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester, and economist Kate Raworth, senior associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and a Professor of Practice at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Olusoga is author of Black and British: A Forgotten History, and presenter of Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners and documentary series Civilisation. Raworth is author of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist and a member of the World Health Organization's Council on the Economics of Health For All.

Three acclaimed thinkers and writers discuss the far-reaching effects of maternity, with author and journalist Candice Brathwaite. Women undergo a huge physiological, psychological and social metamorphosis during pregnancy, childbirth and early motherhood. There is no time other than adolescence that entails such dramatic change, yet the huge diversity in its effects go largely unrepresented and undiscussed.

Dr Pragya Agarwal is a behavioural scientist, University of Cambridge Fellow and author of (M)otherhood: On the Choices of Being a Woman. Lucy Jones is author of Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood, a radical new examination of how motherhood changes the mind and body. Clover Stroud is a journalist and author of My Wild and Sleepless Nights: A Mother’s Story and The Red of My Blood: A Death and Life Story.

For a country that is obsessed with class, no one in the UK seems to know what class is. Class is often reduced to cultural signifiers – our accent, what food we eat, what clothes we wear, how we decorate our houses. Or class is portrayed as if it is solely an economic matter. But these ways of thinking obscure more than they illuminate. Our panel explores the modern class structure in the UK. They discuss how class is lived and experienced; how class interacts with other identities such as race and gender; and the relationship between class and political behaviour.

Walkerdine is Professor at the Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, where Dr Ryan Davey is a Lecturer and Richard Gater is a research assistant at the Centre for Adult Social Care Research. Dan Evans is a researcher at Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data.

A real ambassador and a fictional one meet to discuss the world of diplomacy in this event, chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy. Jane D Hartley, the United States Ambassador to the UK, and Keri Russell, who plays the American ambassador in the TV series The Diplomat, speak about international relations, power and all those official receptions.

Mexican writer Aura García-Junco and British-Palestinian author Isabella Hammad talk to translator Daniel Hahn about writing on both sides of the Atlantic, in a continuation of a conversation that was held at Hay Festival Querétaro 2023, in Mexico. García-Junco is an author, screenwriter and occasional translator who, in 2021, was named by Granta magazine as one of the best young writers in the Spanish language. Her fourth book May God Blast the Woman Who Writes About Me has just been published in English. Hammad was included on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2023 list. She is author of Enter Ghost, about a woman who returns to Palestine after years away from her family’s homeland.

From the former Conservative Cabinet minister and co-presenter of 2022’s hit podcast The Rest is Politics, a searing insider’s account of ten extraordinary years in Parliament. From 2010 to 2019, Rory Stewart went from being a political outsider to standing for prime minister – before resigning from a Conservative Party he barely recognised. Tackling ministerial briefs on flood response and prison violence, engaging with conflict and poverty abroad as a foreign minister, and Brexit as a Cabinet minister, Stewart learned first-hand how profoundly hollow and inadequate our democracy and government had become, with cronyism, ignorance and sheer incompetence running rampant. Stewart talks to TLS Fiction and Politics Editor Toby Lichtig.

From the mystery of quantum physics all the way to the horrors of disruptions to world peace, we make the mistake of thinking in terms of individual entities. We forget that entities are made by their relations. Italian theoretical physicist and writer Carlo Rovelli suggests that trying to make sense of the world in terms of relations can help us make better sense of reality on all its levels.

Three experts discuss cultural exchange across the world. Wanjiru Koinange is a Kenyan writer and entrepreneur, founder of Book Bunk, which aims to change Nairobi by restoring some of the city’s most iconic public libraries into sites of inclusivity, heritage, public art, collective memory, knowledge production, shared experiences and cultural exchange. She is author of The Havoc of Choice. Nigerian poet and author Lola Shoneyin is a publisher, festival organiser and author of The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. Colombian writer Velia Vidal is a festival director, author of Tidal Waters and also a contributor to Untold Microcosms: Latin American Writers in the British Museum. In conversation with the Nigerian writer and lawyer Ayisha Osori.

Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard will be remembered for being the first woman in the role in that country’s history, but even more so for her misogyny speech to parliament, in which she called out politician Tony Abbott for his hypocrisy and sexism. She talks to human rights lawyer Baroness Helena Kennedy about one of the most iconic speeches in modern politics, her career in the Australian government and what is still to be achieved when it comes to equality.

Ideas and stories are limitless: our planet’s resources are not. The combined climate, biodiversity and nature emergencies are an existential threat to us all. So we all have a responsibility to help find solutions. Throughout Hay Festival we invite participants to contribute their ideas and concerns and to help build a combined mobilisation message for the future. Today we launch that message, encouraging everyone to be part of the change needed to secure a safe outcome for future generations.

Actor Julian Rhind-Tutt has appeared in Green Wing, Notting Hill and The Witcher. Documentary filmmaker Jack Harries is co-founder of Earthrise Studio. Environmental activist Jane Davidson is the former Welsh Government minister for Education, Environment and Sustainability. In conversation with Nicola Cutcher, investigative journalist, documentary maker, and freelance writer.

The most talked about British story of the year so far has been the Post Office scandal, thanks to a television drama. ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office, starring Toby Jones as the titular Mr Bates, dramatised the case of hundreds of subpostmasters across the UK who were wrongly prosecuted after faulty computer software found money missing from post office branches.

Join Toby Jones to discuss both his role in this series, and his extensive TV and film career as one of the UK's most regarded stage and screen actors, and to discuss the power in television and film to shed light on human stories.

Three authors who share a personal history of displacement and violence discuss writing about their birth countries with lawyer and writer Philippe Sands. Pulitzer Prize winner Hisham Matar is an American-Libyan writer whose novel, My Friends, is about three friends in political exile and the emotional homeland that deep friendships can provide. Elif Shafak is a Turkish-British novelist, author of The Island of Missing Trees, shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022, which follows a romantic relationship between a Greek and a Turkish Cypriot. Palestinian writer Adania Shibli is the author of PEN Translates Award-winning and International Booker Prize-longlisted Minor Detail, a meditation on war, violence and memory that dissects the Palestinian experience of dispossession and life under occupation.

Start your day at Hay Festival with our daily news review. Join 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 Reverend Richard Coles, co-presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live and author of the Canon Clement Mystery series, Dharshini David, author, broadcaster and Chief Economics Correspondent for BBC News, and Professor Suzannah Lipscomb, host of Not Just the Tudors podcast from History Hit and Chair of Judges for the inaugural Women's Prize for Non-Fiction.

American-Libyan writer Hisham Matar’s new novel is about three Libyan men in political exile in London, and the emotional homeland that deep friendships can provide. It begins in 1984, the year that officials inside the Libyan embassy in London’s St James’s Square fired a machine gun into a crowd of unarmed protesters. Matar’s earlier novel, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, about his father’s abduction by Gaddafi’s forces and the decades-long quest to discover his fate, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017. He discusses his new book with Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer.

Why might an orangutan care which toothpaste you choose? What does your mobile phone have to do with wind turbines? And can your morning coffee really power a bus? Economics affects every aspect of our lives and there are huge changes afoot as the global green revolution speeds up. Dharshini David, Chief Economics Correspondent for BBC News, reveals the green changes already taking place in every aspect of our world, from sustainable materials and corporate greenwashing to industrialisation and global trade wars. David explores the industries of energy, food, fashion, technology, manufacturing and finance, showing how the smallest details in our day can tell a bigger economic story.

Authors Anna Funder and Sandra Newman discuss George Orwell, and highlight the women forgotten in his life and his work. Funder’s Wifedom is a non-fiction book about Orwell’s first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, whose literary brilliance shaped Orwell’s work. Largely forgotten now, she is brought back to life by Funder, using newly discovered letters. Newman is the author of Julia, a retelling of Orwell’s 1984. The book explores state control over women’s bodies and the terror of totalitarianism. Newman was chosen by the Orwell Estate to write the novel and has the approval of George Orwell’s son, Richard Blair.

Palestinian writer Adania Shibli discusses her novel Minor Detail with poet Victoria Adukwei Bulley. A story about a young woman raped in the mist of the Palestian/Israeli conflict of 1949, the book was longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature.

Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba – the catastrophe that led to the displacement and expulsion of more than 700,000 people – and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers capture and rape a young Palestinian woman, and kill and bury her in the sand. Many years later, a woman in Ramallah becomes fascinated to the point of obsession with this ‘minor detail’ of history. A haunting meditation on war, violence and memory, Minor Detail cuts to the heart of the Palestinian experience of dispossession, life under occupation, and the persistent difficulty of piecing together a narrative in the face of ongoing erasure and disempowerment.

The British Empire is a subject of both shame and glorification. Journalist Sathnam Sanghera talks to historian David Olusoga about how our imperial past is everywhere: from how we live and think to the foundation of the NHS and even our response to the Covid-19 crisis. Sanghera is author of Empireland and most recently Empireworld, a look at how British imperialism has shaped the world. Olusoga’s latest book is Black History for Every Day of the Year.