Hay Festival 2023

Got a dilemma about love, relationships, social media, friendship, family or sex? Chances are Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love, Dear Dolly) has provided a solution to it – and many other issues – in the years she’s been running her Dear Dolly agony aunt column in The Sunday Times Style. In conversation with Strictly Come Dancing professional Mabuse, Alderton discusses some of her favourite columns, and shares her wisdom on life, love and more.

We all, regardless of who we are, transition at some point, developing as people. In activist and model Munroe Bergdorf’s Transitional, she shares reflections from her own life to illustrate how transitioning is an essential part of all of our lives. Through the story of how Bergdorf sought to live with authenticity, she shows us how to heal, build a stronger community and evolve as a society out of shame and into pride. She talks to novelist (Rosewater) and gal-dem founder Liv Little about her life-affirming, heartfelt and intimate book. Bergdorf is contributing editor at British Vogue and hosts the podcast The Way We Are.

Take a step behind the most famous door in the UK with Whips, Cleo Watson’s tale of intrigue and scandal. When Bobby Cliveden decides to campaign against the closure of her local mental health unit, she ends up in the heart of the UK’s bustling political centre, and discovers a secret, soft-skilled machinery behind so much political change at the very highest level of government: women. Watson, who worked on President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012 and served in 10 Downing Street as Theresa May’s political adviser then Boris Johnson’s co-deputy chief of staff, talks to ITV News’ political editor Robert Peston (author of The Whistleblower) about writing fiction based on reality, satirising politics and her unique insight into government.

Dara Ó Briain was ready for a break after 180 performances of his last tour, across 20 countries and two years. That was in March 2020 and he now, of course, regrets saying that and will never wish for it again. His new show So…Where Were We? largely ignores the pandemic, and contains his usual mix of stories, one-liners, audience messing and tripping over his words by talking too quickly because he's so giddy to be back in front of a crowd.

Six-member ska ensemble Zhadan and the Dogs is a band that defines the musical scene of Eastern Ukraine. Their two-decade long career includes two acclaimed studio albums. Join them for a night of dance, good music and songs that will make you think and feel.

Three exciting South Asian storytellers perform and speak about their work. Zia Ahmed is a poet and writer hailing from North-West London, a former Poetry Slam Champion at Roundhouse London, whose Peaceophobia won Best Stage Production 2022 at the Asian Media Awards. Reeta Loi is a Buddhist, Dalit and queer Indian woman raised in the UK whose new show takes the audience on a journey spanning 15 years. Hussain Manawer is a British mental health activist, poet and writer born and raised in East London, and a globally renowned mental health activist. The trio speak to BBC broadcaster and DJ Bobby Friction, who co-founded Going South with Chris Tofu and Ajay Chhabra to support South Asian artists.

Experts Paul Johnson and Simon Johnson talk to economist Faiza Shaheen about holding government to account, why elites often benefit from our financial and technological systems, and how we can ensure a fairer world for all. Paul Johnson is director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the author of Follow the Money: How Much Does Britain Cost?, an examination of the way the state raises and spends £1 trillion of our money every year. Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz professor of entrepreneurship in the Sloan School at MIT and was previously chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. He is the co-author, with Daron Acemoglu, of Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity.

Family shapes who we are and is one of the things we all have in common. In The World: A Family History, historian Simon Sebag Montefiore takes us through the story of humanity via the unit of the family. Starting with the footsteps of a family walking along a beach 950,000 years ago, he covers the families that have shaped our worlds, from the Medicis and Rothschilds to the Churchills, Kennedys, Kims and more.

A novel of modern India, Santanu Bhattacharya’s debut One Small Voice invites us to spend two decades in the company of Shubhankar. Aged 10, he witnesses a terrible act of mob violence in which his family are complicit, and which changes the course of his life. Wrestling with the past, the expectations of his family and the seismic shifts taking place around him as the country enters the new millennium, Shubhankar one day makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Bhattacharya, who won the 2021 Mo Siewcharran Prize, is in conversation with novelist Max Porter (Grief is the Thing With Feathers, Shy).

Guides from the Brecon Beacons National Park will lead a gentle walk through the beautiful surrounds of Hay-on-Wye. You’ll be joined by a guest from the Festival programme.

Hay-on-Wye is based within 520 square miles of beautiful landscape that makes up Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) National Park. The National Park is driving change to bring about a sustainable future, meeting our needs within planetary boundaries. Their Hay Festival series of gentle walks will take you into the town’s local environment while offering the opportunity to learn more about the Park’s work and its treasured landscape.

Please wear appropriate footwear and outdoor gear.

Create your own Hay Castle knight with the Brothers McLeod! The Brothers McLeod are Myles and Greg, author and illustrator of the hilarious Knight Sir Louis series. Join them in the independent kingdom of ‘Hay-Wyre’ to help them create a brand new knight character based in Hay Castle in an event packed with drawing, comics and lots and lots of laughs.

This heart-warming family show, based on the much-loved novels by Tove Jansson, tells the story of a year in Moominvalley. Moomintroll wakes up in the middle of winter with a ‘something-wrong-feeling’. There’s no sign of his good friend Snufkin, or the note Snufkin left him. As winter turns to spring and Snufkin returns, the days lengthen into a lazy summer and ‘the sea brings them all the adventures they could wish for’.

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 2.5 hour duration. Accompanying adults: please stay in attendance at all times, but you do not require a ticket.

Join global superstar, pop icon and book lover Dua Lipa for a tour of the people, places and events that have shaped her life and the books that symbolise these moments, hosted by Booker Prize Foundation director Gaby Wood. Lipa discusses how books have been her constant companion and her lifeline, from her childhood in London and her school years in Kosovo to the long hours spent on a tour bus as a musician. Lipa hosts the podcast Dua Lipa: At Your Service and champions books and authors through her platform Service95.

Irene Vallejo presents an immersive journey through the history of books and libraries in the ancient world which has captivated millions of readers around the world. From the banks of the Nile and the battlefields of Alexander the Great, to the censorship of the humorists and the empowerment of women writers like Sappho, Vallejo enlivens the origins of the book. Its invention was as disruptive as the internet, and through these journeys into the past, Vallejo reflects on the dilemmas of our modern world and the challenges of the future. In conversation with Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer.

They go almost unnoticed if you visit a church, but church kneelers are essential, and have a long and storied history. Elizabeth Bingham, the leading authority on Anglican church kneelers, celebrates the design and craft of the cushions and delves into their history, from their beginnings at Winchester in the 1930s to their booming popularity after the Queen's coronation, to the present-day congregations who are keeping the tradition alive. She talks to novelist Kate Mosse.

Fabulously funny actor and author Stephen Mangan and tremendously talented illustrator Anita Mangan bring us laughter, games, drawing and sibling stories. The creators of Escape the Rooms and The Fart that Changed the World are back with their laugh-out-loud new book, The Unlikely Rise of Harry Sponge. Get ready to meet a grumpy king without an heir and five kids competing for the throne in the ‘Crown Duels’. Find out what it takes to be the greatest kid in the kingdom and discover how you should never underestimate the underdog.

This heart-warming family show, based on the much-loved novels by Tove Jansson, tells the story of a year in Moominvalley. Moomintroll wakes up in the middle of winter with a ‘something-wrong-feeling’. There’s no sign of his good friend Snufkin, or the note Snufkin left him. As winter turns to spring and Snufkin returns, the days lengthen into a lazy summer and ‘the sea brings them all the adventures they could wish for’.

There is a question everyone has to ask and answer – in fact, has to keep on asking and keep on answering. It is ‘How should I live my life?’, meaning ‘What sort of person should I be? What values shall I live by? What shall I aim for?’ The great majority of people do not ask this question, they merely answer it unthinkingly in conventional ways. This is the ‘Socratic Question’, challenging us to examine the philosophy of life we live by. Everyone has a philosophy of life, but most people do not know that they have one, because they imbibed it unconsciously from society, parents, schools, friends. What are the assumptions of that unconscious philosophy, and the reasons for living according to it? Do these assumptions and reasons survive scrutiny? If one really thought about one’s life and the philosophy that underlies it, what changes would one make?

In Philosophy and Life Grayling explores how to answer the Socratic challenge and examines the most important questions that arise in doing so: death, the great inevitable, love, the great desirable, meaning, the great mystery – and the great hope, happiness. What do these concepts mean – really mean? And what difference will exploring them, and other equally important questions, make to one’s life and its choices? A serious but accessible and stimulating account of what philosophy offers in thinking about life, its value and its meaning.

Discover the lives, loves, adventures and trailblazing musical careers of four now largely forgotten extraordinary women from Leah Broad, a junior research fellow at Christ Church, Oxford University and author of Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World and Alice Farnham, a conductor who has played concerts with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, and Southbank Sinfonia, author of In Good Hands: The Making of a Modern Conductor. In conversation with cultural historian Gavin Plumley, the pair introduce Ethel Smyth, a queer Victorian composer famed for her operas; Rebecca Clarke, a violist who was one of the first women ever hired by a professional orchestra; Dorothy Howell, a prodigy known as the ‘English Strauss’; and Doreen Carwithen, one of Britain’s first woman film composers who scored Elizabeth II’s coronation film.