Hay Festival 2023

Come and join Rooted Forest School for outdoor family sessions inspired by the Forest School approach. We’ll use foraged materials to craft natural items that you can take away with you, taking part in some simple tool use and finishing off with a hot apple juice around the fire. These sessions are aimed at families and will run whatever the weather, so make sure you’re wrapped up for the conditions.

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.

Enjoy this half-hour open air performance between events. Listen out for some traditional and contemporary folk from the Rolling Home Band. A group of musicians from various folk bands and ensembles, the band comes together to play special festival performances.

Find out how master storyteller Kingsolver reimagined Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield for her new novel, placing her version in the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. Demon Copperhead, who gives the book its title, is born to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, in an area where poverty is all around, and the opioid crisis is striking neighbours, parents and friends. Demon craves affection and safety – and a glimpse of the ocean – and his tale of love and loss shows just how he’ll travel to try and get there. Kingsolver has been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, and in 2010 won what is now the Women’s Prize for fiction for her novel The Lacuna.

There will not be a book signing after this event.

Journalist Daniel Finkelstein’s family story is one of miraculous survival against the 20th century’s two genocidal dictators. His grandfather Alfred is now widely acknowledged to have been the first person to recognise the existential danger Hitler posed to the Jews, and with his family was sent to Bergen-Belsen, while his father’s family was sent to do hard labour in a Siberian gulag. In Hitler, Stalin, Mum & Dad, Finkelstein, who serves in the House of Lords, shares his family’s extraordinary, often painful and hellish history through concentration camps, the Gulag, secret archives and freezing wastelands, to eventual happiness and safety. He talks to Philippe Sands, author of East West Street and The Ratline.

Explore the political, cultural and mythical history of Wales, and get a glimpse of what lies ahead for us all when it comes to climate change, with writers Tom Bullough and Julie Brominicks. In Sarn Helen, Bullough takes us on a walk along Sarn Helen – Helen’s Causeway – the old Roman Road that runs from the south of Wales to the north, weaving in conversations with climate scientists and showing the likely impact of climate change on Wales, while Brominicks celebrates the language, landscape, peoples and biodiversity of Cymru past and present in The Edge of Cymru, exploring themes of belonging and cymreictod (Welshness), trying to find clarity, courage and possibility in the environmental crisis.

Rana Mitter is joined by a panel of writers to look at our relationship with landscapes and the natural world. Kapka Kassabova’s Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time details her stay in a remote valley by the River Mesa in Albania; Patrick Barkham is talking at the Hay Festival about Roger Deakin, the environmentalist and Noreen Masud has written a memoir called A Flat Place.

Prepare yourself for an exciting prehistoric adventure with TV scientist Garrod, exploring the biggest, deadliest and weirdest predators that ever roamed the planet. Garrod’s unique mix of humour and science will shine a new light on the ever popular world of dinosaurs. Garrod is professor of evolutionary biology and science engagement at the University of East Anglia, and worked with Sir David Attenborough on the BBC’s Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard documentary.

Come and join Rooted Forest School for outdoor family sessions inspired by the Forest School approach. We’ll use foraged materials to craft natural items that you can take away with you, taking part in some simple tool use and finishing off with a hot apple juice around the fire. These sessions are aimed at families and will run whatever the weather, so make sure you’re wrapped up for the conditions.

The story of animation stretches back to the early 1800s with the invention of spinning optical illusion devices such as the zoetrope. These days animation is everywhere from animated films, cartoons and GIFs to computer games and VR. But how did we get here? Learn about the origins of early animation and create your own loopy animation in this fun, hands-on workshop led by visual artists MASH Cinema.

Enjoy this half-hour open air performance between events. Listen out for some traditional and contemporary folk from the Rolling Home Band. A group of musicians from various folk bands and ensembles, the band comes together to play special festival performances.

We have long been taught to presume that modern global history began when the ‘Old World’ encountered the ‘New’, when Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ America in 1492. But, as Caroline Dodds Pennock conclusively shows in her groundbreaking book, for tens of thousands of Aztecs, Maya, Totonacs, Inuit and others – enslaved people, diplomats, explorers, servants, traders – the reverse was true: they discovered Europe. For them, Europe comprised savage shores – a land of riches and marvels, yet perplexing for its brutal disparities of wealth and quality of life, and its baffling beliefs. The story of these Indigenous Americans abroad is a story of abduction, loss, cultural appropriation, and, as they saw it, of apocalypse – a story that has largely been absent from our collective imagination of the times. She speaks to historian, writer and broadcaster David Olusoga.

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 has had a huge and negative effect on the country’s women; they are banned from secondary and university education, cannot work for non-governmental organisations, and face increasing restrictions on basic freedoms. ​Shazia Haya fled Afghanistan in 2021 and she presents Dars a new BBC education series for girls who are barred from attending secondary school in the country. Film-maker and journalist Tamana Ayazi speaks to the BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet about the reality for women in Afghanistan, and what happens next. Ayazi directed the Netflix documentary In her Hands, which narrates the story of Zafira Ghafari and her fight for human rights when the Taliban took over her country. ​They both speak to the BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet about the reality for women in Afghanistan, and what happens next.

From creating simple yet tasty recipes with low-cost store cupboard ingredients to creating the Vimes ‘Boots’ index to measure the cost of basic foodstuffs and inflation, Monroe is the UK’s best-loved expert on budget cooking. She discusses her new collection of recipes, Thrifty Kitchen, and talks about her activism around ensuring everyone has access to delicious, nutritious food.

Join Nihal Arthanayake live in conversation with the biggest names from Hay Festival 2023.

BBC Radio 3’s Lunchtime Concert series is presented by Sarah Walker and explores the music of Schubert and others. This first of four recitals broadcast during the Hay Festival week offers a programme including Schubert’s String Quartet No 10 in E flat, D87 and Hensel’s String Quartet in E flat, Op 277.

The internationally renowned and versatile Carducci String Quartet have performed everything from brand new quartets and classic works to folk-rock. The Quartet’s members are Matthew Denton (violin), Michelle Fleming (violin), Eoin Schmidt-Martin (viola) and Emma Denton (cello).

Recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Please arrive in good time.

Get set for some supercharged family fun with David Walliams’ latest novel, an action-packed comic caper set in a city called Bedlam, about the Police Dog School’s newest recruit and future of crime fighting: Robodog. Despite his inexperience, it’s up to Robodog to help stop the most feared duo in Bedlam, and their evil plans to ruin the city. David introduces his unlikely heroes, despicable baddies and a comedic cast of characters including an ice queen, a giant worm and a dastardly collective of cats.

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.

Enjoy this half-hour open air performance between events. Listen out for some traditional and contemporary folk from the Rolling Home Band. A group of musicians from various folk bands and ensembles, the band comes together to play special festival performances.