New Events and Speakers

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 Areeba Hamid, Co-executive Director of Greenpeace UK and former leader of the global finance programme at The Sunrise Project, and Patrick Vallance, former UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA) from 2018-2023, Chief Scientific Advisor for COP26 and Chair of the Natural History Museum. Chaired by The Independent editor Geordie Greig.

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 journalist James O’Brien, judge Lady Hale and comedian Doon Mackichan.

Doon Mackichan is best known for her comedy characters in the hugely popular Brass Eye, Smack the Pony and Toast of London. Lady Hale is former President of the UK Supreme Court and James O'Brien is a British radio presenter, podcaster and author. Chaired by The Independent chief books critic Martin Chilton.

Tim Peake was the first British astronaut to conduct a spacewalk at the International Space Station, and an inspiration for budding young scientists and astronauts everywhere. In this out-of-this-world event, Peake talks about his first non-fiction book for children, The Cosmic Diary of Our Incredible Universe with space scientist, educator, author and presenter Maggie Aderin-Pocock. You'll discover everything from how stars are made, to which fruit can create antimatter. Peake is a former Apache pilot, flight instructor, test pilot and European Space Agency astronaut whose books include his memoir Limitless, and the photography collection Hello, is this Planet Earth?

Join Leusa Llewelyn, Artistic Director of Literature Wales, as she speaks to four of the authors shortlisted for the 2024 Wales Book of the Year Awards. The writers discuss their work and explore the wider context of literature in Wales today. Gain an introduction to some of Wales’ best writers, with the winners being announced later this summer at the Awards Ceremony on 4 July.

The Wales Book of the Year Awards are the national literary awards celebrating outstanding creative talent in Welsh and English across fiction, poetry, non-fiction, creative non-fiction and writing for children and young people. Established in the late 1960s, the awards have since 2011 been run by Literature Wales, the national charity for the development of literature.

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 American literature and culture specialist Professor Sarah Churchwell, author of The Wrath to Come, and David Runciman, professor of politics at Cambridge University and author of Political Hypocrisy and The Confidence Trap, and Lionel Shriver, renowned journalist and author of We Need to Talk about Kevin and Mania. Chaired by The Independent chief books critic Martin Chilton.

Gus Casely-Hayford dives into the power of creativity - its ability to inspire makers, creators and innovators everywhere whether that is through fashion, design or art. As the V&A builds up to opening V&A East in 2025, Gus talks about how it will create new possibilities for everyone, the new art scene in East London and the changes he hopes creative opportunity will bring in the coming year.

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!

Today’s guests include comedian Marcus Brigstocke, the British Antarctic Survey’s physician Gavin Francis, former Secretary of State for Education Justine Greening and science journalist Layal Liverpool.

Howzat? For the first time in Hay Festival Global history, the thwack of leather against willow replaces debate. Actor and author Stephen Fry puts down his pen to umpire the inaugural cricket match between a Hay Festival All-Star team and the local Hay Town team.

The Authors Cricket Team has a 100-year history with the likes of PG Wodehouse, AA Milne and Arthur Conan Doyle playing.. More recently, they’ve played against IPL players, the Vatican and the national teams of Japan and Iceland. Now Hay Festival Global is teaming up with The Authors to put out a side of writers and actors, with the odd professional cricketer filling in…

You can decide whether authors Adam Rutherford, Robert Macfarlane and Charlie Campbell’s batting is better than their writing, whether comedians Marcus Brigstocke and Carrie Quinlan’s bowling beats their jokes and whether musician and actor Johnny Flynn’s catching out-performs his acting. Joined by two professional cricketers – Claire Taylor and Azeem Rafiq – the Hay Festival All-Stars will battle it out against the mighty Hay Town team captained by John Sly.

Who will come out on top?

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 the Director of the AI & Geopolitics Institute at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge Verity Harding, award winning journalist, activist and founder of the Compassion in Politics cross party Think Tank Jennifer Nadel and award-winning senior reporter, author, and host of climate podcast Zero Akshat Rathi.They talk to Bronwen Maddox, the CEO of the International Affairs Think Tank Chatham House.

Spanning 3,000 years, from the birth of Minoan Crete to the death of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in Rome, The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World Through the Women Who Shaped It is a new history of the ancient world told, for the very first time, through women. For centuries, men have been writing histories of antiquity filled with warlords, emperors and kings. But when it comes to incorporating women, aside from Cleopatra and Boudica, writers have been more comfortable describing mythical heroines than real ones. While Penelope and Helen of Troy live on in the imagination, their real-life counterparts have been relegated to the margins. In The Missing Thread, Daisy Dunn inverts this tradition and puts the women of history at the centre of the narrative.

Dr Daisy Dunn is an award-winning classicist and author. Her previous book, Not Far From Brideshead: Oxford Between the Wars, was selected for Radio 4’s Open Book and longlisted for the Runciman Award. Her In The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny was an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times and a book of the year in several outlets.

A hundred years since the Welsh Women's Peace Petition in 1923-24, the young people of Wales are amplifying their call in 2024 with this year's Urdd Peace and Goodwill Message. To mark this moment, Codi Pais magazine launches a special issue celebrating a cultural legacy of peace that's still practiced by Welsh women today.
Join poet Casi Wyn as she meets some of the young women who participated in forming this year's Urdd Peace and Goodwill Message, and reflect on how contemporary Wales continues to play its part in fostering a culture of peace today.

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, and is chaired by leading science writer and broadcaster Vivienne Parry.

Join Laura Dockrill, author, illustrator and judge of the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction, and Kate Mosse, author and founding director of the Women's Prizes, in conversation with Isabella Hammad (Enter Ghost) and Claire Kilroy (Soldier Sailor) two of the writers shortlisted for the 2024 prize. They discuss their selected novels, their broader themes and the impact the prize has on both writers and readers.

The winner of the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction will be announced on Thursday 13 June. Brought to you by the Women's Prize Trust, the charity which enriches society by creating equitable opportunities for women in the world of books and beyond.

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. They will be joined by social philosopher and internationally best selling author Roman Krznaric. Krznaric is Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, founder of the world’s first Empathy Museum and author of many books about the power of ideas to create change including The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World. Empathy, The Wonderbox and Carpe Diem Regained, and History for Tomorrow: Inspiration from the Past for the Future of Humanity. Chaired by writer and journalist Sarfraz Manzoor.

Join Professor Susanna Lipscomb, chair of judges for the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, in conversation with Laura Cumming (Thunderclap) Noreen Masud (A Flat Place), Tiya Miles* (All That She Carried)and Madhumita Murgia* (Code Dependent), four of the writers shortlisted for the 2024 prize. They discuss selected books, their broader themes and the importance of this new prize as a platform to elevate women’s voices in non-fiction that have previously been overlooked.

The winner of the 2024 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction will be announced on Thursday 13 June. Brought to you by the Women's Prize Trust, the charity which enriches society by creating equitable opportunities for women in the world of books and beyond.

*Tiya Miles and Madhumita Murgia will appear digitally.

“And how late it is already!” So ended one of Franz Kafka’s final diary entries; the last was dated 12 June 1923, less than a year before he died on 3 June 1924. The second weekend of this year’s Hay Festival coincides with the 100th anniversary of the last two days of Kafka’s life, a tragic moment in literary history but one also charged with hope, because of his irrepressible spirit and immortal work, which survived despite its author’s wishes.

To mark the centenary, the London Review of Books has mined its remarkable archive to publish a chorus of the different ways its writers have thought about Kafka over the years. This one-off performance is interspersed with readings from Kafka’s own later diary entries, by special guests Toby Jones and Julian Rhind-Tutt; and music from Max Richter’s The Blue Notebooks, itself inspired by Kafka’s journals, played by the celebrated organist James McVinnie.

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, 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 and chaired by former BBC Arts Correspondent and Chief News Presenter Rebecca Jones.