Academic and broadcaster Professor Alice Roberts (Channel 4’s Time Team, BBC2’s Digging for Britain) brings us face to face with individuals who lived and died between ten and five centuries ago, giving a brilliant and unexpected portrait of modern Britain. The stories she tells in Crypt are not comforting tales; there’s a focus on pathology, on disease and injury, and the experience of human suffering in the past. Most of the dead will remain anonymous but, thrillingly, she introduces an individual whose life and bones were marked by chronic debilitating disease – and whose name might just be found in history.

In a wide-ranging conversation with University of Oxford's Professor Sarah Hill, DJ Huw Stephens (BBC Radio 6, BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio Cymru) reveals how he selected 100 Welsh records for his new book, and how these artists have influenced Wales’ culture, past and present. He analyses highlights in the careers of the most important recording artists Wales has produced, singing in English or Welsh – including Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, Dafydd Iwan, Max Boyce, Manic Street Preachers, Super Furry Animals, Adwaith and Mace the Great.

Charlotte Church’s childhood and teenage years were a jumble of global superstardom, financial wealth, tabloid intrusion and the accompanying personal strain. Now, she has taken her experiences of chaos and her passion for wellbeing and is a tenacious campaigner for climate action, economic equity, integrated education and political accountability. Church talks to writer and theatre producer Mary Loudon about her campaigning and The Dreaming, her house in mid-Wales which hosts retreats to provide healing, inspire change and cry hope in a troubled world.

The International Booker Prize celebrates the world’s best fiction in translation. It’s awarded annually for a single book and celebrates the vital work of translators, with the £50,000 prize money divided equally between author and translator. The prize will be announced in May, and we present the winners in conversation with Booker Prize Foundation Director Gaby Wood and one of the judges, Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist Romesh Gunesekera.

Born in Belize, brought up in London’s Tottenham, singer/songwriter/composer Errollyn Wallen talks about her life and work in jazz, pop and classical music. Her book Becoming a Composer combines memoir, observations, diary entries, poems and essays, demystifying the world of composing. Her output includes more than 20 operas and numerous orchestral, chamber and vocal works. She has composed pieces for the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games in 2012, for Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees and a reimagining of Parry’s Jerusalem for the Last Night of the Proms. She talks to choir director Juliet Russell.

St Mary’s Church in Hay, with its excellent acoustics, is the perfect setting for Hereford Chamber Choir’s performance of its critically acclaimed Dymock Poets Reimagined. This innovative concert focuses on seven contemporary composers and their choral settings of works by the Dymock Poets (who included Robert Frost, Rupert Brooke and Edward Thomas, all connected with the Gloucestershire village). Founded in 1983, Hereford Chamber Choir consists of 25 exceptional mixed voices. Under music director Simon Harper, the choir has a reputation for performing exciting programmes of choral music from the medieval era to newly commissioned works.

Ruby Wax’s rawest, darkest, funniest and most compelling stage show returns, documenting the extreme journeys she took in order to find an antidote to living a frazzled life. Along the way she hoped to find meaning, peace, happiness – the stuff everyone is chasing. However, after some transcendent experiences, she ended up in a mental institution.

Take a tour of the 88 constellations and explore the science, history and romanticism behind these celestial bodies with the science communicator and presenter of The Sky at Night. Maggie Aderin-Pocock considers looking up at the night sky from different cultures across the globe rather than just focusing on the Western Greek interpretation of the stars. Join her to share in the tranquil joy that is stargazing, reconnecting with both the natural world and our ancestors. You’ll learn how to identify stars, the basics of naked-eye observation, and advice on the best kit and ‘dark sky’ locations.

The winner of the Sky Edinburgh Comedy Award returns with a show about family, immigration, marriage, history, politics – and beans. Shah has appeared on Mock the Week, The Mash Report, QI, Live at the Apollo, Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, Have I Got News for You and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. “Intricately crafted, profoundly moving, howlingly funny… he’s a blazing talent firing on all cylinders” – The Daily Telegraph.

Join Welsh wine critic and broadcaster Jane Parkinson to pour and score your way through six wines that have her peers frothing with excitement. The author of Wine & Food discusses the styles we’re tasting and explains why some naturally lend themselves to rave reviews. But would you give them the same reviews? And is the role of the wine critic a help or a hindrance? Are professional reviews insightful or intimidating?

Join comedian Robin Ince for his unique Book Club, in which he chats with guests about the weirdest books and strangest stories they have read, and their secret reading obsessions. He brings along many of his favourite pulpy horrors, awkward romances and most eccentric self help guides. Expect an exhilarating tour around these books, where readings from Crabs on the Rampage will be twinned with Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin. Robin was named Author of the Year by the Booksellers Association and his most recent book, Bibliomaniac: An Obsessive’s Tour of the Bookshops of Britain was described by the TLS as “a tonic”. Don’t miss this event exclusively designed for Hay Festival 2024.

Start your day with an hour of yoga blending movement, mantra, meditation and breathwork. The classes support detoxification and regeneration – physically, emotionally and spiritually. Our daily yoga classes are brought to you by a collective of ten highly skilled practitioners, all local to Hay-on-Wye. Each practitioner has their own style, but with all you can expect a mindful, student-focused practice with clear cueing and functional sequencing.

Whether you need grounding and recharging before a busy day at the Festival, an opportunity to stretch and move your body, or simply an hour to focus on your breathing, these classes are open and accessible to all. Practitioners will adapt to different levels of experience, providing options for deepening or softening within poses so that each student takes what they need from the practice. Beginners and experienced students are most welcome. Yoga mats are provided.

Please contact Clare Fry at hello@larchwoodstudio.com with any questions relating to these classes. As capacity is limited, we recommend booking in advance to avoid disappointment.

A fantastic opportunity to see behind the scenes of this unique and historic building. Visit at a time of your choice during Castle opening hours.

Hay Castle’s executive director Tom True introduces the key moments and characters from the castle’s past followed by a continental breakfast.

Explore the ancient world with Bettany Hughes, who tells it through its seven greatest monuments: the Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt; the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Iraq; the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Greece; the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, Turkey; the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos, Turkey; the Colossus of Rhodes, Greece; and the Lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt. All were staggeringly audacious, and demonstrated the reaches of human imagination. Now only the Pyramid remains, yet the scale and majesty of these seven wonders still enthral us today. The author of Venus & Aphrodite and Helen of Troy asks: why do we wonder, why do we create and why do we choose to remember the wonder of others?

Put on your walking boots, grab a notebook and join creative producer Kathryn Tann on a writing ‘walk-shop’, using the landscape to shape your stories. Practice using all your senses and surroundings to create memorable and transporting pieces of writing, with a focus on creative non-fiction. You don’t need to be an outdoors expert to bring nature and place into your creative work.

Starting from and returning to the Festival site, the walk covers around 1km in the environs of Hay-on-Wye, with regular stops and writing exercises along the way. Tann’s book Seaglass blends creative non-fiction with nature writing and memoir, portraying the journey of a young woman navigating modern adulthood.

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas burst onto the literary scene in 2004. A novel comprised of six interconnected tales, each written in a unique style and told from a differing perspective, this genre-defying ‘Russian doll’ epic remains one of the most original, unusual and polarising works of recent times. Shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize, in 2012 it was adapted for film with a stellar cast including Tom Hanks and Halle Berry. Mitchell has been nominated for the Booker Prize five times as well as winning the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, given in recognition of a writer’s entire body of work. Twenty years after publication, Mitchell reflects on the past, present and future of his novel. He speaks to journalist and director of the Booker Prize Foundation Gaby Wood.

For hundreds of thousands of years our ability – and willingness – to move over vast distances has allowed humans to escape existential threats and thrive as a species. Yet human mobility today faces ever stronger barriers that not only harm the lives of potential migrants, but also threaten our own societies. The migration impulse is a core facet of the human condition: in attempting to suppress it, governments are sacrificing the future of humanity for the sake of short-term political gain. Visionary thinker Ian Goldin tells the millennia-spanning story of the movement of peoples, offering a powerful set of tools to understand the present as well as the past. Goldin is Oxford Professor of Globalisation and Development. His books include Terra Incognita, Age of Discovery and Age of the City.

The front-bench Labour MP grew up on a council estate in Stepney, East London, the son of teenage parents. His maternal grandfather Bill, an unsuccessful armed robber, spent time behind bars, as did his grandmother, who was also a political campaigner. He brings to life the struggle and heartache of his parents’ and grandparents’ lives in poverty; the choices they had to make between feeding the meter and feeding the family. He is also passionate about the life-changing power of education. Encouraged by a series of inspirational teachers, he won a place at Cambridge, and later became head of education at Stonewall. He talks to BBC broadcaster Samira Ahmed about his journey to become an elected MP in 2015 and now Shadow Health Secretary.

The Indiana Jones of the botanical world recounts his quest to find and save Rafflesia, the world’s largest flowers, from extinction. Talking to writer, photographer and broadcaster Robert Penn, botanist Chris Thorogood offers a fantastic glimpse into the world of extreme fieldwork, with local guides and foresters, braving leeches, kidnap, monitor lizards and lethal forest swamps.

Finding Rafflesia completes Thorogood’s childhood obsession with these plants. From the age of eight he was growing vines up his curtain pole. Today that boy is a world specialist on parasitic plants, Deputy Director of Science at the Oxford Botanic Gardens and a regular panellist on Gardeners’ Question Time.

The American and British novelists discuss their latest work. Téa Obreht won the Orange Prize in 2011 for The Tiger’s Wife. Her new novel The Morningside follows Silvia and her mother, expelled from their ancestral home, to a crumbling luxury tower in a dystopian future. Silvia knows nothing about why she and her mother came to be here, but an aunt offers glimpses of her demolished homeland. Sarah Perry’s Enlightenment is a story of love and astronomy told over the course of 20 years through the lives of two improbable best friends, torn between their commitment to religion and their desire for more. They develop an obsession with the 19th-century female astronomer said to haunt a nearby manor. Could astronomy offer as much wonder as divine or earthly love? Perry’s previous novels include The Essex Serpent, which was adapted into an Apple TV series starring Tom Hiddleston and Claire Danes. Obreht and Perry talk to critic, academic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari.

Well known to Hay Music audiences and acclaimed as a “pianist of extraordinary gifts” (Gramophone) and “immense power” (The Times), Clare Hammond is recognised for the virtuosity and authority of her performances. In 2016, she won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Young Artist Award in recognition of outstanding achievement. In the fine setting of St Mary’s Church, Hammond plays a programme comprising: Clara Schumann: Three Romances Op. 21; Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2 ‘Moonlight’; Samy Moussa: Al’assaut des jardins; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Sonata in D major, K. 311 and Cécile Chaminade: ‘Impromptu’ Étude de Concert, Op. 35 No. 5 and Étude Romantique, Op. 132.

Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion and the UK’s first and only Green Party MP, delves into our literary heritage to explore what it can teach us about the most pressing issues of our time, from the toxic legacy of Empire to the struggle for constitutional reform and the accelerating climate emergency. Today the dominant story of English nationhood is told by cheerleaders for Brexit, exceptionalism and imperial nostalgia. Focusing on stories of the English people’s radical inclusivity, their deep-rooted commitment to the natural world, their long struggle to win rights for all, Lucas sketches out an alternative Englishness: one that we can all embrace to build a greener, fairer future. In conversation with Brenda Hale, judge and former President of the Supreme Court.

Join the novelists for a discussion of writing and their latest books. Carys Davies’ Clear is set in 1843 on a remote Scottish island. Ivar leads a life of quiet isolation until the day he finds a man unconscious on the beach. Taking him into his home, Ivar is unaware that the newcomer has been sent to evict him and turn the island into grazing land for sheep. Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz takes place in 1922, in an America that never was, when two detectives find a body on a roof. A delicate peace holds in the city of Cahokia, but that body is about to spark off a week that will spill the city’s secrets and bring it either to destruction or rebirth. Davies and Spufford talk to critic, academic and broadcaster Shahidha Bari.

Watch the professional at work in this cooking demonstration and tasting session as chef and farmer Julius Roberts shares simple, seasonal recipes and tales from his Dorset smallholding. After a year at London’s Noble Rot, he longed for a simpler life and to grow his own food. Four piglets were soon joined by chickens, goats, sheep and an extensive vegetable patch. Three years later, his debut cookbook The Farm Table contains 100 recipes using affordable, seasonal ingredients. Each chapter has a mix of smaller plates, veggie dishes, fish and meat, with a few easy puddings to finish.

Facing a minor mid-life crisis, Anna packs in her high-powered life in New York – complete with beautiful apartment, well-meaning partner, and excellent job – to head back to Ireland for a PR job at a super-high-end coastal resort. Even though the locals hate the resort, there’s no wrinkle Anna can’t smooth over… apart from her own mistakes, which have followed her from New York. Much-loved author and literary phenomenon Marian Keyes introduces Anna, the star of her newest book My Favourite Mistake, discusses her writing career and perhaps even shares a few of her own favourite mistakes.

The two writers discuss the history and future of food. Taras Grescoe argues that the key to sustainable eating lies in looking back to the foods, many almost extinct, that have sustained us throughout existence. His The Lost Supper reveals the flavours captivating gastronomes today: ancient sourdough bread last baked by Egyptian pharaohs; raw-milk farmhouse cheese from endangered British cattle; ham from Spanish pata negra pigs foraging on acorns. To save these foods, we have to eat them, or face famine and ecological collapse. Pen Vogler tells the stories of foods at the centre of social upheaval: the medieval inns boosted by the plague; the Enclosures that finished off the roast goose; the post-war supermarkets luring customers with strawberries. Her book Stuffed draws on cookbooks, literature and social records, to tell a tale of feast and famine. In times of plenty, we stuff ourselves. When the food runs out, we’re stuffed too.

Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad (The Bookseller of Kabul, Angel of Grozny) introduces us to three people whose lives have been shaped by the fall and rise of the Taliban – Jamila, Bashir and Ariana – as well their families, friends, foes and co-fighters. Jamila is a prominent women’s rights activist; Bashi is a Taliban commander; Ariana is a law student who had one semester left when the Taliban came to power.

Drawing on her thought-provoking new book The Afghans: Three Lives Through War, Love and Revolt, Seierstad shows us their stories – encompassing love, loss, revolution and war as well as the everyday rhythms of family life. Experience the lead up to the Taliban retaking power in 2021, how the first year of their rule unfolded, and where this leaves Afghans today and tomorrow. Seierstad talks to writer and journalist Sarfraz Manzoor.

An exciting new voice in fiction presents his latest book. McKenzie’s debut An Olive Grove in Ends was Guardian Novel of the Year 2022. Fast by the Horns is set in Bristol, 1980, in the tight-knit neighbourhood of St Pauls. Fourteen-year-old Jabari is proud of his position as the only son of revered Community leader Ras Levi. Raised in a world of sus laws and council neglect, Jabari finds hope in his Rastafari faith, with the comforting vision that one day believers will at last be free from oppression and prejudice. But a local firebrand activist has been arrested, and violence soon overflows, pulling father and son into its maelstrom. A chance encounter with a young Black child gives Jabari an opportunity for justice – or is it revenge? McKenzie talks to writer and TikTok creator Ben Mercer.

There is a prescription for whatever might be your poetic need or desire, from verses to soothe your soul and brighten your day to poems that offer comfort in times of trouble. The creator and editor of The Poetry Pharmacy is joined by special guests including Natascha McElhone (The Crown, Designated Survivor), Dominic West (Brassic, The Wire) and more to be announced for an event of connection, imagination and inspiration.

Drifting and directionless in her twenties, Marina Gibson escaped from the city to the country, where she picked up a fishing rod for the first time in years. It was a return to a childhood pursuit and a passion passed on by her mother. Through fishing, Gibson – founder of the Northern Fishing School at the Swinton Estate and an ambassador for Orvis, Costa and Angling IQ – found a source of serenity, refuge from a failing marriage and a connection to a tradition of female anglers stretching back generations. In Cast, Catch and Release Gibson follows the journey of the migrating salmon, and shares her own journey back to herself. Gibson talks to writer and broadcaster Horatio Clare.

Two Titans of the comedy scene share their experiences on stage, screen and in real life with BBC broadcaster Samira Ahmed. Actor and comedian Helen Lederer (author of Losing It) is best known as Catriona, the dippy journalist in Absolutely Fabulous. Her memoir Not That I’m Bitter reveals how choppy the waters could be for women struggling to be seen and heard in the world of comedy. Doon Mackichan played comedy characters in the hugely popular Brass Eye and Smack the Pony, but throughout her career she’s challenged stereotypes. In My Lady Parts, she examines how we can say no to objectification, in an industry that has been exposed for its deep-rooted sexism.