Hay Festival Winter Weekend 2023

Dark days, cold temperatures and unfriendly weather don’t mean your garden doesn’t have potential in winter. Author and award-winning garden designer Naomi Slade shares tips on getting the most out of your green space in the winter months.

Addressing the fundamentals of winter gardening, Slade will offer recommendations on the flowers, plants and vegetables you can grow, and show you how to make your garden useable and enjoyable.

Slade, a journalist, author, designer and consultant, celebrates the coldest season in her book RHS The Winter Garden, revealing how to reclaim the outdoors. She is the author of a number of books and has won awards for her garden displays.

She talks to freelance writer and green consultant Kitty Corrigan.

Chef Gelf Alderson gets mouths watering with a discussion about the new book from the legendary River Cottage restaurants. Alderson discusses how cooks can harness the power of the oven to transform good quality, everyday ingredients into their more deliciously caramelised, roasted counterparts. Whether you’re a gourmet chef or a humble home cook, Alderson offers up useful tips, tricks and recipes.

Alderson has been executive head chef of River Cottage for over 10 years and, during his time there, has worked with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to create the menus served in all six River Cottage restaurants. He talks to Welsh presenter and producer Meinir Howells.

What foods do you eat when nobody is watching? And what does that food tell us about our lives, memories and experiences?

Food writer Grace Dent’s new book Comfort Eating, inspired by the award-winning podcast of the same name, is an intimate collection that celebrates the food we turn to behind closed doors, and features interviews with people include Jo Brand – who loves fried bread sandwiches – and Scarlett Moffat, whose go-to snack is Wotsits-topped beans on toast.

In this event, Dent invites us into her kitchen for a look at her comfort foods, and looks at the joy of the food we eat when we’re alone.

Dent is a columnist, broadcaster and author and the Guardian’s restaurant critic. Her memoir Hungry won the 2021 Fortnums Debut Book Award, and she hosts the podcast Comfort Eating. She talks to Welsh presenter and producer Meinir Howells.

Join award-winning author and TV personality Oz Clarke on a journey through the ages as he explores the places, the people and the bottles that have shaped the captivating history of wine.

Starting as far back as 6000 BC and the probable birth of a wine culture in ancient Georgia, through the fact and fiction of Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome and to the trends and tribulations of now – including the devastation wildfires cause to winemakers– Clarke takes us on a whistle-stop tour of wine history, taken from his book Oz Clarke's Story of Wine.

Clarke is one of the world’s leading wine experts, known for his phenomenal palate, irreverent style, accurate predictions, and enthusiasm for life in general and wine in particular. He was awarded an OBE in 2020.

There will be a small glass of wine on arrival supplied by local wine merchant Tanners. Audience members will also be able to place orders after the event.