Hay Festival 2024

Rotoscope and remix! Leave your mark – help reanimate, reimagine and remix short films with visual artists MASH Cinema. During the workshop you’ll experiment with techniques pioneered by animator Max Fleischer to produce new moving image artwork in this fun, hands-on collaborative creative project. Completed animations will be available to view online.

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

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.

Propaganda, fake news and the fight for the narrative define contemporary and past wars and society. How do we identify and combat propaganda, and how should we move forward from it? Our panel discuss how to deal with biased and misleading communication with Oliver Bullough, author of Butler to the World.

Peter Pomerantsev is author of How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist who Outwitted Hitler. A Soviet-born British journalist and TV producer, he is Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics’ Institute of Global Affairs. Nobel Peace Prize-winner Maria Ressa is author of How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future. Co-founder and CEO of the Filippino online news site Rappler, she is a Fellow at Columbia’s new Institute of Global Politics.

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.

Marking 100 years since the death of Franz Kafka and 75 years since the publication of George Orwell’s 1984, we discuss the lasting legacy of these two writers and consider their continuing influence in the 21st century.

Are you a fan of Norse myths? Have you ever wondered what Loki, the mischievous shape-shifter and cunning trickster god would be like if they were banished to Earth in the form of an 11-year-old? Well, look no further – this is the event for you! Join author and Norse myth super fan Louie Stowell to hear all about her bestselling series Loki: A Bad God’s Guide to… Discover how to draw Loki and even create your own Norse gods in this interactive event packed full of humour and cool facts.

Please bring your own sketchbook and pencils to draw along in this event.

Rotoscope and remix! Leave your mark – help reanimate, reimagine and remix short films with visual artists MASH Cinema. During the workshop you’ll experiment with techniques pioneered by animator Max Fleischer to produce new moving image artwork in this fun, hands-on collaborative creative project. Completed animations will be available to view online.

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.

Award-winning scientist and BBC broadcaster Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock returns to Hay Festival with more of her fabulous facts, mind-blowing insights and engaging explanations. Dr Maggie’s new book Am I Made of Stardust? addresses such questions as whether there are rainbows on other planets, and what dinner tastes like on the International Space Station…

Take a fresh look at chivalry with activist and bestselling feminist writer Laura Bates. She introduces her new YA fantasy Sisters of Sword and Shadow, a reimagining of the tales of the Arthurian Round Table through a feminist lens. Discover the Sisterhood of Silk Knights who live in a world of ancient feuds and glorious battles and who are determined to protect their community and right the wrongs of men. Laura shares her original inspiration, her action-packed research at Knight school and why she hopes this novel will energise and bring joy to feminists young and old.

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

Come to the Family Garden for a pizza masterclass with Kitchen Garden Pizza. In this one-hour session your imagination and creativity will be fed along with your belly! You’ll get your hands messy with freshly grown and foraged ingredients, make and top your own dough and observe the pizzaioli at work at the wood-fired oven. And while you wait for your pizza to cook, you can decorate your own pizza box!
Dairy-free and gluten-free options available

Rotoscope and remix! Leave your mark – help reanimate, reimagine and remix short films with visual artists MASH Cinema. During the workshop you’ll experiment with techniques pioneered by animator Max Fleischer to produce new moving image artwork in this fun, hands-on collaborative creative project. Completed animations will be available to view online.

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.