Hay Festival Winter Weekend 2024

The winter months don’t mean an outdoor space can’t be a source of comfort and solace, as Caroline Quentin argues in this event. The actress, drawing on her life-long passion for gardening, talks to Tamsin Westhorpe about the joy she gets from spending time in her garden, whether she’s grappling with the best way to grow plants and vegetables or raising seeds in her potting shed.

Quentin shares stories from her lifetime of gardening – from thieving blackbirds to singing to dragonflies – and shares tips and tricks that can be used all year round. Known for her roles in TV shows including Men Behaving Badly, Bridgerton and Jonathan Creek, Quentin is the author of Drawn to the Garden, a collection of stories, advice, recipes and poems about her love for gardening. Westhorpe is the editor of the Horticultural Trade Association magazine and curator and gardener of Stockton Bury Gardens, Herefordshire.

Have you ever wanted to talk to animals? In this entertaining and original event, wildlife filmmaker Tom Mustill reveals how conversing with whales – and understanding what they’re saying – might not be such a crazy notion. Mustill was whale watching in 2015 when a humpback breached onto his kayak and nearly killed him. He became obsessed with trying to work out what the whale had been thinking, and while making a film about his experience discovered that cutting-edge developments and discoveries mean asking the whale what happened might not be beyond the realm of possibility. Mustill discusses the technologies and scientists who are working to turn the fantasy of Dr Dolittle into a reality, and looks ahead to how making contact could change our approach to the natural world.

Mustill is a biologist turned filmmaker and writer. His film collaborations, many with Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, have received numerous international awards.

He talks to presenter of Inside Science and co-host of the Science in Action podcast Marnie Chesterton.

Listen in awe to the extraordinary tale of how writer and political advisor Chloe Dalton befriended a hare after moving to the countryside of her childhood. Dalton moved from the city to the country during lockdown, and found a newly born hare, no bigger than her palm and with no one to look after it. So she took it upon herself to be the custodian of the hare, bottle-feeding it and giving it a home in her house. Two years later, it still ran in from the fields when Dalton called it, and took naps in her house.

Dalton speaks to Hay Festival’s Director of Programmes and Engagement Helen Bagnall about the unusual bond between her and the hare, rekindling our sense of wonder towards nature and wildlife.

Experience a remarkable audio journey by heading deep into an undersea world, all from the comfort of St Mary’s Church. Wildlife filmmaker and writer Tom Mustill and musician and Human Instruments co-founder Vahakn Matossian present a soundscape of recordings from a ground-breaking underwater listening station, three miles beneath the waves of Monterey Bay Canyon.

There, underwater landslides rumble and distant rain at the surface can still be heard as a fizz, and the seas teem with the sounds of dolphin megapods, hunting killer whales, the bleats of Gray whale calves to their mothers, the mysterious booms of Fin and Whales and of course, the complex and enchanting songs of the Humpback Whale. Mustill’s team spent six months gathering 350 new bioacoustic tracks from scientists around the world, many never heard before, making them into a soundscape journey from the perspective of seven different whales.

Spend a raucous night out in the company of Jim and Nancy Moir, as they share their weird and wonderful adventures of tracking down birds so Jim can paint them. Under the name Vic Reeves, Jim is one of the UK’s best known and most successful comedians. But since leaving behind the comedy persona that made his name, Moir has spent his time focusing on a passion from childhood: birds, and creating beautiful paintings of them. Moir shares his excitement about painting birds with his wife Nancy, and the pair’s hit television show Painting Birds with Jim and Nancy Moir is about to be commissioned for its third series. Join the couple for this exclusive event as they give an insight into their adventures tracking down and painting birds of all kinds and tell stories about the lives of our feathered friends. Moir and Nancy speak to publisher John Mitchinson of Unbound, which has published Moir’s paintings in the books Birds and More Birds.

Moir is most famous for his work as Vic Reeves alongside Bob Mortimer, with TV shows including Vic Reeves Big Night Out, The Smell of Reeves & Mortimer, and the comedy quiz show Shooting Stars. He is also a successful artist and he exhibits regularly around the world.

Nancy is an actress and television presenter, best known for her roles in Love Actually, Catterick and Painting Birds with Jim and Nancy.