Hay Festival Winter Weekend 2024

Prepare to be enthralled as historian Jonathan Dimbleby takes you on a journey through 1944, the year that sealed the fate of the Nazis. In conversation with fellow historian David Olusoga, Dimbleby discusses his new book Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War. The year is probably best known for the Allies’ triumph on the beaches of Normandy, but Dimbleby takes readers beyond this to the events on the Eastern Front in 1944 that delivered the knockout blow in the Second World War.

Dimbleby discusses with Olusoga how previously untranslated German and Russian sources, many from ‘ordinary’ soldiers, helped him tell the story of 1944, and gives an insight into some of the bloody battles along the Eastern front and the unusual roles played by deception, the partisans, and the war within a war in Ukraine. Dimbleby's previous books include the highly acclaimed Second World War histories The Battle of the Atlantic and Destiny in the Desert: The Road to El Alamein, which was shortlisted for the Hessell-Tiltman Prize and was followed by his BBC2 programme Churchill's Desert War.

Travel 6,000 years into the past and explore the Neolithic period in Wales with Dr George Nash. The academic takes a look at chambered tombs and monuments across the country, and gives a greater understanding of these enigmatic and spiritual sites.

Nash is an associate professor at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and an honorary researcher within the department of archaeology, classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. Nash has directed excavations at many Neolithic burial-ritual monuments and is the author of numerous books on the Neolithic and prehistoric and contemporary rock art, including Neolithic Tombs of Wales.

Festival favourite Natalie Haynes returns with a fresh dose of mythological musings. From Artemis to Aphrodite and Hera to Hestia, the bestselling author of Pandora’s Jar and Stone Blind brings formidable Greek goddesses the attention they deserve. These goddesses are as mighty, revered and destructive as their male counterparts. Isn’t it time we looked beyond the columns of a ruined temple to the awesome power within? She talks to Hay Festival Director of Programmes and Engagement Helen Bagnall.