Hay Festival 2025 Full Programme

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

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 yoga 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.

Charlie and David Blandford open the gates to their farm for a visit led by agronomist Jonathon Harrington and vet Barney Sampson. Brobury Farm lies alongside the River Wye, in the heart of Kilvert country, and produces top quality lamb and arable crops. Walk around the farm (a distance of up to a mile), watch working sheep-dogs, learn about sheep shearing and wool spinning, and taste lamb that has been produced on the farm.

With thanks to Charlie & David Blandford for welcoming us to their farm.

Please wear walking boots or wellies and waterproof clothing in case of inclement weather. These are visits to real working farms and are suitable for anyone interested in learning more about food and farming. Families are welcome but children must be supervised at all times.

Ten years on from the Serious Crime Act 2015, which made coercive and controlling behaviour a criminal offence, domestic abuse campaigner David Challen and solicitor Harriet Wistrich speak to broadcaster Samira Ahmed about misogyny, male violence and how to bring about justice.

Challen, author of The Unthinkable, successfully campaigned to overturn his mother Sally Challen’s murder conviction in a landmark appeal recognising the lifetime of coercive control she suffered. An advisor to the Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, he is a leading campaigner on coercive control and has written about his own fight for justice and society’s failure to recognise its impact.

Wistrich acted for Sally Challen in the appeal that overturned her conviction for the murder of her coercively controlling husband. She has written about that battle for justice and several others, including acting in the landmark Supreme Court case that held the Metropolitan Police accountable for their failures in the investigation of taxi driver and serial rapist John Worboys. She is founder director of the Centre for Women’s Justice, a founder member of campaign group Justice for Women, and author of Sister in Law.

Start the day at Hay Festival with headline guests chaired by editors from The Independent reviewing the news, discussing the headlines and issues of the day, and revealing what’s breaking and trending online. A fascinating look at what’s tickling the nation’s fancy – and driving it to splenetic fury. Bring your coffee!

Among today’s guests are historian and broadcaster David Olusoga, author of Black and British and presenter of Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners, and farmer and writer Helen Rebanks, author of The Farmer’s Wife.

Guides from the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park and Hay Heritage Group lead a walk through the beautiful ancient environment of Hay-on-Wye. Learn more about the historic buildings of the town and its surroundings.

Hay-on-Wye is located within 520 square miles of beautiful landscape that makes up the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park. The National Park is driving change to bring about a sustainable future, meeting our needs within planetary boundaries. Their Hay Festival series of walks take you into the town’s local environment while offering the opportunity to learn more about the Park’s work and its treasured landscape.

Join much-loved actor and activist Michael Sheen for a family event to launch A Home for Spark the Dragon – a heartwarming story about the importance of finding a home, written in association with national home and homelessness charity Shelter. When Spark the dragon wakes up and finds a storm has destroyed his nest, he tries to find a new place to live. But Spark soon discovers that a house needs more than just walls to feel like home. Will he ever find the right place for him?

Shimmy up to hear the ballroom star, Strictly Come Dancing judge and author Anton Du Beke talk about his new book for young readers with CBeebies presenter Maddie Moate.

Set in Britain during WW2, the book sees 10-year-old twins Harry and Rosie evacuated to live with their great uncle on the Lancashire coast. Missing the vibrancy of London and the dancers at the tearoom where their mother works, they throw themselves into a local Christmas show. But when Harry sees strange lights out on the treacherous mudflats, he and Rosie discover their new home is hiding huge secrets…

Grab a front row seat to an extraordinary conversation between two literary greats: Nobel Prize-winner Abdulrazak Gurnah and Booker-shortlisted Elif Shafak. The pair talk about their writing, the role of literature in presenting diverse perspectives, and the power of storytelling to bring hope in times of crisis and in a deeply polarised and fractured world.

Gurnah’s latest novel is Theft, in which he explores the intertwined lives of three young people as they come of age in postcolonial East Africa. He is Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent.

Step into a world where little girls dressed up as women dance for an audience of adult men, where a pornographic deep fake video of you exists on the internet and you just don’t know it yet, and where men create ‘perfect’ AI girlfriends who live in their pocket.

This isn’t an image of the future. Sex robots, chatbots and the metaverse are here and spreading fast. A new wave of AI-powered technologies, with misogyny baked into their design, is putting women everywhere in danger.

Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, takes us deep into the heart of this strange new world, from cyber brothels to schools gripped by an epidemic of online sexual abuse, showing how our lives are being infiltrated by ever-evolving technologies that are changing the way we live and love.

Enjoy an uplifting burst of springtime joy from the much-loved author of War Horse and Private Peaceful. Michael Morpurgo has lived on Nethercott Farm, deep in Devon river country, for more than forty years. In spring, he observes the changing season all around him, as new shoots emerge and seeds are sown, lambs are born and blossom flowers overhead.

As the weeks pass, he watches the lambing on the farm, walks through the bluebell woods, and feeds the birds in his garden in his wellies and dressing gown. He describes dramatic encounters with sparrowhawks, hares and otters, while sharing other magical discoveries, new poems and reminiscences about childhood and springs gone by. Morpurgo discusses Spring, his first adult non-fiction in nearly four decades, with Helen Rebanks, author of The Farmer’s Wife: My Life in Days.

The author of Safiyyah’s War weaves a powerful story of friendship and family set during the violence and chaos of Indian partition, as two friends desperately try to make it to the right side of the border in time.

It’s 1947 in Lahore. Jahan and Ravi spend their days racing, wrestling and teasing each other. Jahan’s dad works for the British government and the boys hear snippets about the end of the British Raj and a partition of India. Tensions are rising throughout the city and beyond. Then word comes that there are only two days until the partition. Families must flee through desperate violence – will the boys ever see each other again?

Return to the world of Greek myth with the ‘rock star mythologist’, as she examines the role of the goddesses. From Athene, who sprang fully formed from her father’s head, to Artemis, goddess of hunting and protector of young girls (apart from those she decides she wants as a sacrifice), through to Zeus’ long-suffering wife Hera, Haynes takes us on a rapid-fire journey through the power and might of the ancient goddesses who are as revered as their male counterparts.

Haynes is a writer and broadcaster. Her books include A Thousand Ships, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize. She has written and presented seven series of the BBC Radio 4 show Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics.

George Alagiah was one of the BBC’s most respected journalists. As a proud immigrant, he could see the world from the perspective of the Global South. He was a regular attendee of Hay Festival, and we honour him in this memorial lecture by exploring themes that were close to his heart.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hisham Matar delves into the world of Naguib Mahfouz, the first Arab winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and one of the Arab world’s best-known writers. Matar translated and wrote the intro to Mahfouz’s I Found Myself: Last Dreams, a surreal record of his dreams in his final years after an assassination attempt led him to become a recluse.

Diana Matar, the artist whose photographs illustrate the book, shares some of the images which, alongside Hisham Matar’s translation, combine to build a lush and complex picture of Mahfouz’ subconscious.

A BBC Radio 3 lunchtime concert series marking the 150th anniversary of Maurice Ravel’s birth. This first of three recitals recorded for broadcast explores the music of Ravel and others. Danny Driver (piano) performs a programme including Ravel, Debussy and Fauré.

Programme:

Claude Debussy Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir

Thomas Adès Darknesse Visible

Gabriel Fauré Barcarolle No 4 in A flat

Gabriela Lena Frank Nocturnoe Nazeueño

Maurice Ravel Gaspard de la Nuit

Recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Please arrive in good time.

Buckle in for a mind-blowing science ride with TikTok superstar Big Manny and children’s TV presenter Maddie Moate. Big Manny reveals all about physics, from sound waves to circuits and mad magnetism to fantastic friction. Want to bend water or build an electroscope? He’s your man. Maddie Moate takes a look inside everyday objects and marvellous machines to see how they work, from microwaves to smart speakers to supermarket checkouts, and explains why roundabouts make you dizzy!

Big Manny is a science-first content creator with a master’s degree in biomedical science. He has a combined following of 2.9 million on TikTok and Instagram. His latest book is Science is Lit: Awesome Electricity and Mad Magnets.

Maddie Moate is a BAFTA-winning presenter, star of CBeebies’ Do You Know? and non-fiction children’s author. Her new book is How Does it Work? Explore Machines and Objects, from Fridges to Fire Engines!

Enjoy a twenty-minute open air performance between events. Singing is fun with Hay Community Choir – good for mental health, feeling you’re part of a whole. Come along and have a listen as the Choir share their joy in music.

Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist Mona Chalabi delivers our inaugural John Caldon memorial lecture, remembering the investment banker, TV innovator and inspirational entrepreneur, who died in 2021.

Chalabi argues that journalists need to think differently about language – so that readers don’t feel hopeless in the face of wars, colonialism, the climate crisis and Nazi salutes in 2025. If we want to resist war and injustice, we need to resist the idea that resistance is futile.

From the 2003 Iraq War – when millions marched against going to war – to the invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing occupation of Palestine, we see how narratives of ‘freedom’ and ‘security’ continue to be weaponised to justify war and repression. The same playbook of media manipulation, selective outrage and suppression of dissent is at work. The sense of powerlessness many felt in 2003 persists, deepening into a broader crisis of defeatism. Maybe the issue isn’t just ‘manufacturing consent’ but rather manufacturing despair.

“I feel like there’s a leopard in my house, locked in a room. I’ve contacted the leopard authorities and they assure me they are used to dealing with leopards like this, and they have a plan for removing the leopard. It will take a while, though, and once in a while I can hear it growl. And that’s all very reassuring. Even so, several times a day I think to myself: ‘Hang on, there’s a leopard in my house.’”

One morning, while shaving, comedian Mark Steel noticed that one side of his neck seemed larger than the other. After a whistlestop tour of assorted medical professionals, a consultant delivered the ominous words that would define the next months of his life: “I’m afraid it’s not good news, Mr Steel.” And so began a journey into the heart of the NHS, as he embarked on the long and uncertain road to cancer recovery via a range of mildly tortuous and entirely miraculous treatments. What, if anything, might he learn about himself – and our capacity for coping with life when times get tough – as he becomes part of a club that one in two British people will ultimately join?