Hay Festival 2025 Full Programme

With populism on the rise in our polarised world, how can we carve our space for empowerment, equality, and progress? Join a dynamic quartet of Festival thinkers as they tackle the big questions around leadership in 2025 and beyond. Baroness Rosie Boycott is joined by Eluned Morgan, the First Minister of Wales and the first woman to be appointed to the role, leading US journalist McKay Coppins and Mary Trump, niece of President Trump, psychologist and author of Too Much and Never Enough. In discussing the intersection of misogyny, sexism and global power dynamics, they will reimagine leadership and suggest how to confront these challenges, rebuild faith in democratic systems and fight for equality.

What are men for? Most heavy things can be lifted by machines and most problems can be solved by computers and most puddles can be crossed without us gallantly draping our capes over them – so are we fellas of any use at all? Award-winning man Marcus Brigstocke thinks we might still serve some useful function. But what is it?

This new show will resolve the entire issue once and for all (in a non-patriarchal, open minded, progressive sort of way). DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man is the image of the ideal male form. Brigstocke’s Vitruvian Mango is the same, but sweeter, softer, seasonally available and, when ripe, delicately perfumed.

Age Guidance: 14 years old and above.

Journalist and novelist Omar El Akkad engages in a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrayed its fundamental values of freedom and justice for all.

El Akkad has reported on stories including the various Wars on Terror and the Black Lives Matter protests. Watching the slaughter in Gaza, he has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie, and that some groups of people will always be treated as less than fully human.

He talks to historian and broadcaster David Olusoga about his new book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – named for a phrase he used in a viral social media post – in which he chronicles his painful realisation and his grappling with what it means to carve out some sense of possibility during these devastating times.

For over a century, the Guardian’s ‘Country Diary’ has published the nation’s most celebrated writers of natural history as they capture the essence of the British countryside. Four nature lovers discuss Under the Changing Skies, which collates the finest contributions from recent years.

Patrick Barkham is natural history writer for the Guardian and author of The Butterfly Isles, Coastlines and Wild Green Wonders. Nicola Chester writes on belonging, protest, access and connection to nature. Her memoir is On Gallows Down: Place, Protest and Belonging. Paul Evans is a nature writer and senior lecturer in the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. Broadcaster Martha Kearney is also a keen apiarist who filmed her beekeeping year for The Wonder of Bees on BBC Four.