Hay Festival 2019 Programme

The sublime Man Asian Prize-winner and Booker-shortlisted The Garden Of Evening Mists explores Japanese atrocity and beauty in Malaya in 1949. The blackly comic The Devil’s Workshop tells the story of how a town in Belarus commemorates its concentration camp past.

What does it take to start a small rural business? Discover how to turn talent into turnover with advice from three successful entrepreneurs: Business Manager at Women in Rural Enterprise (WiRE) Fiona Davies, home textile designer Jan Constantine and Hay’s own Athene English of The Great English Outdoors.

 Wild ideas for things to do outdoors on wet, windy and snowy days, including painting with wet mud and making a fire in the rain.

Duration 60 mins.

7+ years

Josh Lacey packs a huge amount of fun and adventure into his stories, including the latest – The Dragonsitter Takes Off.

6+ years

One of Britain’s best-loved BBC radio presenters returns with his second children’s book Itch Rocks. With elements as his gadgets, Itch has to use all his wits to escape unscrupulous enemies.

10+ years

The Now Show and Outnumbered star muses on a self-confident, pluralist Olympic Britain – a country where a major politician can dangle helplessly from a zip wire like a discarded straw dolly and gain in popularity, and whose Jubilee Queen can send herself up and then descend by parachute.

Six years on from his landmark Climate Change Report, Lord Stern thinks he underestimated the predictions of global temperature rise and that we may now be looking not at 2/3° but at 4/5°. On the up side, he sees potential for economic growth in green industries. Chaired by Nik Gowing.

The pre-eminent design critic explores the history of design’s influence on our lives – from the macabre symbol invented by C18th pirates and one woman’s quest for the best possible prosthetic legs to the evolution of the World Cup ball. Chaired by Suzy Klein.

An introduction to families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down’s syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, disability, with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender. While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, Solomon documents repeated triumphs of human love and compassion to show that the shared experience of difference is what unites us.

From castles to coastlines, pit heads to pubs, ruins to rugby clubs. Which is the most important place in Welsh history? Our historians make their pitches. You decide!

McCann’s masterpiece Transatlantic is a bravura weft of stories crossing between Ireland and the New World over 200 years. Boianjiu’s contemporary novel The People Of Forever Are Not Afraid conjures three Israeli girlfriends guarding physical and personal borders. Chaired by Ted Hodgkinson.

The author of the bestselling Missing trilogy and winner of the Red House Children’s Book Award for Hit Squad shares her top tips on thriller writing and tells us what’s coming next.

11+ years

Exploring, questioning, working systematically, visualising, conjecturing, explaining, generalising, justifying, proving…all are at the heart of mathematical thinking. Come and take part in some stimulating activities designed to develop your capacity to work as a mathematician. Parents and teachers will enjoy this too!

9+ years

Talk-time with the author of the fabulous How To Be A Woman and the Moranthology collection, which are both politically brilliant and outrageously funny.

In this first lecture honouring our late President, three legal scholars, historians and political thinkers discuss the nature of his legacy, and the writing of modern history.

One man, fourteen months, the world’s loneliest continent, minus 50°C, and the magnificent Emperor Penguins for company through a summer of perpetual sunshine into winter months of darkness.

The former head of the UN in Sudan reveals the shocking depths of evil plumbed by those who designed and orchestrated ‘the final solution’ in Darfur – How One Man Became The Whistleblower To The First Mass Murder Of The Twenty-First Century.

Silvestre’s If I Close My Eyes Now is a prize-winning mystery set in 1960s Brazil. Sankaran’s The Hope Factory, set in Bangalore, captures the vitality and danger of a newly industrialized city and how it shapes the dreams and aspirations of two very different families.

Building a sustainable society is perhaps the greatest test that the world’s population has ever faced. Today we have borrowed from the future by grabbing prosperity now and imposing the cost on the next generation.

The high-energy duo are back to share their comic book genius. Discover all the secrets you need to create your own adventures in words and pictures.

9+ years