Hay Festival 2014

The History of Conspiracy Theories

How far do conspiracy theories undermine trust in government and shape history? From 9/11 to the rise of Holocaust denial, conspiracy theories have fascinated us. The historian best known for his work on C19th and C20th German history is Principal Investigator and overall director of a new project: Conspiracy and Democracy – History, Political Theory and Internet Research.

In the century that followed the deciphering of hieroglyphic script in 1822, Egypt became a focal point in disputes over the nature of human origins, the patterns underlying human history, the status and purpose of the Bible, and the cultural role of the classics.

A wonderfully accessible introduction to chemistry’s central concepts that shows how it contributes not only towards our material comfort, but also to human culture. Atkins shows how chemistry provides the infrastructure of our world, through the chemical industry, the fuels of heating, power generation and transport, as well as the fabrics of our clothing and furnishings.

Guo’s love story I Am China explores ideas of translation and exile and the role of the artist. Longlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize, Aw’s Five Star Billionaire maps the overlapping lives of five newcomers to Shanghai.

Almost one million young people are unemployed in the UK and 75 million worldwide. One of the ways in which we can mitigate this problem is by building soft skills such as work ethic and communication at schools, and through better teaching of entrepreneurship as a potential career choice.

Is chaos descending on Mount Everest? Why are Sherpas and Westerners fighting on the slopes? How come the Nepalese authorities have had to put an army post at base camp? And what about the ever-younger age of climbers? Do 13-year-olds really belong in this lethal place? Everest Summiteer Matt Dickinson discusses these dramatic changes and presents a fact-filled journey to the top of the world’s highest mountain. He also discusses his new teen novel The Everest Files, which follows an Everest expedition from the point of view of a 16-year-old Sherpa climber.
8+ years

Enjoy a high-energy and high-speed blast of cartooning magic with a line-up of cartoon geniuses including Martin Brown, Sarah McIntyre, Philip Reeve and Phoenix comic cartoonists. Challenge them to draw your cartoon ideas. Noisy fun for all the family. 

LifeSkills created with Barclays are running a series of fun, developmental workshops to help you move effectively from school into the world of work.

Activity 1: Get ready for an interview
Helps students understand that interviews help the employer and employee assess their match for one another. Duration 20 minutes

Activity 2: Questions and answers
Students understand and practise using the STAR (situation, task, activity, result) model for answering questions. Duration 25 minutes

11–19 years

FREE BUT TICKETED

Join The Phoenix comic artist Karen Rubins for her comic-creation sessions! As the scribbler of all things creepy and spooky, Karen will guide you through a world of comic monsters. Learn some top comic-creating tips while she helps you to draw your own ghosts, mythical beasts and of course…some pie!

7+ years

A delicious light lunch will be served to celebrate the latest phase of the restoration at Hay Castle. The lunch will be hosted by Nancy Lavin Albert and Trustees of the Hay Castle Trust.

Princess Michael will talk about her novel The Queen of Four Kingdoms. Yolande of Aragon is sent away from her family, her friends and everything she knows, to marry the young Duke of Anjou, King Charles VI’s cousin. SJ Parris talks about the latest of her Bruno Giordano crime novels set in Elizabethan England, Treachery.

The wars since 9/11, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, have generated frustration and an increasing sense of failure in the West and the blame has been attributed to poor strategy. Strachan, one of the world’s leading military historians, reveals how these failures resulted from a fundamental misreading and misapplication of strategy itself. He argues that the wars since 2001 have not in reality been as ‘new’ as has been widely assumed and that we need to adopt a more historical approach to contemporary strategy in order to identify what is really changing in how we wage war.

Sheep are the thread that runs through the history of the British countryside. Our fortunes were once founded on sheep, and this book tells a story of wool and money and history, of merchants and farmers and shepherds, of English yeomen and how they got their freedom and, above all, of the soil. He talks to Kitty Corrigan.

The Untold Story: The Environment in Fiction 

The pianist plays Gluck/Sgambati – Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Orfeo and Eurydice; Beethoven – Sonata in D major Op28, Pastorale; Grieg – Slatter Op72 (selection of Norwegian Dances); Chopin – Polonaise-Fantasy in A flat major Op61; and Gershwin – Songs (arr).

Mike is a former RN Officer (Submarine Service) and has helped set up three businesses – his military training and experience has been crucial to their success.

Mitchell has won the Blue Peter Best Book with Facts Awards twice, for Why Eating Bogeys Is Good For You and Do Igloos Have Loos? Here, the revolting rhymes expert treats his audience to a wickedly funny retelling of Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for Children.

9+ years

Nicola is a marvellous writer, speaker, and observer of the natural world. She reads from her beautiful new picture book The Promise, which reminds us all that the smallest actions can change our world for the better.
5+ years