Hay Festival 2019 Programme

With the help of her husband Malcolm on guitar, Julia brings her much-loved characters to life and celebrates the Gruffalo’s 15th birthday. Stories, singing and lots of fun! Special apperance by Lydia Monks, illustrator of The Singing Mermaid.

6+ years

See also event HF157.

An opportunity to try your hand at traditional craft skills with a three-hour workshop in which you will develop hand woodworking skills with an expert craftsperson. During the workshop you will mark out, construct and assemble a rustic oak stool to take home with you at the end of the session; all without the use of modern power tools or measuring devices. The design is marked out using the same principles of daisy wheel geometry used to build the great medieval cathedrals and the Tithe Barn at Cressing Temple.
Suitable for all abilities and ages, 12+ years

Come and discover the secret world that lives in your garden with the RSPB. Grab a net and see what amazing creatures are hiding in the leaves and lurking underwater. Make a Bee and Bug B&B to take home and give nature a home in your garden.

4–12 years

The historian analyses the Great War and asks: was the sacrifice worth it? Was it all really an inevitable cataclysm and were the Germans a genuine threat? Was the war, as is often asserted, greeted with popular enthusiasm? Why did men keep on fighting when conditions were so wretched? Was there in fact a death wish, driving soldiers to their own destruction? In the Great War’s centenary year, the historian offers a provocative analysis: that going to war in 1914 was the biggest mistake in British history.

One day in 2008 a member of the public brought a cuneiform tablet into the British Museum. Flood expert Dr Irving Finkel reveals how decoding the symbols on this 4,000-year-old piece of clay enable a radical new interpretation of the Noah’s Ark myth.

The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War

The biographer talks about her riveting, genre-breaking and multi-award-winning portrait of the Italian poet, fascist and utopian. Introduced by Stuart Proffitt.

Like Carrie Bradshaw, Gordon may have had a column in a national newspaper, but her twenties weren’t one long episode of Sex and the City. They were a decade of hangovers, heartbreak, and hideously awkward mornings-after, all over her overdraft limit. She tells the tales to Georgina Godwin.

Two of the contributors to Ian Goldin’s overview of the world’s population and resources address key issues. Malhi takes a metabolic perspective on our human-dominated planet in Bigger Than The Biosphere? Godfray examines the practicality of food production in Can the World Feed 10 Billion People (Sustainably & Equitably)?

How can a business facilitate the involvement of young people to regain their self-esteem? And at the same time emphasise the skills they might gain and use in working for co-operative or social enterprise organisations and in ultimately setting up their own companies using similar skills.

Join the author on a quest to hi-tech modern-day Japan, where watermelons are square and mobile phones are waterproof because people use them in the shower. But there’s an ancient prophesy to be fulfilled… Hi-tech meets ancient myth in this exciting debut.
Duration 45 minutes
9+ years

Kjartan introduces you to the people who really did put the Murder into Maths. He’ll also show off some amazing tricks and weird facts but NO NASTY SUMS – guaranteed! ‘A stand-up maths routine has children and teachers in fits of laughter.’ – The Times Educational Supplement.
Duration 45 minutes
7+ years

Meet Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam – two hapless robber dogs who will steal your heart, even if they aren’t very good at pinching anything else! Tracey Corderoy brings these thieving canines and their story of crime, cakes and bungled burglaries to life, with the help of illustrator Steven Lenton’s live drawing – a MUST for dog-lovers everywhere.
Duration 45 minutes
4+ years

A series of thought-provoking talks in which the speakers air their thinking on the trends, ideas, interests and passions that affect culture and society.  Speakers featured are fantasy writer,Jasper Fforde on why writers have reached the limits of human imagination:  American author, Sandra Newman talks about why  cool people are a liability;  blogger and digital editor of Prospect Magazine, Serena Kutchinskyasks whether priceless objects should belong to all and architect and satirical blogger, Karl Sharro argues that people should build what they want.

Recording to be broadcast at a later date.

16+ years

FREE BUT TICKETED

The visionary Earth scientist suggests two new big ideas: the first is that three hundred years ago, when Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine, he was unknowingly beginning ‘accelerated evolution’, a process which is bringing about change on our planet roughly a million times faster than Darwinian evolution. The second is that as part of this process, humanity has the capacity to become the intelligent part of Gaia, the self-regulating Earth system whose discovery Lovelock first announced nearly 50 years ago.

‘I went into the newsagent’s for a packet of fags and I saw the exercise book, and I thought, yes, that’s got your name on it. Or it soon will. Buy it and fill it with your thoughts, which are many and beautiful and frequently in service to the Lord. Make a diary of your time at St Saviour’s. Maybe, in two hundred years’ time, you’ll be celebrated as the Samuel Pepys of the Church of England. Or a sort of Reverend Bridget Jones. Is that too much to hope for, Lord?’ The creators of the glorious television comedy present the thoughts of Rev. Adam Smallbone.

From triangles, rotations and power laws to fractals, cones and rollercoaster loops, Bellos takes us on a journey of mathematical discovery with his signature wit, engaging stories and limitless enthusiasm.

The designer of the Queen Mary 2 describes the technical and aesthetic challenges of making one of the most spectacular ocean-going cruise ships of all time. Chaired by Chris Parry.

Hitler claimed in Mein Kampf that his years as a soldier in the First World War were the most formative years of his life. Weber looks at what really happened to Private Hitler and the men of the Bavarian List Regiment of which he was a member. It is a radical revision of the period of Hitler’s life that is said to have made him. Chaired by Rosie Goldsmith.

Set on the fictional Caribbean island of Sans Amen, Roffey’s House of Ashes tells the story of three characters, a gunman, a hostage and a boy soldier, caught up in a botched coup d’etat. Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind introduces a nonagenarian Sherlock Holmes. In the twilight of his life, as people continue to look to him for answers, Holmes revisits a case that may provide him with answers of his own to questions he didn’t even know he was asking – about life, about love, and about the limits of the mind’s ability to know. The authors talk to Georgina Godwin.