In a specially convened Hay outing for the London short lecture series, a star cast deliver five provocative and inspirational essays. The expenses scandal investigative hero Heather Brooke asks Is There Hope for Politics?; philosopher AC Grayling talks about Walking With Hazlitt; dazzlingly witty QI writer John Mitchinson introduces the QI Book of the Dead; Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, President of the Royal Society and this year's BBC Reith Lecturer wonders at What We Still Don't Know; and Rory Stewart – writer, diplomat , former Director of the Kennedy School, at Harvard and newly elected MP for Penrith talks about The Rhetoric of War in the Twenty-first Century. Introduced by Daisy Leitch.