Tom Sutcliffe presents Radio 4’s flagship programme of ideas live from Hay, and will be joined on stage by award-winning authors Colm Tóibín, Sebastian Barry and Meg Rosoff to discuss how they breathe new life into stories from the past, from Greek tragedy to civil war while psychologist Jan Kizilhan explains how a history of trauma and genocide has been woven into the story of he Yazidi community.

Start the Week is broadcast every Monday at 9AM on BBC Radio 4

A fascinating account of an exemplary Parliamentary and political career from an insider committed to progressing gender equality. There’s a great quote about her in The Times: “Countless blows have tempered Harman into something fearless and indestructible”. She talks to the founder of the Everyday Sexism project.

We have the most relentlessly tested school students in Europe. We have constantly revised SATs and GCSE structures. Is any of this encouraging or cultivating learning? How could we develop better ways of valuing both students and teachers? Dorling is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford. Chaired by Peter Florence.

Taylor presents the newest research into the cause and cure of the life-changing neurodegenerative diseases, Alzheimer’s and dementia. She focuses on insights arising from the relatively new field of neuro-immunology: the increasing recognition of the important role of the immune system in the brain. Chaired by Rosie Boycott.

In 1609, the entire Muslim population of Spain was given three days to leave Spanish territory or be killed. In a brutal and traumatic exodus, entire families were forced to abandon the homes and villages where they had lived for generations. An estimated 300,000 Muslims had been removed from Spanish territory, making it – then – the largest act of ethnic cleansing in European history. Chaired by Abdul-Rehman Malik.

The new novel from the author of the multi-award winning A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing. An 18-year-old Irish girl arrives in London to study Drama and falls violently in love with an older actor. The older man has a disturbing past that the young girl is unprepared for. The young girl has a troubling past of her own. This is her story and their story. The Lesser Bohemians is about sexual passion. It is about innocence and the loss of it. At once epic and exquisitely intimate, it is a celebration of the dark and the light in love.

Award-winner Jeffers returns to Hay Festival to entertain his many fans with stories and live drawing from his recent titles including A Child of Books, as well as giving an insight into his future titles. A  Child of Books is the winner of the 2017 Bolognaragazzi Fiction Award.

Don your crowns to discover the key elements of the insanely funny King Flashypants as he determines to be a proper king and sets off to fight Gizimoth, a huge and terrible monster.  Join Emmy-winning author/illustrator Andy Riley for an event filled with plenty of Foo Hoo Hooing, strident music and royally good drawing.

Come along to our immersive lantern-lit tented Storytelling Nook to listen to Veronica Lamond’s illustrated stories of Landy and Fender the lovable Land Rovers, and Kenyan author Aunty Kiko’s tale “Baby Elephant’s Safari, and experience how solar light is making a difference to millions of families in Africa.

Learn how to silk-screen print with locally based and internationally acclaimed textile designers Sunny and Emma Todd. Their bold, graphic artwork is stocked in Liberty, Heal’s, Le Bon Marché, Amara and Anthropologie. Sunny is also a textiles lecturer at Hereford College of Arts. Create your own one-off stencil and screenprint it onto a canvas bag for you to take away (Fairtrade and UK-produced).

Get seriously messy with Jon Williams from Herefordshire’s Eastnor Pottery. You will see pottery demonstrations and  create your own sculptural masterpieces to add to our forest critters’ colony or take home...or both. One thing’s for sure...mud will fly!

BBC Radio 3’s weekly journey of imagination and insight poses the question: “How do you set words to music”? The composer and pianist Richard Sisson, who wrote the score for Alan Bennett’s The History Boys at The National Theatre, and who is one half of the cabaret double-act Kit and The Widow, joins presenter Tom Service at the piano to work out how composers from Schubert to Sondheim, Beethoven to Bacharach, have fused poetry and music to create some of our best loved songs. As an added challenge Richard will set some poetry to music live before the eyes – and ears – of the audience.

To be broadcast on Sunday 4 June at 5PM on BBC Radio 3

The two journalists travelled around Great Britain gathering the voices of the people who make up the public sector: nurses and patients, teachers and policemen and civilians. The story they tell is one of society’s dismemberment across our nation state: a fragmented NHS, a reduced police force, divided schools and a vulnerable military.

Where do we belong? What passport and what papers do we carry? The international human rights lawyer proposes a new form of internationalist identity, and the adoption of the Tobin Tax that would help fund a universally available Citizenship of the World. Chaired by Guto Harri.

A rare interview with the great Polish novelist, who discusses her multi-award-winning fiction Flights. Perfectly intertwining travel narratives and reflections on travel with observations on the body and on life and death, Tokarczuk guides the reader beyond the surface layer of modernity and deeper and deeper towards the core of the very nature of humankind. From the C17^th, we have the story of the real Dutch anatomist Philip Verheyen, who dissected and drew pictures of his own amputated leg, discovering in so doing the Achilles tendon. From the present we have the trials and tribulations of a wife accompanying her much older professor husband as he teaches a course on a cruise ship in the Greek islands, or the quest of a Polish woman who immigrated to New Zealand as a teen but must now return in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart…

Have you ever wondered what the career back-story is behind someone you’ve seen on stage at Hay? How I Got Here is a new series of daily events revealing just a few of these stories.

Tracy Chevalier is the author of Girl with a Pearl Earring.

This will be Chris Riddell’s final public event as UK Children’s Laureate. On his appointment, he promised to show everyone how much fun they could have with a pencil, and today he will demonstrate this by live-drawing his answers to questions. Chris will pick his favourite questions to illustrate and give an insight into his world and the journey he has been on over the last two years as Laureate. The lucky questioners he picks can take their doodle-answers home as a unique piece of art from one of our greatest illustrators.

The final novel from Carnegie Medal-winning author Mal Peet is a sweeping coming-of-age adventure of a mixed-race boy transported to North America in the 1900s. Mal sadly passed away in 2015, leaving Meg Rosoff to complete the story. In conversation with Daniel Hahn she discusses the process of working with Mal’s idea, writing it in her own way, and about the reception to the book.

  #HAYYA

Brave explorer George has packed 25 muffins for his night-time adventure in the museum to catch the fabled thief. Can he and his faithful puppy Trixie track down the criminal without getting squashed by the great big mammoth? With storytelling and funny songs, the authors bring the entertaining adventure to life.

Learn how to silk-screen print with locally based and internationally acclaimed textile designers Sunny and Emma Todd. Their bold, graphic artwork is stocked in Liberty, Heal’s, Le Bon Marché, Amara and Anthropologie. Sunny is also a textiles lecturer at Hereford College of Arts. Create your own one-off stencil and screenprint it onto a canvas bag for you to take away (Fairtrade and UK-produced).

Creative writing sessions with activities to help your stories grow. Come and explore your creativity with Emma, she has a wealth of experience running creative writing workshops and an infectious approach to building a story. Emma is currently writing a novel based on her sailing adventures in Svalbard and her educational writing includes Making Poetry Happen (Bloomsbury, 2015).

Get seriously messy with Jon Williams from Herefordshire’s Eastnor Pottery. You will see pottery demonstrations and  create your own sculptural masterpieces to add to our forest critters’ colony or take home...or both. One thing’s for sure...mud will fly!

Please drop in to our new Compass venue, quiz leading academics about their subject and engage in some critical thinking. As part of Hay Festival 2016 and with help from the Welsh Government we have invited a range of university lecturers and speakers to drop in, talk about their subject areas and about university life.

Kathleen Taylor is freelance science writer affiliated to the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford.