Val McDermid is one of the best selling crime writers in the English-speaking world. Her prolific literary work, which has been translated into more than 30 languages, includes titles such as The Wire in the Blood, The Distant Echo and her latest work The Retribution. She has been awarded the prestigious Cartier Diamond Daggerprize for her contribution to the genre throughout her career. She speaks with the writer Tiffany Murray.
Co-organised with the British Council and the Arts Council of Wales and the collaboration of RBA publishing house.
David Bowie – A Life
Drawn from more than 180 interviews with friends, rivals, lovers and collaborators, some of whom have never before spoken about their relationship with Bowie, the editor of GQ’s fabulous oral history weaves a hypnotic spell as it unfolds a remarkable rise to stardom and an unparalleled artistic path. With stories and music and film clips.
David Bowie – A Life
Drawn from more than 180 interviews with friends, rivals, lovers and collaborators, some of whom have never before spoken about their relationship with Bowie, the editor of GQ’s fabulous oral history weaves a hypnotic spell as it unfolds a remarkable rise to stardom and an unparalleled artistic path. With stories and music and film clips.
Writing as a craft
New Fiction
Edinburgh Book Festival Director Catherine Lockerbie hosts this fiction discussion with the authors of the comic debut Happy Accidents, the great Neasden novel 26A, and the contemporary classic The Time Traveller's Wife.
Hay 25
The Hay Festival is 25 this year, and as part of the celebrations we have put 25 Questions to everyone taking part in all our 15 festivals around the world. Please join the panel to discuss three of the Questions – What would you do if you knew you would never be caught? We’re building a library of literature, music and cinema. Which one book, film and album would you contribute to it? 25 years ago, the whole world lived in fear of an Aids pandemic, the Berlin Wall divided East and Western Europe, China and Latin America were considered part of the developing world and less than 1% of the world’s population used mobile phones or computers. What changes will we see to the way we live now in 25 years’ time?
The Hay International Fellow 2011–2012 will talk about growing up with rock stars, and her novel Diamond Star Halo (shortlisted for the Bollinger Prize and the London Award) to political journalist Ken Murray.
The Dig
The author reads from and discusses his searing short novel, weaving the interlocking fates of a badger-baiter and a disconsolate farmer. The story unfolds in a stark rural setting where man, animal, land and weather are at loggerheads.
Ox-Travels 1
Four Meetings with Remarkable Travellers from our new Oxfam anthology. Chaired by series editor Mark Ellingham.
Two interesting Welsh writers will talk to the Festival Director about their work. Jon Gower studied English Studies at Cambridge University and is one of Wales’ greatest literary talents. A writer, presenter and radio and television producer, he has worked for media such as the BBC and Boomerang. He has published a range of books in English, including the An Island Called Smith, which won him the John Morgan Travel Award. Tiffany Murray is a Welsh writer and creative writing teacher. Her novels Diamond Star Halo (2010) and Happy Accidents (2005) have been shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize; she has contributed to The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent and The Guardian.
British novelist Tiffany Murray returns to Segovia to talk to author Marifé Santiago and journalist and writer Marta del Riego about outstanding women, including the heroine of her latest novel Sugar Hall, which is set in 1950 after the Second World War.
I Know This Much: From Soho to Spandau
Great music memoir from the Spandau Ballet songwriter and New Romantic star.
I Think I Love You
The Early Edition 2
Merciless mockery of muppets and mags. Exclusive! In all Sundays...
Fictions: The Comedians
Two magnificent and spectacularly funny second novels. Skippy Dies is an epic and tragic comedy set in Dublin. Diamond Star Halo is a rock ’n’ roll love story down on a Welsh farm. Both Skippy Dies and Diamond Star Halo are shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction.
The Next Big Things
Agents, publishers and talent-spotters should flock to hear the Millennium Class from the famous UEA Writing School, almamater to Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Owen Sheers and Trezza Azzopardi, in a gala presentation of their graduating work. You'll hear them here first.
Hay 25 - The Way We Live Now 3