words: SUSIE WILD
It is that time of year again. Time for a trip to join the literati in the town of books. Hay-on-Why-the-hell-not?!
Hay Festival has plenty to offer punters in 2011. Much to entertain and even more to expand your mind with, for the ‘Woodstock of the Mind’ is no longer just about books. Among the headline guests will be Nobel Laureates VS Naipaul, JMG le Clezio, Paul Nurse and Mohammed ElBaradei. There will be music, too, thanks to performances from Afro Celt Sound System, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Ojos de Brujo, Penguin Cafe, Cerys Matthews and Bob Geldolf. Children are well catered for with Hay Fever, a festival for tots, teens and inbetweens (www.hayfeverblog.net) including storytelling, workshops and carnival extravaganzas and run concurrently with the main festival.
There will be laughs thanks to comedians Mark Watson, Paul Merton, and Jo Brand. There are historians Eric Hobsbawm, Michael Wood, Bettany Hughes and Niall Ferguson, broadcasters Chris Evans, Jenni Murray, Kevin McCloud and Evan Davis, actors Vanessa Redgrave, Ralph Fiennes, Rob Lowe, Gillian Anderson and Simon Russell Beale, and DON’T PANIC, there will also be plenty of writers including John Carey, Paul Theroux, Linda Grant, Malorie Blackman, Deborah Kay Davies, Michael Morpurgo, Niall Griffiths and Jacqueline Wilson. Sky Arts also returns with its acclaimed series of The Book Show. Mariella Frostrup will be interviewing the biggest and best names at the festival.
The Greenprint Forum is the festival’s sustainability project and forms part of the programme of managing and mitigating their environmental impact and has been running for five years. You can join in and contribute to the sessions and the debate at hayfestival.org/greenprint. Of the more unusual events The Passion fever has hit Hay, and Nicholas Lowton, Rhoda Lewis, Peter Florence and friends will undertake a 96-hour reading of the King James Authorised Version of the Bible that will run in two 4-hour sessions daily in parish churches on either side of the border. Full listings will be online at www.hayfestival.org/bible.
In town, Hay-on-Wye has yet more to offer. The Bus Stop Cinema run by Swansea’s Elysium Gallery will be showing short films in the Salem Chapel on 4 June and will be well worth a visit. Hay Poetry Jamboree celebrates its third birthday in Oriel Contemporary Arts (Salem Chapel) with another magnificent line-up of some of the best and most exciting poets on the contemporary scene, amongst them Allen Fisher, Carol Watts, Ralph Hawkins, Maggie O’Sullivan, Sean Bonney and Kelvin Corcoran. The Jamboree runs from 2 – 4 June and all daytime events are free. Entrance to evening events cost ÂŁ5 (ÂŁ3 concs).
How The Light Gets In, the philosophy and music festival at Hay-on-Wye, is back and they’ve recently released their full programme. From rigorous debates and incisive solo talks to cutting-edge DJ sessions and a different themed party every night, this year’s festival promises to be a cerebral and imaginative start to the summer season and is my favourite innovative, enlightening and fun part of Hay. Look out for the evening after parties including The Saturday Shindig, the Shooting Star Party and their legendary Sunday Special, as well as gigs from Camille O’Sullivan, Richard Strange, Lulu & The Lampshades and the delightful Peggy Sue. See www.howthelightgetsin.org for more details.
While in town indulge in local beer, cheer and many many bookshops. I recommend the open air Honesty Bookshop in the Castle Grounds for alfresco browsing and Richard Booth’s rambling bookshop on Lion Street, which is packed with over 500,000 volumes, sourced from around the world and is managed by specialist department heads.
This year’s Hay Festival runs from 26 May to 5 June. View the full Hay Festival programme at www.hayfestival.com
With such a packed programme of music, literature and comedy, it can be hard to narrow down exactly what to go and see. MICHAEL MILLS and EMMA BROWN guide you through some of this year’s Hay Festival highlights.
BRIAN COX
Fundamentally, Brian Cox is fundamentally brilliant. He has fundamentally made astronomy and astro-physics fundamentally cool. And he fundamentally has a fundamental obsession with the word fundamental. Professor Cox’s talk on the Wonders Of The Universe is sure to be a treat for any amateur astronomer or academic of physics lucky enough to get a ticket. It’s sometimes easy to forget Cox’s credentials and see him as a populist, but this talk is being organised in association with the Royal Academy no less. You can count on Cox bringing his usual combination of awe and humour to the mind-blowing subject of creation. And come on, the man used be in D:Ream for God’s sake! All together, “Thi-i-ings, can only get bette-e-er…”
Barclays Wealth Pavilion, Sat 28 May, 7pm, tickets: ÂŁ10
STEVE BELL
Rude, crude and always on the button, Steve Bell’s daily comic strip If… has appeared in the Guardian since 1981. The man who saw George W. Bush as a gorilla, Tony Blair as a wild-eyed psychopath and David Cameron as a talking condom with a suspicious bicycle helmet, is sure to shake up the calm debates at Hay. This isn’t Bell’s first visit to the festival and he’s sure to repeat his previous successes. These live satirical shows have a track record of working brilliantly at Hay, with audiences able to marvel as top humorists lay straight into the most recent news stories without the safety net of an editor or legal department.
Llwyfan Cymru – Wales Stage, Sun 5 June, 1pm, tickets £6
DAVID BAILEY
David Bailey’s a man with no mean credentials. With his photographic portraits of everyone from the Beatles and Andy Warhol to the Kray twins, he single-handedly captured some of the most iconic images of the swinging 60s. Since then, he’s continued to shoot the most iconic figures of the past 40 years. Now, he turns his sights to Afghanistan and in this talk he will be recounting his trip to Camp Bastion last year in aid of Help For Heroes. Bailey will be talking to Dylan Jones, the editor of GQ, who accompanied him on the journey. A former RAF man himself, Bailey is likely to offer some fascinating insights into the mindset of the soldiers he met, as well as some stunning images.
Barclays Wealth Pavilion, Sun 29 May, 7pm, tickets: ÂŁ11
JO BRAND
A living legend of the comedy circuit returns to Hay to promote her new autobiography, Can’t Stand Up For Sitting Down. If her performance last year is anything to go by, then Jo Brand’s tales of rally driving, marathon running and “TV tarting” are likely to leave the audience gasping for air between the belly laughs. There are those who unfairly dismiss Brand as a two joke comedian – “I’m fat, men are rubbish” – but that’s to do a disservice to a woman who helped to blow away the cobwebs of the misogynist working men’s clubs and to secure the place of women in the alternative comedy movement from the start. Shappi Khorsandi, Carry Quinlan, Laura Solon – they wouldn’t be here without her.
Barclays Wealth Pavilion, Tues 31 May, 7pm, tickets: ÂŁ10
MOHAMED ELBARADEI
Eight years on and the US-led invasion of Iraq remains a contentious subject. This interview with Mohamed ElBaradei, the former lead weapons inspector in Iraq, will offer a first-hand insight into the often-confused picture of the months that led up to military intervention. Conducting the interview will be Channel 4’s Jon Snow, who is also likely to touch on ElBaradei’s recent involvement in the Egyptian protests that led to the resignation of Hosni Mubarek. It’s testament to the growing confidence of the Hay Festival organisers that they can attract a Nobel prize-winning veteran of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the protests at Tahrir Square.
Barclays Wealth Pavilion, Sat 4 June, 5.30pm, tickets: ÂŁ10
Beyond its glittering literary lineup, Hay also hosts a fantastic range of live acts. We pick out five of this year’s highlights
HYPNOTIC BRASS ENSEMBLE
A nine-piece group hailing from Chicago, The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble consist of eight horn-playing sons of Phil Cochran, and one drummer. Fusing jazz, hip-hop and everything in between, the band started life as a street ensemble before beginning to record in 2004 and collaborating with groups including Mos Def and Nomadic Massive. They also featured on a number of tracks on the Gorillaz’s third album, Plastic Beach. With the likes of Barack Obama singing their praises – “I can’t get enough of these guys. They soothe the soul” – we urge you to head over to the Barclays Pavilion for some soul-soothing of your own, in what is certain to be a damn fine end to the first weekend of the festival. Barclays Wealth Pavilion, Sun 29 May, 9.45pm, tickets: £12
LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO
Having shot to fame in the 1980s off the back of their hugely successful collaboration with Paul Simon on his album, Graceland, Ladysmith Black Mambazo still continue to make critically acclaimed and incredibly powerful music. A male a capella choir from South Africa, consisting largely of family members, the group sing in beautiful, intricate harmonies in the vocal style traditional to the Zulu people, isicathamiya. The group have achieved worldwide recognition and in 2009 won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional World Music Album for Ilembe: Honoring Shaka Zulu. Ladysmith Black Mambazo bring their unique harmonies to Hay this May, and with a back-catalogue of over 50 recorded albums and years of touring under their belt, you can certainly expect the group to deliver a stunning performance. Oxfam Stage, Mon 30 May, 9.30pm, tickets: ÂŁ23
THE PORTICO QUARTET
This four-piece group from London got the jazz world talking back in 2007 with the release of their debut album Knee-Deep In The North Sea. Their style of modern jazz music is made distinctive by the use of 21st century percussion instrument, the hang, an instrument made from two steel sheets and similar in principle to the steel drum or gamelan. This helped catapult The Portico Quartet from their humble busking beginnings to a Mercury Music Prize nomination. Their debut album was also Time Out’s best jazz album of 2007 and they have since released their second album, Isla. The band will be bringing their unique sound to Hay for a show that we can safely say, will be something very different. In a good way. Oxfam Stage, Sat 4 June, 10pm, tickets: £10
MONARCHY
Originally from Australia but based in London, Monarchy have created remixes for pop giants including Lady Gaga, Kylie and Jamiroquai. Famously elusive, the pair are defined almost solely through their brand of soaring, synth-heavy electro-pop. That and the particularly impressive accolade of being the first band ever to broadcast live into space, an event which took place from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in June 2010. With a busy festival schedule following the release of their first full-length debut album in May, audiences can look forward to a set comprising of their own material as well remixes. Oxfam Stage, Thurs 2 June, 9.30pm, tickets: ÂŁ7
CERYS MATTHEWS
Cardiff-born Cerys Matthews is perhaps best known as lead singer of the Welsh band Catatonia, who enjoyed success in the 90s with singles including Mulder And Scully and You’ve Got A Lot To Answer For. Matthews also duetted with Tom Jones on the Christmas hit Baby It’s Cold Outside, a collaboration which you could argue contributed to the singer being voted the Sexiest Woman In Rock in a reader’s poll by the magazine Melody Maker later that year. Now, Matthews is to return to the Hay Festival where, a decade ago, she famously serenaded Bill Clinton. She will be performing songs from her recent solo album Tir, which means water in Welsh. The album, a collection of traditional Welsh songs, is Matthews’ third release on her own label, Rainbow City Recordings and includes beautiful versions of Calon Lâm and Cym Rhondda. Barclays Wealth Pavilion, Fri 3 June, 10pm, tickets: £15