HAY FESTIVAL WINTER WEEKEND
Hay-On-Wye, a small but perfectly formed market town tucked across the borders of England and Wales, once again supplements its week-and-a-half-long flagship summer festival with its Winter Weekend. A jamboree of literature, music, art, theatre and politics with names both respected and famous – heck, sometimes both – it follows much the same pattern of the larger Hay Festival, but smaller scale and with a bit more protection from the weather. Here’s a few things not to be missed from the festival:
BERNARDINE EVARISTO
Currently enjoying the injection of sales and attention that come with a Booker Prize win – the most recent ceremony, in September, shared the bauble between her and Margaret Atwood – Bernardine Evaristo’s appearance here, in conversation with Peter Florence, is likely to be one of the hottest tickets at the Winter Weekend. London-born Evaristo writes fiction predominantly, and powerfully, about issues relating to the African diaspora – her father was of Nigerian origin – and experiments with language and form. Girl, Woman, Other, her Booker-winning 2019 novel, has been described as ‘polyphonic’ for the manner in which its 12 principal characters are introduced, and over time intersect.
Baillie Gifford Stage, Fri 29 Nov, 5pm. Tickets: £10
CERYS MATTHEWS: WHERE THE WILD COOKS GO
Welsh singer and latter-day radio disc jockey Matthews talks to John Mitchinson onstage, sharing her story of how food and music have intertwined. She’s just published her first cookbook, an anecdotal number titled Where The Wild Cooks Go and the dishes listed as examples – thousand-hole pancakes, amlou, roasted artichokes, vermouth with anchovy-filled green olives, death by chocolate – sound like a tasty tour of the culinary globe.
Baillie Gifford Stage, Fri 29 Nov, 7pm. Tickets: £10
FATHER RICHARD WILLIAMS PLAYS
Richard Williams, vicar at St Mary’s Church in Hay and a composer too, soundtracks Fritz Lang’s classic 1927 film Metropolis live, on the Bevington organ. The plot of this film concerns a futuristic city which is divided between the city planners and the working class, with a love interest that crosses that social divide and throws in some meddling robots for good measure. All of which should be geed up by some suitably dramatic ministerial pumping of the bellows.
St Mary’s Church, Fri 29 + Sat 30 Nov, 8.30pm. Tickets: £10 per night
Hay Festival Winter Weekend, various venues, Hay-On-Wye, Thurs 28 Nov-Sun 1 Dec. Tickets: from £10. Info: 01497 822629 / www.hayfestival.com
