March 7-9
Welcome to Malvern Festival of Ideas 2025
I am looking forward to welcoming you to Malvern St. James Girls’ School in March 2025 for the Malvern Festival of ideas.
A diverse array of creative and inspiring individuals — scientists, politicians, academics, journalists, and authors will delve into our chosen theme, offering thought-provoking insights and perhaps even challenging your perspectives.
I eagerly anticipate this inspirational event. Our team has meticulously curated an exhilarating array of sessions, each promising to ignite curiosity and excite.
Dive into the wealth of talks on offer there’s truly something for everyone. From captivating discussions for families to engaging sessions tailored for young minds.
Ready to secure your spot? Head over to malvernfestivalofideas.org.uk to book your tickets! Plus, don’t miss out on the fantastic discounts available for both day passes and weekend access.
Andrew Webb Festival Director
Siân Evans Festival Programme Team
About the Malvern Festival of Ideas
Malvern Festival of Ideas is a multidisciplinary festival of ideas that takes place in the beautiful location of Malvern, Worcestershire. It is (mainly) a single-tracked series of talks, discussion and activities on a theme that takes place over a weekend plus a set of young people and family sessions. At our 2025 Festival, we plan to explore issues that are not discussed openly enough; topics for which we each have a partial truth; and the factors influencing them.
Visiting the Malvern Festival of Ideas
All sessions (apart from the sessions for schools, see page 10) take place at Malvern St James Girls’ School (MSJ), 15 Avenue Road, Great Malvern, WR14 3BA. If travelling by car, there is no parking on site apart from disabled parking. Parking is in nearby streets and has been reserved at the MSJ Sports and Fitness Centre, 33 Barnard’s Green Rd, Barnard’s Green, Malvern, WR14 3LH. MSJ is conveniently situated close to Great Malvern train station.
How to Book
www.malvernfestivalofideas.org.uk 01684 565708
Booking
Tickets may be booked through the Festival website or directly through TicketSource, where you can add the sessions you want to your basket and pay at checkout. Alternatively, telephone the number above.
www.ticketsource.co.uk/mfi2025
Pricing: The prices shown in this brochure are the early-bird prices, valid until 1st February 2025.
Day and Weekend tickets: Make a day of it - or weekend! These tickets cover all sessions in the York Hall at MSJ (see pages 5-9) and are offered at 15% discount. Also include tea/coffee at Saturday and Sunday morning and afternoon intervals (collect a pass at Reception).
Further information
When - the Festival takes place over the weekend of 7-9 March 2025.
Where - All sessions (apart from the meet-the-author session for school-age children) take place at Malvern St James Girls’ School (MSJ), 15 Avenue Road, Great Malvern, WR14 3BA
Light refreshments (tea/coffee) can be purchased throughout the day. A limited lunch menu is also available. You are welcome to bring a packed lunch.
Many of the sessions will be followed by book-signing. The bookstall is provided by Malvern Book Co-operative.
Visit the Festival website and sign up to be informed of updates to the programme.
Many sessions have age guidelinessee the website for details.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this brochure is correct at the time of going to press. Any changes will be notified via the Festival website and by email to subscribers.
Contact and booking details
Website:www.malvernfestivalofideas.org.uk
Facebook: @malvernfestivalofideas
X/Twitter: @MalvernFI
Instagram: @malvernfi
Email: info@malvernfestivalofideas.org.uk
Telephone: 01684 565708
York Hall
Divine Might
Natalie Haynes 7.30pm £13
We are pleased to welcome acclaimed author, classicist and comedian, Natalie Haynes, for an electrifying one-woman show. Full of fire, fury and devotion, Natalie Haynes brings the divine women of Olympus kicking and screaming into the modern age.
Few writers today have reshaped our view of the ancient Greek myths more than revered bestselling author Natalie Haynes. Divine Might is a refreshing take on the legends and stories we thought we knew. It takes a female-centred look at Olympus and the Furies, focusing on the goddesses whose prowess, passions, jealousies, and desires rival those of their male kin
Natalie Haynes began her career as a comedian. However, as a trained classicist, who studied at Cambridge, she has morphed into one of Britain’s most successful authors. Haynes is at the forefront of perhaps the biggest movement in modern literature: the retelling of ancient myths from the perspective of women.
Natalie Haynes is a writer and broadcaster and – according to the Washington Post – a rock star mythologist. Her first novel, The Amber Fury, was published to great acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, as was The Ancient Guide to Modern Life, her previous book. Her second novel, The Children of Jocasta, was published in 2017. Her retelling of the Trojan War, A Thousand Ships, was published in 2019. It was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020. It has been translated into multiple languages. Her most recent non-fiction book, Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myth was published in Oct 2020, and reached number 2 in the New York Times Bestseller chart. Her novel about Medusa, Stone Blind, was published in Sep 2022 and Margaret Atwood liked it. So did Neil Gaiman. She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4; Natalie writes for The Guardian and The Independent and has written for The Observer, New Statesman, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Evening Standard and others.
Weekend Pass
Enjoy one of our Festival passes and buy a ticket for all sessions. Numbers are limited.
The Festival pass includes:
• Entry to all sessions in the York Hall at Malvern St James from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon (pages 5-9)
• Free tea/coffee at morning and afternoon breaks on Saturday and Sunday (a wristband can be collected from Reception)
• A saving of 15% on the ticket prices
Saturday 8th March 2025 York Hall
The AI revolution: How it happened and what it means
Michael Wooldridge 10.00 - 11.00am £10
While AI has been a prominent emerging technology for at least a decade, the speed of progress in the past few years has been remarkable - and possibly unsettling. Generative AI, most notably in the form of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT has gone viralthe first general purpose AI technology to reach a global audience. In this talk, award-winning Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, Michael Wooldridge, will review what is generative AI and how is it different, and ask why generative AI has taken off now. He will look at capabilities of generative AI now, and how will they evolve, and the implications for all of us.
The only way is up Polly Toynbee and David Walker 11.30 - 12.30pm £10
It's only when your feet touch the bottom of the swamp that you can push up to the surface. By 2030 the UK could be so much better, so much more productive, fairer, cleaner, greener, healthier and more contented. Polly Toynbee and David Walker benchmark the country's progress on that pathway. Yes, it's a steep gradient, but the only way is up.
The Only Way is Up gives us a ready reckoner on how to repair the damage and set the UK on the path to sustainable growth. Combining the latest data with expert analysis across health, children's services, the economy, environment, policing and defence, Polly Toynbee and David Walker tell the story of what has gone wrong and what must now be remedied.
Human Rights: The Case for the Defence
Brenda Hale and Shami Chakrabarti 2.00 - 3.00pm £10
After the devastation of World War Two, the international community came together to enshrine fundamental rights to refuge, health, education and living standards, for privacy, fair trials and free speech, and outlawing torture, slavery and discrimination. Their goal was greater global justice, equality, and peace. That settlement is now in danger, attacked by opponents from across the political spectrum and populist and authoritarian movements worldwide. We are threatened by wars, inequality, new technologies and climate catastrophe, and we need our human rights now more than ever.
In this session, Brenda Hale and Shami Chakrabarti provide an indispensable guide to the law and logic underpinning human dignity and universal freedoms. They will engage both sceptics and supporters, equipping believers in the battle of ideas and persuading doubters to think again. For human rights to survive, they must be far better understood by everyone.
Saturday
8th
March 2025 York Hall
Who do you REALLY think you are?
Adam Rutherford 3.30 - 4.30pm £13
The tree of life is the most wondrous demonstration of evolution in all its magnificent splendour. Except it's not a tree at all. Genealogy and family trees are the ties that bind us to our ancestors, descendants and local history. They're not trees either. And the story of human evolution is our species' family tree: guess what? Also not a tree. In this talk, Adam Rutherford will take his genetics shears and history axe, and pollard, prune and chop down some of these trees, and plant much better ones. Adam says, ‘The whole of life on Earth is a tangled bank, and I guarantee that in this talk, you will discover your Royal heritage’.
History and the History Wars
David Olusoga 7.30 - 9.00pm £18
Saturday Pass
History is now front-page news, contested as never before. Statues have fallen and the reputations of great men called into question. In this talk, Professor David Olusoga examines the causes of the ‘history wars’ and asks where they might lead us.
David Olusoga is a British-Nigerian historian, author, presenter and BAFTA winning film-maker. He is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester and presents the long-running BBC history series A House Through Time. He produced and presented the award winning series - Black & British: A Forgotten History, Union With David Olusoga and the BAFTA winning Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners. Among his other presenting credits are The World’s War, and The Unwanted: The Secret Windrush Files, and the landmark BBC arts series Civilizations.
Enjoy one of our Festival passes and buy a ticket for all sessions. Numbers are limited.
The Saturday Festival Pass includes:
• Entry to all sessions in the York Hall at Malvern St James on Saturday 8th March 2025 (pages 6, 7)
• Free tea/coffee at morning and afternoon breaks on Saturday (a wristband can be collected from Reception)
• A saving of 15% on the ticket prices
Sunday 9th March 2025
Embodying Pride, Cultivating Protest
Senthorun Raj 9.30 - 10.30am £8
Senthorun Raj explores the different ways lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, non-binary, intersex, queer, and asexual people around the world are building communities to protest legal exclusions, social violence, and hostile politics.
Dr Senthorun (Sen) Raj is a Reader in Human Rights Law at Manchester Law School. He is passionate about glitter, unicorns, pop culture, and social justice. Sen’s academic, community, and advocacy work examine the relationship between emotion, culture, law, and LGBTIQA+ rights in different jurisdictions. He is the author of Feeling Queer Jurisprudence: Injury, Intimacy, Identity (Routledge) and co-editor of The Queer Outside in Law: Recognising LGBTIQ People in the United Kingdom (Palgrave). Most recently, he served as the Chair of Amnesty International UK.
Making Disability Funny
Sara Gibbs and Elsa Williams 11.00 - 12.00noon £8
X Marks the Spot
The writers of The Daily Tism, Sara Gibbs and Elsa Williams, discuss punching inwards – how own-voices writers mine their own lives for comedy. Discussions include how to target your jokes, your unique perspective and the power that comes from making light of your own life. Sara Gibbs is a British comedy script writer and autism advocate with credits on the British television shows Have I Got News For You, Dead Ringers, The News Quiz, The Now Show and The Mash Report amongst others. Elsa Williams is a comedy writer from the North West. Elsa’s first school report described her as a ‘highly unusual character’ – though she didn’t actually get an autism diagnosis until her mid-twenties due to the unfortunate fact of being Northern.
Suitable for 15 years and up
Michael Scott 12.15 - 1.15pm £8
Uncovering the physical remains of our past is a quintessential human itch; the pursuit of every society from the ancients through to today. But the stories behind archaeological exploration and discovery - what we look for when, what we end up finding, and what we then do with it tell us as much about ourselves today as they do about the past. Michael Scott is a Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick. He believes passionately in making academic research as accessible as possible to a broad range of audiences and has written and presented a wide range of television, radio and podcast series for channels like BBC, ITV, SBS, History and Discovery Channel in the UK, US and Australia.
Sunday 9th March 2025 York Hall
Capitalism, Democracy, and “Bullshit”
Grace Blakeley and Sam Fowles 2.00 - 3.00pm £8
Everything you’ve been told about economics is a lie. And it’s affecting our democracy. Join Grace Blakeley, “the web’s most popular socialist firebrand” and Sam Fowles, “the barrister who beat the prime minister in court” as they discuss the lies that underpin our economy and democracy and how we can save it.
Sam Fowles and Grace Blakeley’s exploration of democracy’s fragility reminds us that our civic responsibilities extend beyond the ballot box.
Muddied Tales
Jade Cuttle 3.30 - 4.30pm £8
Sunday Pass
Jade Cuttle was born into a family of Yorkshire farmers and grew up listening to their muddied tales, aspiring to one day write her own. Whether recounting her passions for mudlarking or metal detecting, medieval re-enacting or magnet fishing, or simply sleeping in her garden shed, Jade's poems and memoir is moved by a commitment to muddying her shoes, and in turn a sense of self.
Jade concludes our weekend with readings from her poetic memoir book Silthood, exploring ancient connections between soil and self.
Enjoy one of our Festival passes and buy a ticket for all sessions. Numbers are limited.
The Sunday Festival Pass includes:
• Entry to all sessions in the York Hall at Malvern St James on Sunday 9th March 2025 (pages 8, 9)
• Free tea/coffee at morning and afternoon breaks on Sunday (a wristband can be collected from Reception)
• A saving of 15% on the ticket prices
Friday 7th March 2025
Cosmic Adventures and Curious Minds
Best-selling author, Christopher Edge, gives a high energy, interactive presentation about his books with quizzes, props, fun facts, and demonstrations of some of the real-life science behind the stories.
Friday 7th March 2025
9.30-10.30 and 11.30-12.30 And 2pm-3pm
Coach House Theatre, Grange Road, Great Malvern, WR14 3HA
Christopher Edge
Christopher Edge talks about his books Escape Room, Black Hole Cinema Club, The Many Worlds of Albie Bright, The Jamie Drake Equation, The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day and The Longest Night of Charlie Noon in an absorbing interactive presentation. Whilst always entertaining the audience, Christopher will talk about how real scientific research has inspired his work and in doing so, he’ll inspire and encourage young people in their own reading and writing. This entertaining and interactive event will keep audiences enthralled.
Each session is followed by a book-signing.
These sessions are for schools and school-age children, aimed at KS2 (7-11 years)
Saturday 8th March 2025 - Young People and Family programme
Elephant
Drawing
in the Jungle -
Will
Hughes (10am) £5 Chapel
Writer and illustrator Will Hughes will show you how to come up with a character based on a creature you might find in the treetops or caves of an enormous rainforest, and then how to write a story all about them.
in the Art Room
- Rosemary
Webb (11am) £5 Chapel
An art and craft session on an elephant theme, with glass, paper, wood and lots of glue!
Not Irrelephant - Rosemary Webb
(12noon) £3 Chapel
Learn fun elephant facts through games including 'Top Trunks', Pass the Elephant, and the Completely Irrelephant Festival 2025 Board Game.
The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be
Mark Lewney 2.00 - 3.00pm £5 Drama Studio
Tickets must be booked for these sessions. Children under 11 to be accompanied by adults
Why aren’t astrologers rich? Surely, the horoscope of a footballer would tell them how to win a game? The science of foretelling the future has changed dramatically over the centuries, so why can we predict some things, like total eclipses, but not others? Guitar physicist, DrMark , presents ‘a history of the future’, beginning with films such as 2001 Space Odyssey and Back To The Future 2. Mark will explain in simple terms what chaos theory and quantum physics is, and how these mind-blowing theories prevent us from predicting everyday life. He will look at the evolution of science and technology and how, with the development of supermaterials such as graphene, our future may change completely. Even though we cannot be sure exactly what the future holds – we know that it is going to be very exciting when we get there!
Spectral Strokes: Unveiling the World of The Sad Ghost Club
Lize Meddings 3.30 - 4.30pm £5 Drama Studio
Where Ghosts and Pencils Collide
Step into the cozy realm of ink-stained paper and whispered tales. Join Lize Meddings, the brilliant graphic novelist behind The Sad Ghost Club, as she guides you through a minifold zine workshop. Discover the magic of comics, explore your creativity, and perhaps even find a friendly spectral companion along the way.
Lize Meddings is a talented artist and creator of The Sad Ghost Club, a webcomic and zine series that explores mental health and loneliness. Lize tackles themes of anxiety and loneliness with an assured lightness of touch. The Sad Ghost Club series are stunning graphic novels that celebrate friendship and unity with sensitivity and humour.
At a glance
7th March 2025 7.30pm Divine Might Natalie Haynes
8th March 2025 10.00am The AI revolution: How it happened and what it means Michael Wooldridge
8th March 2025 11.30am The only way is up Polly Toynbee and David Walker
8th March 2025 2pm Human Rights: The Case for the Defence Brenda Hale and Shami Chakrabarti
8th March 2025 3.30pm Who do you REALLY think you are? Adam Rutherford
8th March 2025 7.30pm History and the History Wars David Olusoga
8th March 2025 10am to 1pm 10am Drawing in the Jungle (Will Hughes); 11am Elephant in the Art Room (Rosemary Webb); 12noon Not Irrelephant (Rosemary Webb).
8th March 2025 2pm The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be Mark Lewney
8th March 2025 3.30pm Spectral Strokes: Unveiling the World of The Sad Ghost Club Lize Meddings
9th March 2025 9.30am Embodying Pride, Cultivating Protest Senthorun Raj
9th March 2025 11.00am Making Disability Funny Sara Gibbs and Elsa Williams
9th March 2025 12.15pm X Marks the Spot Michael Scott
9th March 2025 2pm Capitalism, Democracy, and “Bullshit” Grace Blakeley and Sam Fowles
9th March 2025 3.30pm Muddied Tales Jade Cuttle