TUESDAY 28 MAY

hayfestival.org 11.30am

1pm

[HD31] 11.30am CUBE £8

[176] 1pm OXFAM MOOT £8

Discover Story Building

Monisha Rajesh talks to Olivia Squire

Perfectly Norman

Around the World in 80 Trains: a 45,000-Mile Adventure

Join Story Builders from Discover Children’s Story Centre (discover.org.uk) to explore picture book Perfectly Norman by Tom Percival. In this interactive event children will hear all about Norman, a boy with an extraordinary secret. Explore why Norman feels the way he does, and reflect on what makes us all unique. The event includes a craft activity for each child to complete and take home. 4–7 This event was developed with Thrive LDN, and promotes positive mental health messages for young children and families

When Monisha Rajesh announced plans to circumnavigate the globe in 80 train journeys, she was met with wide-eyed disbelief. But it wasn’t long before she was carefully plotting a route that would cover 45,000 miles - almost twice the circumference of the Earth - coasting along the world’s most remarkable railways, from the cloud-skimming heights of Tibet’s Qinghai railway to the silk-sheeted splendour of the Venice Simplon-Orient Express. Packing her rucksack – and her fiancé, Jem – Monisha embarks on an unforgettable adventure that will take her from London’s St Pancras station to the vast expanses of Russia and Mongolia, Kazakhstan, North Korea and beyond. The ensuing journey is one of constant movement and mayhem, as the pair strike up friendships and swap stories with the hilarious, irksome and ultimately endearing travellers they meet on board, all the while taking in some of the Earth’s most breathtaking views. In partnership with Suitcase magazine

1pm [174] 1pm LLWYFAN CYMRU – WALES STAGE £10

Germaine Greer

Sappho From the Greek island of Lesbos, Sappho presented one of the earliest forms of passionate literary subjectivity in the history of Western love poetry. As one of the first female love poets with verse embracing both men and women, her legacy in popular culture lives on and her persona has become etymologically attached to female homosexuality. What do we really know about Sappho? As a professional performer she wrote poems in various personae, yet scholars have persisted in regarding every fragment that survives as autobiographical.

[177] 1pm HAY FESTIVAL FOUNDATION STAGE £8

Bill Sutherland

Cambridge Series 7: Rethinking Decision-making in a Post-truth World Sutherland, who holds the Miriam Rothschild Chair in Conservation Biology at the Department of Zoology, Cambridge University, will describe attempts to make global evidence available to all, to improve the effectiveness of experts and to change attitudes toward the use of evidence. In association with Cambridge University

[175] 1pm BAILLIE GIFFORD STAGE £9

Bart van Es talks to Philippe Sands

The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found A conversation about the extraordinary biography that won the 2018 Costa Award. Little Lien wasn’t taken from her Jewish parents – she was given away in the hope that she might be saved. Hidden and raised by a foster family in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation, she survived the war only to find that her real parents had not. Much later, she fell out with her foster family, and Bart van Es, the grandson of Lien’s foster parents, knew he needed to find out why. His account of tracing Lien and telling her story is a searing exploration of two lives and two families. It is a story about love and misunderstanding and about the ways that our most painful experiences, so crucial in defining us, can also be redefined. Philippe Sands’ East West Street won the 2017 Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction.

[178] 1pm BBC TENT

free but ticketed

Tonight at Hay

BBC Radio Wales A round-up of highlights from Hay Festival on the national radio station for Wales. [179] 1pm ST MARY’S CHURCH £10

Louis Schwizgebel (piano)

BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Recitals 2 The second of four recitals broadcast from Hay this week. Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit (Ondine); Claude Debussy Preludes Book 1 (L’isle Joyeuse); Modest Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition. Recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Please arrive in good time.

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