The Indiependent visit Hay Festival
This May, Hay Festival made its return to Wales, bringing the ‘world’s first book festival’ back to the UK for another successful year. Described as a festival of ‘stories, ideas, and new possibilities’ Hay Festival’s 2025 lineup boasted a bit of something for everyone, no matter your interests!
Aside from the 2025 programme’s packed schedule, the impressive festival grounds and their offerings fully completed the Hay Festival experience. Commendable for its reasonable and attainable pricing, Day 1 saw the opening of everything that the festival had to offer; from a local produce farm shop, promoting excellent in-season fruits, freshly baked pastries, and more, appearances by several charities such as the Little Princess Trust, and The Woodland Trust, and niche stalls promoting self-made art, clothing, roleplay gaming, and food! As well as this, sticking to improved sustainability values, Hay Festival offered beverages served in one-time purchase reusable souvenir cups for £1, and also promote bringing your own reusable cup to the Festival site. Last but not least, this year’s lineupalso saw the return of the much-loved Festival Book Shop, displaying and promoting festival authors, previous festival favourites, and highlighting minority authors- making the festival a unique experience, and an extremely welcoming environment for all.
Day one of Hay Festival opened with an insightful talk from the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey, who introduced and discussed his same-day-published debut novel, Why I Care: And Why Care Matters. Keeping the discussion family-centric, Davey delved into his own personal account as a carer for his son, John, who lives with a severe disability.
Festivalgoers expressed their appreciation towards Davey and his stance on representing the needs and values of carers and those reliant on care, within parliament. He responded to this, describing how care has affected his own family life and relationships, viewpoints towards those receiving care, and why funding and carers rights go hand in hand at the forefront of the political and personal values in which he aims to push, whilst undertaking his influential position of power within the Liberal Democrats.
After a day filled with the likes of BBC Radio 4’s Loose Ends, and talks from Robert Macfarlane, Paloma Faith, and Alexander McCall Smith, Hay Festival continued its wide array of talks with another politically fuelled conversation, featuring The Little Book of Bitcoin author Anthony Scaramucci in conversation with Alastair Campbell. The talk was exactly what you would expect (and would hope for!) from both of The Rest Is Politics UK and US co-hosts, as they discussed Scaramucci’s complicated relationship as former White House Communications Director within Donald Trump’s team in 2016, which turned out to be even more controversial after his role lasted only 11 days. Hearing Scaramucci’s discussion with Campbell was a truly insightful witness of an eye-opening (and not to forget, comical) conversation between two figures that are so deeply ingrained into the current political conversation. Hay Festival’s first-day closing talk was not only interesting and mentally stimulating, but also extremely light-hearted and entertaining to all, and could also be seen as intriguing to that do not regularly consume political content, and even for those who do not listen to The Rest Is Politics!
Hay Festival’s opening day was a breath of fresh air and provided an overall enjoyable, motivating, and heart-warming mix of interesting and thought-provoking talks to begin the busy festival run ahead, exceeding expectations. Hay Festival is not one to miss on your bucket list!
Discover more about Hay Festival, and Hay-on-Wye, here!
Words by Mia Stapleton
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