The Visually Impaired Person’s Guide to The Hay Festival

The programme for the 25^th Hay Festival, running from Thursday May 31^st until Sunday June 10^th has been announced, together with the children’s programme, Hay Fever, which runs at the same time.

There is a wonderfully diverse programme, with a large number of authors. You can find the full programme here.

Many of these authors are available in large print and we have produced a guide to what is available in large print for the benefit of festival goers, and for those who are tempted to get involved at a distance.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Half of a Yellow Sun and The Thing Around Your Neck, will give the Commonwealth Lecture ‘To Instruct and Delight – a Case for Realist Literature’.

Martin Amis will discuss his new novel with The Telegraph Head of Books, Gaby Wood. Some of his earlier work is available in large print and you can find details here.

William Boyd talks with the Festival Director Peter Florence about his new novel, Waiting for Sunrise.

Louis de Bernières discusses his work as the librettist for the musical production about the Hay Poisoner.

Monty Don appears in four events, discussing diverse subjects from climate change to bi-polarity to the growing world population.

Michael Frayn discusses his childhood memoir, My Father’s Fortune, available in hardback and paperback.

Stephen Fry attends two discussions on bi-polarity.

Philippa Gregory is appearing in three events on Saturday 2^nd June. Five of her titles are available in large print.

Mohammed Hanif will be discussing his new novel Our Lady of Alice Bhatti.

Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding: It is rather extraordinary that a book about Baseball has received such rave reviews in the UK (as well as the US of course) and Waterstones have chosen it as one of their 2012 “Waterstones eleven” for debut novels.

Joanne Harris will be discussing a sequel to Chocolat. Let’s hope it is published in large print in due course.

Alan Hollinghurst will discuss his latest novel, The Stranger’s Child, with Gaby Wood.

Boris Johnson will be talking about his latest book, Johnson’s Life of London, one of the 98% of books published every year which are never published in large print. However, his The Dream of Rome is still available in large print.

Kathy Lette will be talking about her new novel The Boy Who Fell to Earth.

Two of our bestsellers are Ben MacIntyre’s Operation Mincemeat and Agent Zigzag, so it is a mystery as to why his latest bestseller Double Cross – The True Story of the D-Day Spies is not yet available in large print, despite having been a Radio 4 Book of the Week.

One of the highlights of the festival will undoubtedly be Hilary Mantel talking about her new book Bring up the Bodies, her sequel to Wolf Hall, one of our biggest sellers in large print. As yet, we do not know who is going to publish the large print edition of Bring Up the Bodies. Send us an email if you want to be kept informed as soon as we know more.

Andrew Marr will be talking about The Diamond Queen on Friday 8^th June. If we are very lucky the large print edition will be available by then. It is due to be published on June 4^th, the first day of the two-day Diamond Jubilee holiday, so we can be sure it will not be published on that day! The publisher is notorious for failing to meet their publication deadlines anyway, often being a month late. What is puzzling is that the normal print edition was published in October last year so they have had plenty of time to produce the large print edition.

Ian McEwan will be discussing his writing and his new novel, Sweet Tooth, with Timothy Garton Ash. He will also be talking to James Watson, the 1962 Nobel Laureate, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.

Sinclair McKay will be talking about his The Secret Life of Bletchley Park, chosen as the Independent Booksellers Book of the Year in 2011, and one of our biggest sellers.

Andrew Miller will be talking about Pure, the Costa Book of the Year 2012.

Adam Nicolson will talk about his 700 year history of The Gentry, arguing that it is the history of this yeoman class that makes England what it is today.

Frances Osborne, author of The Bolter, will talk about her new novel Park Lane.

Ian Rankin talks about his writing including his latest title, The Impossible Dead.

Anne Sebba talks about her biography of Wallis Simpson, The Duchess of Windsor, That Woman.

Lionel Shriver, Orange Prizewinning author, will talk about his latest work, The New Republic.

Helen Simpson talks about her short stories.

David Starkey discusses the House of Windsor.

Kate Summerscale will talk about her latest book Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady. Her Samuel Johnson Prize Winning The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is available in large print.

John Lewis-Stempel will talk about his biography of James Herriot, The Young Herriot. We would love to have provided a link to the large print edition of this book, published in April this year but unfortunately it also went out of print in April this year! Just one of the daft vagaries of our life as large print booksellers – see our blog on the subject here.

Rebecca Stott will discuss her new book on Darwin’s predecessors. In the meantime her novel, The Coral Thief is available in large print.

Sue Townsend, a great champion for the visually impaired, will be talking about her latest novel, The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year. Her Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years is available in hardback and paperback in large print.

Kate Williams talks about her latest novel Beautiful Lies.

Jeanette Winterson talks about her autobiography, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?