HAy!

Had a great time at the 2026 Hay Festival. This was the first time I’ve spent overnight - not camping staying with locals and other authors in one of the many picturesque hamlets dotted around the festival site.

I was talking to slightly older children on the friday, my talk had been marketed to 12-15 year olds which is KS2 and KS3 in school speak. This allowed me to go into a bit more depth about how I write historical fiction, using my current book ‘The Domesday Cows’ as an example. It was the first time I’ve done it and as always with Hay will be up forever on their website to my eternal horror. That said, it did go very well, especially considering the heat… I even had a decent line of teenagers wanting to buy my books afterwards. City of Spies was surprisingly popular.

Photo credits: Adam Tatton Reid and Hay Festival

The next day I got to interview Hugh Bonneville for about his new children’s book Rory Sparkes and the elephant in the room. This was incredibly easy as he had many an anecdote, as these thespians usually do. Backstage I’d love to share some amazing celeb gossip, but we mostly talked about wildlife, hedgehogs, diplodocus and bee photography with his partner and Rosie, the publicist.

It is fun doing these festivals, I also did the first Wantage Children’s Book Festival this weekend. Which proved very popular again despite the heatwave. Thanks to Wantage Bookshop and Judith, Mervin and the team for all their hard work!

Photo credit: Lucile Desligneres