Although the world-renowned Hay Festival has been forced to turn to a digital event for the second year in a row, it didn’t stop the Duchess of Cornwall from participating in the literature festival’s opening gala, A Night of Hope.
The annual festival is held in the Welsh market town of Hay-on-Wye, which is famous for its numerous bookshops. Held over 12 days, the event draws hundreds of writers, historians, poets, and academics from across Britain and the globe for various readings and events, and this year, Camilla joined in to perform a reading herself.
The Duchess of Cornwall read a passage from A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, which was a pick for her digital book club, The Duchess of Cornwall’s Reading Room.
In her opening message, the Duchess of Cornwall said:
“For over 30 years, Hay has been bringing readers and writing together at sustainable events, reaching more than five million people, of all ages, across five continents. I am one of those five million – and I absolutely love the Hay Festival. Over the past ten years, I have been lucky enough to attend it three times. Each occasion has been unique, thanks to the endless creativity of the directors and staff.
“Every Hay Festival, wherever and however it takes place, has in common one purpose: to ‘inspire, examine and entertain.’ From personal experience, I can say that Hay more than achieves this aim, because of the brilliant people who come together to debate, to challenge, to thank and to celebrate. I am quite sure that tonight will be no exception, even if we are, sadly, unable to be together in person.”
The digital opening gala was hosted by broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes, and welcomed writers and performers from around the world gather to share inspiring works of literature, theatre and poetry, including contributions from actors Jessica Raine, Stephen Fry, Charly Arrowsmith, Richard Eyre and Louise Brearley; comedians Sindhu Vee and Rob Brydon; writers Elif Shafak, Juno Dawson, Clemency Burton-Hill, Simon Schama, Rufus Mufasa, Hafsa Zayyan, Margaret Busby, poets Hollie McNish and Karl Nova, and scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock.
This year’s Hay Festival is being held from 26 May through 6 June, and all events are free to stream online via their website; find the full lineup here. Festival events will be closed captioned and if you can’t tune in at the time, events will be available to watch free for 24 hours after the live broadcast.
