Former US Secretary of State, First Lady and US Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will appear at Hay Festival 2022 in conversation with lawyer Helena Kennedy on Thursday, June 2 as part of the Festival’s Women & Power series.

The first woman in US history to become the presidential nominee of a major political party, Clinton served as the 67th Secretary of State after nearly four decades in public service advocating on behalf of children and families as an attorney, First Lady, and US Senator. She is the author of eight books.

Tickets to the event are on sale now to Friends of Hay Festival at hayfestival.org/wales or on 01497 822 629. Public booking to this event opens this Friday, April 22.

Hay Festival international director Cristina Fuentes La Roche said: “We’re honoured to welcome Hillary Rodham Clinton to Hay Festival this spring, joining a vibrant programme to imagine the world anew. It’s been 35 years since writers and readers started sharing their stories together in our Festival tents and we have never needed these stories more urgently. Join us.”

For Mrs Clinton the trip to Hay is a return to the land of her fathers... at least her great grandparents who were both born in South Wales.

Back in 2016 a BBC Wales documenrary revealed that Mrs Clinton’s family tree was well and truly rooted in Wales, something which was not a shock to her, as she had already written in her autobiography that her father got his looks from a ‘long line of black-haired coalminers’adding that Wales had a ‘special place in her heart’.

Research by the BBC revealed that Mrs Clinton’s paternal great grandparents were Llangynidr man John Jones and Abergavenny woman Mary Griffiths who alongside thousands of other coalminers and their families moved to Pennsylvania, where Hillary’s grandmother Hannah Jones was born in 1883.

It also showed that that her mother’s family hailed from Pembrokeshire providing that Mrs Clinton has more than a little Welsh blood in her veins.

With five of the first six Presidents of the USA of Welsh descent, and ten Presidents to date boasting Welsh connections (John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Morrison Jnr, James Monroe, William Harrison, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Harrison, James A Garfield and Calvin Coolidge) her Welsh lineage may yet prove a good luck charm for Mrs Clinton.

The world famous Hay Festival will be returning for its first in-person spring event since 2019, Hay Festival is the world’s leading festival of ideas, bringing readers and writers together in sustainable events to inspire, examine and entertain.

Taking place May 26 - June 5, this will be the 35th spring Hay Festival edition, featuring more than 600 writers, thinkers and performers in more than 500 in-person events over 11 days.