Game-changing books that offer hope, as recommended by speakers at this year’s Hay festival, including Theresa May, Tom Holland, Helen Garner and Jon Ronson

The US children’s author and novelist on a sublime musical trio, how spices reinvigorated his cooking, an addictive ‘mid-19th century’ BBC panel show and being floored by a new jazz track

Robert Muchamore’s series of novels about young undercover intelligence operatives with troubled lives shook up the sanitised world of early noughties YA literature

Lauren Child brings a light touch to big issues, Elle McNicoll explores autism – and a secret society is at work in Paris’s sewers