Howard Jacobson and Mervyn King feature in new ‘Hay Levels’ series

Novelist Howard Jacobson and Mervyn King, former governor of the bank of England, are amongst the first speakers to appear in this year’s Hay Levels, a series of educational videos for A-Level students from the Hay Festival.

As well as Jacobson and King, the first batch of videos will also feature speakers such as Siddhartha Mukherjee, assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University, and Emma Smith, professor of Shakespeare studies at the University of Oxford. From now until Christmas, Hay will release new videos on a dedicated YouTube channel.

More videos, which will be released at a later date, will feature experts including Timothy Brook (professor of Chinese history at University of British Columbia), art historian Neil MacGregor and author Jung Chang.

Hay Levels, launched by Hay Festival and Tata Group, were created to offer A Level students access to speakers who are renowned in their field.

The 200+ videos have been seen 150,000 times by young people in the UK, the US, Australia, Russia, India, Japan, Brazil and Kenya, according to Hay.

Peter Florence, director of Hay Festival, said: “Hay Festival continues to bring some of the best thinkers and great academics of our day to audiences all over the world, developing an ever-growing community of curious souls who enjoy engaging with ideas and each other. We wanted to share this opportunity with even more people. Hay Levels is the result. We hope they will be widely used and shared and are deeply grateful to these fabulous academics that have supported us so far.”