A movie writer, a BBC news man – and 11 others to see at York Festival Of Ideas

York has never been a city short of a brainwave or two. And that fact is celebrated this month with the return of the York Festival of Ideas.

Running from Tuesday, June 9 to Sunday, June 21, with a theme of Secrets And Discoveries it has more than 150 events to choose from with some stellar speakers.

Here’s a few to look out for. And they’re all free…

Andrew Davies

Award-winning British screenwriter and BAFTA Fellow Andrew Davies discusses his screen work, including those currently in-the-making – including Bridget Jones’s Diary, Pride And Prejudice and House Of Cards. He will also look into literary adaptation, business-making and Jane Austen.

Ewen MacAskill

The Guardian’s defence editor Ewen MacAskill gives the festival’s keynote speech on the newspaper’s coverage of whistleblower Edward Snowden.

This precedes a panel discussion with NATO’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations and Intelligence Major General Gordon Davis and a host of international experts on the level of state surveillance and the implications for security.

Amartya Sen

Nobel-prize winning social scientist Amartya Sen discusses the demands of democracy in a free public lecture organised by the university’s school of politics, philosophy and economics. He is currently based at Harvard University and has spent most of his career looking at the social impact of economic policies.

AC Grayling

Philosopher AC Grayling explores the destructive and disruptive nature of truth, deriving from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning ‘straight’.

Polly Toynbee

Award-winning Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee joins the former director of public reporting at the Audit Commission David Walker looking into the previous Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. They argue that the financial crisis was used by the coalition as an opportunity to dismantle the welfare state, going beyond what Margaret Thatcher had tried.

Greg Jenner

Historian and historical consultant to CBBC’s multi-award winning Horrible Histories Greg Jenner discusses how routines such as washing, using the toilet and eating have evolved since the Stone Age.

Holocaust survivor

Holocaust survivor Iby Knill was captured and sent to Auschwitz during the Second World War. Aged 91, she tells an emotional account of herself and her family in occupied Europe as the threat from the Nazis closed around them.

Rory Cellan-Jones

BBC Technology Correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones discusses the future of cyber security in conversation with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University, Bebo White. A panel discussion follows with academics from a range of universities.

Susan Reverby

Susan Reverby of Wellesley College, USA, discusses a US Public Health Service sponsored medical research study in Guetamela which involved infecting vulnerable people with sexually transmitted diseases from 1946 to 1948. She talks about the fight to achieve justice and how the US government came to apologise.

Hilary Robinson

Author Hilary Robinson discusses her two picture books The Christmas Truce and Where The Poppies Now Grow, which were released to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. In her stories, she looks at the life in Edwardian England and the struggles of the soldiers in the trenches.

Drone expert

Andy Miah from the University of Salford talks about how the world is changing through the technological advances in drone design. He also looks into wearable drones and drone artists.